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CONSERVATION GROUPS’ COMMENTS <br />UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE RMP AND DEIS <br />54 <br />warmer springs are pulling the moisture into the air more quickly, turning shrub, brush and grass <br />into kindling.”161 <br />The story quotes Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: “We take our job to protect the <br />public seriously, and recently, the job has become increasingly difficult due to the effects of <br />climate change, chronic droughts and a constrained budget environment in Washington.”162 <br />Secretary Vilsack also noted that seven firefighters died and 4,500 homes burned in wildfires in <br />2015.163 The article states that the Forest Service spent more than half of its entire budget on <br />firefighting last year, “at the expense of programs aimed at minimizing the risk of fires in the <br />wild, such as planned burns of overgrown patches.”164 <br />More recently, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences <br />concludes that human-caused climate change nearly doubled the area impacted by forest fire in <br />the West over the last thirty years. The study found that human-caused warming in the period <br />2000 to 2015: <br />contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high … fire-season fuel <br />aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential…. <br />We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 <br />million ha [10.4 million acres] of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly <br />doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence…. [A]nthropogenic climate <br />change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should <br />continue to do so ….165 <br />For comparison to the estimate that climate change contributed to over ten million acres <br />of forest fire area since 1984, we note that the total acreage of national forest land in Colorado is <br />about 13 million acres. The study concludes that climate-caused wildfire will worsen in the <br />future, and will tax the Forest Service’s budgets even further: <br />The growing ACC [anthropogenic climate change] influence on fuel aridity is <br />projected to increasingly promote wildfire potential across western US forests in <br />the coming decades and pose threats to ecosystems, the carbon budget, human <br />health, and fire suppression budgets that will collectively encourage the <br />development of fire-resilient landscapes. Although fuel limitations are likely to <br />eventually arise due to increased fire activity, this process has not yet <br />substantially disrupted the relationship between western US forest fire area and <br />aridity. We expect anthropogenic climate change and associated increases in fuel <br /> 161 Id. at PDF page 1. 162 Id. at PDF page 2 (emphasis added). 163 Id. 164 Id. at PDF page 3. 165 J. Abatzoglou & A. Williams, Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across <br />western US forests, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (Oct. 2016) at 1 (attached <br />as Exhibit 192).