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2023 4FRI Regional Economic Contributions

A regional economic contribution analysis of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) was conducted for Calendar Year 2023, illustrating regional employment and output from 4FRI in five northern Arizona counties. When other restoration treatments and activities are included, such as extensive hand thinning and prescribed burning, along with indirect and induced effects, over 1,000 full and part-time jobs were sustained by 4FRI activities in northern Arizona in 2023.

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Long-Term Costs of Uncharacteristic Wildfire

Wildfires often have long-lasting costs that are difficult to document and are rarely captured in full. We provide an example for measuring the full costs of a single wildfire over time, using a case study from the 2010 Schultz Fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, to enhance our understanding of the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire. Costs associated with the Schultz Fire continued to accrue over 10 years, particularly those associated with post-wildfire flooding, totaling between US$109 and US$114 million.

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Regional Economic Contributions of the 4FRI

The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Arizona is the largest collaborative restoration project in US Forest Service history.  With such a large landscape approach, 4FRI positively affects rural economies by facilitating employment and income generation with logging, wood utilization, and other restoration activities.  To understand the extent of regional employment, income, and output, and to establish a monitoring baseline, we conducted a regional economic contribution analysis of 4FRI activities for Fiscal Year 2017.

Forest Density Preferences of WUI Homebuyers

Taxpayer-funded wildfire management costs have ballooned to more than $3 billion annually, tripling in the last 15 years.  While increasing risk and size of wildfires are driving up management costs, the biggest culprit for skyrocketing fire management funds is the rapid development of wildland-urban interfaces (WUI).  CEI worked with the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University to determine how forest density and associated wildfire risk are incorporated into WUI house prices in fire-prone western WUIs.

Economics of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP)

After a century of intensive fire suppression and logging, our Western forests are in desperate need of investments to help return ecological health.  Investing in forest restoration can provide immediate economic benefits and can help pay off natural capital loans taken out by prior generations, leaving healthier forests for future generations.  In collaboration with the Ecological Restoration Institute, we provided a book chapter on the economics of forest restoration in: Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook.

Economics of Ecological Restoration

Ecological restoration of degraded forests offers hope for returning natural fire regimes and historic levels of ecosystem service provision.  In this chapter, we critically review various concepts from neoclassical and ecological economics that can be useful in understanding the socioeconomic and political contexts of ecological restoration.  This book chapter comes from the recent Island Press published book, Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration: Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture, edited by D. Egan, E. Hjerpe, and J. Abrams. 

© 2025

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