Budget and appropriations tracking
We follow wildfire line items from the President's budget request through enacted appropriations to obligated spending, and publish the deltas.
Program
Policy & Transparency
Wildfire governance at federal, state, and local levels — funding tracked, decisions documented, systems made legible.
Defining metric
Wildfire policy is made in appropriations bills, agency directives, and incident-level decisions that are rarely read together. We read them together, publish what we find, and keep the primary documents public.
What we do
Records and disclosure
We file records requests when the public record is incomplete, and publish every response — including the refusals — alongside the analysis.
Agency directive analysis
When an agency changes a suppression or fuels directive, we publish a plain-language reading of what changed and what it means on the ground.
State and local governance
Fire policy is set in county boards and state legislatures as much as in Washington. We track the decisions that carry local consequences.
Research in this program
All Policy & Transparency research
Investigation
Policy & Transparency
The Statutory Void: Federal Wildfire Use, Agency Discretion, and the Limits of Compensation for Affected Landowners
No organic statute authorizes managing wildfire for resource benefit — and when that practice destroys private property, the discretionary function exception closes the courthouse door. A legal history from the Organic Act of 1897 to the Black Fire.
Stories & analysis
All stories
Analysis
Expanding Firefighting Capacity
Frank Carroll argues NWCG qualification standards and task books, while vital for safety, are constraining wildfire and prescribed-fire workforce capacity — and calls for risk-based recalibration rather than abandonment.
Analysis
New Mexico Megafires, and the Case for Reforming National Wildfire Policy
This article revisits Steve Pearce’s request for a post‑fire report after New Mexico’s 2012 Whitewater‑Baldy and Little Bear megafires, outlining Bill Derr’s findings, NWA’s four core principles, and the call to restore the 10 A.M. Policy, end “let burn” strategies, treat fuels, and actively manage
Analysis
From the Vault - The True Costs of Wildfire and the Douglas Complex: Wildfire Cost‑Plus‑Loss Economics — National Wildfi
Dr. Bob Zybach and John Marker show that suppression is only a small fraction of wildfire damages, using the Douglas Complex to illustrate cost‑plus‑loss economics and a practical one‑page checklist for quantifying true wildfire impacts.
Next step
Monthly analysis of what moved in wildfire governance, with links to every primary document.
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