Shawn Regan and Tate Watkins of the Property and Environment Research Center write about how government regulation hinders wildfire-prevention efforts:
There is now broad agreement among ecologists and fire scientists that forest restoration — including the use of controlled burns and selective thinning — preempts devastation by clearing brush and other vegetative fuels before they go up in smoke. All too often, however, environmental-review and permitting processes prevent this important work from being completed in time — and the homes, wildlife habitat, and air quality it is meant to protect end up damaged or even destroyed.
A recent study by our colleagues at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) found that from the time environmental reviews are initiated for U.S. Forest Service projects, it takes an average of 3.6 years to begin mechanical-thinning treatments on the ground, while prescribed burns take 4.7 years to start on average. Mechanical-thinning and prescribed-burn treatments that require environmental-impact statements — the most stringent category of analysis — are even slower, taking an average of approximately five years and seven years, respectively.
Read the whole thing here.