What does the money actually buy?
Oregon's 2025 landscape report gives us a real starting point: its forestry department recorded $50.98 million spent across 13 programs. Almost half of that total was in a land-conservation program. Other programs paid for project preparation, work on the ground, technical help, and monitoring. The State Fire Marshal supports a different part of the picture, including community protection and fire-service capacity. These activities cannot be reduced to one price for a burned acre.
Follow each dollar to its purpose, period and activity before comparing it with a possible benefit.
We pay for the work. Will a fire reach it?
Imagine spending $1 million on a project. If a wildfire reaches it while the work is effective, assume the project prevents $10 million in damage. The question is how likely that fire is.
Imagine 100 possible futures for this place.
20 out of 100: fire reaches the work.
80 out of 100: it doesn’t.
Spend $1 million.
Avoid $10 million in damage.
Still spend $1 million.
Avoid $0 in wildfire damage.
Average the possible futures.
Only 20 of the 100 futures receive the assumed $10 million benefit. Spread that benefit across all 100, and the average damage avoided is $2 million.
20% × $10 million = $2 million
On average, damage avoided exceeds project cost by $1 million.
To cover the project cost, the chance of fire reaching the work would need to be 10%.
This is an average across possible futures. In this simplified example, the place actually avoids either $0 or $10 million in damage—not the average amount.
A project can also improve habitat or meet other goals without a later wildfire. Those benefits are outside this damage-only calculation.
What would we need to use real Oregon numbers?
Itemized project costs, upkeep schedules, a local estimate of the chance fire reaches the work, and evidence of how much damage the project could prevent. Both choices need the same place and time period. A fuller comparison also includes when money is spent, smoke, treatment risks, response costs and ecological outcomes.
Study of fire reaching treatments and potential savings ↗First establish what was actually spent
ODF's 2025 report includes land conservation, federal forest restoration, landscape resiliency, and ten other programs. It records $50,984,180 expended across those programs in calendar 2025. That is a bounded ODF account, not all Oregon fire spending and not a cost for any single burn.
A project account separates planning, preparation, implementation, monitoring and maintenance. It identifies year, geographic scope, payer and whether a figure is an expense, budget, grant or estimate. Incident cost reports may be cumulative estimates; adding successive reports double counts spending.
Another agency, another accounting stage
The Oregon State Fire Marshal reports a one-time $2.7 million investment through Community Wildfire Protection Plans, announced in February 2023 for projects in 25 counties. The listed activities include community education, home assessments and fuel work. This is an announced investment program, not an audited account of final expenditures or measured outcomes.
An ODF calendar-2025 expenditure and an OSFM 2023 investment announcement cannot be added into an Oregon prevention total. Follow each award to payments, completed activities and any later observations before asking what that money achieved.
Then compare possible futures
A treatment can affect loss only in circumstances where its effects are relevant. A financial scenario needs the probability of those circumstances and an estimate of the difference in loss with and without the strategy.
The optional teaching calculation on this deeper page multiplies an assumed encounter probability by assumed damage avoided. Its numbers are invented. An actual Oregon analysis also needs maintenance, timing, multiple outcomes, treatment risks and a consistent baseline strategy.
Two studies answer different money questions
One 2026 study of Forest Service fires in the Pacific Northwest estimates five to six dollars in federal suppression-cost savings per treatment dollar in its study setting. A separate western Forest Service study estimates $3.73 in expected avoided damages per treatment dollar. The latter includes different types of harm and a different research design.
The estimates cannot be added or treated as a forecast for a particular Oregon unit. Study-wide costs can also be imputed from agency budgets rather than traced through project invoices. Inspect their original populations, methods and uncertainty before adapting them.
Average benefits and a typical year can differ
Thompson and colleagues modeled treatments in the Sierra National Forest. Fire-treatment encounters were uncommon and median suppression savings were zero, while extreme years could produce much larger savings.
That illustrates why probability matters. It does not supply Oregon’s probabilities, prove that every treatment pays for itself or account for every ecological and community benefit.
Keep the public budget and wider outcomes visible
Firefighting expenditure is one part of the account. Property loss, health impacts, water systems and habitat outcomes involve other people and measures. Some can be valued in dollars with appropriate methods; others should be reported in their original units.
This atlas does not yet have verified itemized costs and counterfactual loss estimates for a complete Oregon project comparison. We seek those records and will distinguish recorded expenditure, modeled estimates and observed outcomes as they are added.
Why would dividing a program's total spending by its prescribed-fire acres give the wrong burn cost?
Read the evidence
- ODF · 2025 landscape resiliency implementation report ↗Pages 1, 6, and 8–9; scope, interagency tracker, and calendar-year program expenditures
- Oregon State Fire Marshal · Investments for Oregon ↗Community Wildfire Protection Plan investments announced February 2023; scope and project list
- Thompson and colleagues · Treatment encounters and suppression costs ↗2017; Sierra National Forest modeling study, sections 3–4; encounters and annual savings distributions
- Davis and colleagues · Review of 40 treatment studies ↗2024; sections 2.1–2.2 and 3.2.1; Figure 3. Relative effects on severity in treated areas subsequently reached by wildfire
- Strabo and Reimer · Fuel treatments and suppression costs ↗2026 Economic Journal abstract; Pacific Northwest Forest Service ignitions and federal suppression costs
- Strabo, Bryan and Reimer · Fuel treatment effects and avoided damages ↗2026 authors' research report; western Forest Service lands, expected damage benefits and study limits