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Montana residents subsidizing costs for high-risk properties • Daily Montanan [1]

['Laura Collins', 'Hilary Eisen', 'Eva Molina', 'Eric Heiman', 'Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', 'August', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus']

Date: 2025-08-06

Despite larger and hotter wildfires resulting from our warming climate and a century of excessive fire suppression, residential development in fire-prone areas is increasing exponentially. Much of Montana’s growing population is moving into high-risk areas such as the wildland urban interface (WUI), where every new home presents huge safety risks for people and property. The rapid expansion of the WUI is creating significant challenges for our firefighters, public officials and land managers, and poses enormous costs to protect vulnerable homes when fires inevitably occur.

Agency responsibility to protect property has increased significantly during the last 50 years, but land-use planning that reduces risk and unnecessary spending hasn’t kept pace. According to a 2025 report prepared by the Legislative Audit Division, structures in rural and remote areas require more aggressive responses that can increase wildfire protection costs by 70% or more. Of all the variables affecting the cost of wildfire protection, the decision to further develop structures in the WUI can be directly influenced by the decisions we make as a community – unlike the decades or centuries it will take to restore forest health through land management and natural processes.

Big fire suppression budgets to protect family homes may be politically attractive, but these policies encourage further development in high-risk areas by property owners. Unfortunately, this type of development won’t end up footing the bill for the massive firefighting response that their properties require – every taxpayer in the state will be on the hook.

The audit further reported that the Department of Natural Resources expended more than $30 million in 2023 for wildfire response in areas of elevated fire risk at the expense of all Montanans. When the DNRC, Forest Service, or other responsible agency protects private property without charging commensurate fire protection fees, the property owner’s risk is subsidized by everyday Montana families. This wasteful, inefficient system lets potential landowners ignore the responsibilities they assume when living in a high-risk area. Why worry when you know that you’ll receive the highest level of protection with no expense spared, and your distant neighbors in the city limits will pay for it?

Making landowners who choose to develop in the WUI responsible for their contribution to wildfire protection costs is the right thing to do.

Such a policy would reduce subsidies and wildfire risk. Many prospective property owners might choose to purchase and develop property elsewhere if they were required to pay for their share in fire protection services. Otherwise, the absence of penalties will continue to encourage high-risk development. When fire inevitably threatens homes in these areas, we all are left holding the bill.

Currently, Montana’s laws prevent local governments from implementing the growth management tools needed to adequately regulate new development in the WUI. Development in the WUI should be discouraged, and local governments should be afforded more power to take preventative actions. On-the-ground, local decisions about developments impacting communities should be made by the people who live in them. We need to treat development in the WUI with the urgency and priority that development in the floodplain and other high risk areas already receive.

Above all, we need to implement equitable cost-sharing of wildfire protection, so that the majority of Montanans are not subsidizing those who decide to build poorly planned developments in predictably high-risk areas.

Laura Collins is the Sustainable Communities Director for the Montana Environmental Information Center.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2025/08/06/montana-residents-subsidizing-costs-for-high-risk-properties/

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