A Solution to the California Wildfires

For the past few years the media has celebrated two things in the otherwise mundane summer reporting season: hurricane season and wildfire season. It's almost too convenient - wildfires rage from May to September, while hurricane season picks up in late June and lasts as late as November. Without fail, a news reporter will ask the rhetorical question "What could have been done to prevent such a tragedy?"

The global warming debate aside, hurricanes are beyond human ability to control. As a byproduct of a number of environmental factors, hurricanes can only be predicated, not controlled.

Wildfires, on the other hand, are the opposite: they are completely within human ability to control, and their prevention begins with the defense of private property rights.

Consider: The government owns nearly 30% of all land within the United States, including all roadways and inland waterways. As you travel west of the Mississippi River, the statistics are even more pronounced as government land ownership increases markedly. The government owns 84.5% of Nevada, 45.3% of California, and 48.1% of Arizona. (The statistics are available here; I chose the those three states because they are most likely to experience forest fires.)

Not only does government land ownership prevent otherwise profitable land from being utilized by more efficient private owners, it also increases the likelihood of disaster. Because government owned land is immune from market forces (i.e. there is no way to determine whether or not government allocation of available resources is in tune with market demands), the incentive does not exist to ensure the land is provided with proper care and treatment. As it pertains to forest fires and the potential thereof, the government is more likely to overlook costly preventative measures needed to decrease the likelihood of disaster.

For example, consider two different landowners of 100,000 acre plots of land, one a National Park, the other a private cattle ranch. The National Park is fully staffed and run by government officials. The park's staff are paid based on funds allocated from government sources, which are dependent upon political - not market- forces. In other words, the amount of money available to pay workers, replace equipment, preserve the land, etc. is entirely dependent upon the mood in Washington. If the legislative body in Washington has money tied up in other projects like, say, the War on Terror, it's entirely possible that funding for National Parks will suffer. Less funding for National Parks means something has to be cut within the National Park budget, with the most expensive items cut first. Budget cuts inevitably affect all of the vital land management assets named above, most importantly labor. Less labor means less people available to tend to the land, thereby increasing the likelihood of a controllable disaster.

Now consider the private cattle rancher. His 100,000 acre plot of land is his lifeblood. Indeed, he depends on the land as well as his cattle for survival, hence he has a vested interested in maintaining (and improving) the quality of the land upon which his fortune lies. There is nothing the cattle rancher fears more than a disaster - especially one that he can control - therefore he or she will allocate the appropriate resources needed to prevent the occurrence of a disaster. To the cattle rancher, unsuccessful land management means certain loss of wealth as unsuccessful land managers are "weeded out" for their failure to prevent disasters from occurring.

The solution is obvious: increase the percentage of privately owned land, especially in the above named states. As long as land management depends on the whims of a detached elected body in Washington, we can expect an increase in the amount of wildfires and other natural disasters in the Western portion of the United States. Come to think of it, the government soaks private citizens twice when it comes to natural disasters: it prevents profitable land from being developed and entering the marketplace, and it demands payment from you to repair the damaged land it neglected in the first place.

Conversely, privatized land benefits everyone as productive individuals would be allowed to freely develop his or her land in order to produce needed goods and services for other individuals. Smokey the Bear is famous for saying, "Only you can prevent forest fires;" I'd like to amend that statement to read: "Only the free market and steadfast defense of property rights can prevent forest fires." Catchy? No. Correct? Absolutely.