Authors: Benjamin Bagdon and Ching-Hsun Huang, Northern Arizona University
Date: 2016
Wildfire suppression expenditures sharply increased from $528.5 million in 1985 (in 2015 dollars)
to $2.1 billion in 2015 while the size of area burned has more than tripled (from 2.8 to 10.1 million acres) during the same time period (National Interagency Fire Center [NIFC] 2015, USDA Forest Service 2015). The proportion of the Forest Service’s annual budget allocated to wildfire suppression has increased from 16% in 1995 to 52% in 2015 and is projected to increase to 67% of the budget by 2025 (USDA Forest Service 2015).
