"More and more people are building homes in the western "wildland urban interface", the forested areas where housing borders undeveloped public lands. With more homes built in forested areas, it has become increasingly expensive to fight the inevitable wildfires that are part of life in the arid West. Building remote homes on the outskirts of western wildlands is placing a huge strain on U.S. firefighting efforts.
Only 14% of forested western private land adjacent to public land is currently developed for residential use. Based on current growth trends, there is tremendous potential for future development on the remaining 86%.
Given the skyrocketing cost of fighting wildfires in recent years (on average $1.3 billion each year between 2000-2005), this potential development would create an unmanageable financial burden for taxpayers.
If homes were built in 50% of the forested areas where private land borders public land, annual firefighting costs could range from $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion per year. By way of comparison, the U.S. Forest Service's annual budget is approximately $4.5 billion."
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