Enhancing the economic feasibility of fuel treatments: Market and policy pathways for US Federal Lands

The cost of fuel removal needed in the western United States exceeds available federal funding; therefore, meeting fuel treatment goals may require engaging the private sector to market treatment biomass. To assess the economics of fuel treatments in the western United States, we develop a spatially explicit model of the revenues and costs of fuel removal in Idaho and Montana. We find that fuel treatment sales would not be economically feasible across most of the study region unless prices of small-diameter material were to rise significantly. However, the area of feasible treatments could be dramatically expanded under current market conditions by bundling treatments with sawtimber harvest or subsidizing fuel treatment sales, perhaps through the allowance for negatively priced sales. In many places, required subsidies would be much lower than the cost of noncommercial alternative fuel treatments, indicating their potential to extend the impact of appropriated funding. • .Most forest fuel treatments comprised solely of small diameter timber removal are not economically viable in current markets. • Prices of biomass would need to increase by about 400 % to significantly increase the area of economically feasible treatments. • Including some harvest of larger timber in treatments greatly expands the area where treatments are economically feasible. • Subsidies for timber sales could also expand the treatable areas at costs that are lower than other treatment alternatives. • Bundling sawtimber harvest or using subsidies are feasible strategies on high-risk federal lands close to the WUI.