Long-Term Economic Impacts of Large Fires in California from 2018-2021: Losses and Opportunities

Read and download the full report here: Long-Term Economic Impacts of Large Fires in California from 2018-2021: Losses and Opportunities

Mason, Bruce & Girard, Inc., CAL FIRE, and USFS collaborated with a technical advisory committee, including agency staff, non-profit representatives and industry representatives to develop the scope for this analysis.

California appears to have entered an era of megafires with more wildfires burning hundreds of thousands of acres, and a few individual fires burning over 1 million acres. This report focuses on impacts of the large fires in 2018 through 2021 on the timber industry sector and characterizes some of the economic impacts caused by these fires. 

This analysis found that of the 21.7 million acres of forest in the 40-million-acre project area, over 4 million acres, 20% of the forest area, burned from 2018 through 2021. This includes 1,570,000 acres of high severity fire where overstory tree mortality typically exceeds 75%. The large fires in this study will reduce the potential future timber harvest volume by 11,032 million board feet (MMbf), valued at $12.7 billion, over the next 50 years, after accounting for legal and policy requirements, and differences in management intensity by different landowners. The lost future timber harvest potential would support an average of 4,800 forestry, logging, and wood products manufacturing jobs in California with a range from 4,300 to 5,900 jobs over the 50- year period, assuming employment per MMbf remains at 2016 levels.

A similar report was completed by Mason, Bruce & Girard for Oregon after a large series of fires that occurred over the 2020 Labor Day Weekend.

Read and download the full report here: Long-Term Economic Impacts of Large Fires in California from 2018-2021: Losses and Opportunities

Please visit our main page for this report here: https://masonbruce.com/long-term-economic-impacts-of-large-fires-in-california-from-2018-2021-losses-and-opportunities/