PERC report says investment in forest fuel treatments leads to decreased wildfire costs
A new report says prescribed burns and thinning projects save money, longterm, highlighting new peer-reviewed economic research on wildfires.
The report, released by Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center, a “free market environmentalism” nonprofit think-tank, draws heavily on two economics papers looking at fire suppression costs and damages, which say every $1 invested in fuel treatments in Pacific Northwest national forests yields between $5 and $6 dollars in reduced firefighting expenditures.
Additionally, the research states that across the western United States, each dollar invested in national forest fuel treatments “yields an average of $3.73 in expected benefits through avoided damages from smoke and property loss.”
Frederik Strabo, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, and PERC said that was calculated, in part, by looking at areas that had burned after fuel treatment. Economic wildfire research has been “pretty limited” previously, Strabo said.
Using Forest Service data sets, they were able to use actual treatment data in research — most previous research has been largely hypothetical, he said.
“They’ve put together a very well documented and kind of comprehensive fuel treatment database that we were able to use,” Strabo said this week. “So we actually kind of use the on-the-ground fuel treatments, and then there’s all this great data on wildfires and what different aspects of wildfire costs, and so we essentially are able to evaluate how these treatments influence wildfire behavior.”
Researchers were able to assess factors like burn severity and the probability of fire spread, Strabo said.
The PERC report also states larger projects (often referred to as landscape-scale, which are projects 2,400 acres and more) also produce greater returns.
“The Forest Service’s long-standing collaboration with private firms in timber sales offers a model for how these partnerships could be modernized to deliver fuel treatments at scale,” the PERC report states.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said earlier this year in Helena that landscape-scale treatments of forests are no longer an “academic exercise” and that his agency has renewed focus on implementing forest plans. Forest plans are guiding documents each state uses to drive forest policy.
It also comes in the midst of legislation — including some by Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Republican representing Montana — seeking to promote fuel reductions work and expand the Good Neighbor Authority program, which allows the state and federal government to partner on forestry projects and provides timber for the forest industry.
The research comes in the midst of cuts to federal land management agencies. According to an analysis by Hawk Eye Strategies and Prospect Partners, Montana lost 267 Forest Service employees in 2025, which was 13% of the state’s total.
The National Park Service lost 53 employees, the Bureau of Land Management lost 58 and the Bureau of Reclamation lost 106 Montana employees, which was a third of the state’s total.
All together, the state lost 15% of its federal public lands workforce in the state in 2025, the analysis says.
“By eliminating critical scientific roles, this administration has effectively destroyed Montana’s alarm systems for natural disasters and other environmental crises,” Andrea Delgado, who helped create that analysis, said in a press release. “We are entering a summer of increased fire potential with 40% fewer entomologists to track insect infestations and 35% fewer soil scientists to manage land health.”
The PERC study added that the Forest Service manages nearly 200 million acres of land with 25,000 people.
“These challenges are compounded by institutional incentives that favor short-term fire suppression over long-term prevention, along with regulatory requirements—such as endangered species protections, federal and state air-quality standards, federally designated Wilderness areas, and review under NEPA—that can delay or prevent fuel-reduction projects, even in forests at high risk of wildfire,” the PERC report states.
Legal challenges to forestry projects have been common and a source of contention for some. Some of those groups pushing the legal challenges have pointed to research they say shows forests are closer to their natural density than some federal studies would suggest.
Last month, for example, the Gallatin Wildlife Association, Alliance for The Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council on Wildlife and Fish filed suit to stop logging and burning on more than 5,600 acres between Hyalite and South Cottonwood canyons south of Bozeman.
“Talking to a lot of fire ecologists, experts, they typically, point out, even though they would self describe themselves as ardent environmentalists, they think that some of this environmental litigation is one of the biggest hurdles to conducting fuel treatments,” Strabo said.
He added it’s “well documented” that natural fire return intervals are “out of wack” and adding that fuel treatments do not go against the natural ecosystem.
“Is it really just an information problem, or people not educated? Or is this a misunderstanding? I know there’s the narrative that a lot of people who say they’re environmentalists might just be getting nervous about this being an excuse to just do logging,” Strabo said. “And so this is a result of decades of mistrust between environmental groups and public agencies.”
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