Every dollar spent on forest fuel treatments saves about $3.75 in wildfire damages, according to a new study, led by researchers at the University of California (UC), Davis, of nearly 300 fires in the western U.S. The study estimated that the treatments, such as forest thinning and prescribed burns, prevented $2.8 billion in losses, reduced wildfire spread and fire severity.
The researchers analyzed the nearly 300 wildfires that intersected U.S. Forest Service (USFS) fuel reduction treatments in 11 states between 2017 and 2023. The study is the first to evaluate the economic value of USFS fuel treatments across the West at a large-scale using data from wildfires that encountered fuel treatments rather than relying on wildfire simulation models. It was published in the journal Science.
“Fuel treatments and forest management are critically underfunded public goods,” said lead author Frederik Strabo, a postdoctoral scholar with the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. “Our results suggest that when fewer resources are available to agencies like the Forest Service, more of the economic burden of wildfires falls on the public.”
The researchers measured wildfire damages including structure losses, carbon emissions and the health impacts of exposure to fine particulate matter. As climate change has intensified wildfires in recent decades, those damages are estimated to total $185 billion to $540 billion a year.
Preventing wildfire spread
Researchers compared how fires behaved when they spread into treated areas vs. untreated forests, accounting for predictable patterns of fire spread using fire-simulation modeling, while controlling for weather conditions and suppression efforts.
Fires were more than 13 percentage points less likely to continue spreading after reaching a treatment area. Treatments were especially effective at reducing high-severity fire—those that kill more than 75% of the tree canopy—lowering burned area by 20% to 35%.
Prescribed burning was significantly more effective than mechanical thinning alone at limiting wildfire spread. Treatment size also mattered: landscape-scale treatments larger than 2,400 acres were the most effective at reducing wildfire spread.
Investments pay off
Across the fires studied, fuel treatments reduced total burned area by 36%, or about 152,000 acres, relative to a scenario without treatments. They also prevented the loss of more than 4,000 buildings, avoided the release of 2.7 million tons of CO2, reduced 25,757 tons of fine particle pollution and prevented an estimated 59 premature deaths.
Together, these avoided damages totaled about $2.8 billion, including:
• $895 million from avoided structure loss.
• $503 million from reduced CO2 emissions.
• $1.39 billion from avoided health impacts and productivity losses linked to smoke pollution.
Strabo said the findings underscore the importance of investing more in preventive forest management.
“Wildfire policy has historically focused on suppression, but our results suggest greater investment in prevention could substantially reduce wildfire damages,” said Strabo. “That will become even more important as the climate continues to change and forests face more large wildfires and other disturbances.”
The research was supported by the Giannini Foundation for Agricultural Economics and the USFS. Other authors include Matthew N. Reimer with UC Davis and Calvin Bryan with the Department of Economics at Washington and Lee University. — UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
