To help pay the rising costs of fighting wildfires in Oregon, the Oregon legislature passed a bill in the last session that boosts revenue to the Oregon forest Land Protection Fund (OFLPF). House Bill 3044A, which is effective this year, increases the:

€ Fire protection assessment paid by forest landowners.

€ Tax on timber harvest.

€ Surcharge on improved lots within fire protection districts.

The new law will help, but it is just the first step in a much-needed restructuring of Oregon's fire protection funding system, according to the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Fires burning in the forest cost more to put out than they would have 20, 10 or even five years ago. Hotter, drier summers, rising labor and equipment costs, build-up of forest fuels and urban sprawl all factor into the increase.

The strain on the OFLPF of more expensive, and more frequent, large fires surfaced in June when the fund managers had to borrow money from the state treasury to offset a $5 million deficit incurred in 2007. By law, the loan must be repaid within a year.

The landowner-financed OFLPF pays the extra costs of fighting large wildfires such as air tankers, helicopters and hand crews.

Over the past three fire seasons, the ODF battled 14 large wildfires that ran to more than a million dollars each to put out. During that period, it cost an average of $11.8 million per season to fight these forest fires on lands protected by ODF. For the past several years, funding sources for the OFLPF have brought in slightly more than $8 million annually. With increasingly costly fire seasons, the balance of the fund has been in steady decline for a decade.

Clearly, more must be done to assure the quality of wildfire protection that Oregonians have become accustomed to on the 15.8 million acres of private and public forestlands that ODF safeguards.

For that reason, ODF has prepared the Wildfire Reduction Act for consideration in the 2009 legislative session. It calls for strengthening firefighting capacity to reduce the incidence of large, costly and environmentally damaging wildfires. The Act would:

€ Place more firefighters, fire engines and helicopters in the most fire-prone districts so that fewer small fires escape to become large, costly incidents. Currently, these four districts account for more than 80 percent of the expenditures to put out large fires.

€ Shift responsibility for the additional costs incurred during periods of fire severity (currently maintained within the Legislature's emergency fund) to forest landowners.

€ Restructure the system for paying large fire costs so that the state general fund shares more equitably with forest landowners in maintaining the wildfire protection system that benefits all Oregonians.

The hope of state wildfire managers is that the Act will help stabilize wildfire funding and decrease the need to borrow money in future years to pay for forest firefighting.