In 2026, the state provided about 27 billion rubles to protect forests from fire, which is almost twice as much as two years earlier. At the same time, the head of Rosleskhoz estimates the annual direct damage from wildfires at about 10 billion rubles. At first glance, it turns out absurd: protection is more expensive than losses. However, comparing these two figures head-on is like comparing the cost of insurance with the amount of one insured event. In this article, we will analyze why the official accounting of damage shows only a small part of the real account, how the budgetary logic of the fire department works and why prevention still looks “expensive,” although international data suggest otherwise.
Three different prices that mixed into one discussion
The main misunderstanding in the public discussion of the cost of fires arises from the fact that three fundamentally different amounts converge in one conversation. The first is the price of protection: in 2026, Rosleskhoz allocated 26.6 billion rubles for forest protection – aviation and ground monitoring, maintenance of forest fire units, detection and extinguishing. Growth by 2025 amounted to approximately 6.9 billion rubles, and a significant part of the increase went to the regions that reduce the control zones: Yakutia, Transbaikalia, Krasnoyarsk Territory received 5.3 billion, another 4.6 billion was sent to 19 regions for new air units and 570 parachute service specialists.
The second amount is the bookkeeping observed damage, which the head of Rosleskhoz Ivan Sovetnikov at SPIEF-2025 called “within 10 billion rubles” annually. The third is the full socio-economic cost, including health, working hours, carbon, ecosystem services, water impacts and long-term recovery. International estimates show that after the inclusion of these components, the total amount can be several times higher than the traditional property account.
The observed damage of 10 billion is the residual damage after the operation of the protection system, and not an estimate of how much would have burned at zero costs. A high budget and a relatively low amount of residual damage in themselves do not prove the inefficiency of expenses, just as they do not prove their effectiveness.
Why 27 billion is an insurance premium, not the cost of fires
Rosleskhoz in 2026 directly lists among the purposes of expenses aviation and ground monitoring, the maintenance of staff, detection and extinguishing. In fact, 26.6 billion rubles is the state’s insurance premium to itself: money is paid for the presence of aviation, forest fire stations, people and the opportunity to arrive at a fire before it becomes a disaster.
Now the state is deliberately expanding the area of active fire protection – by January 2026, the control zones (that is, the territories where fire monitoring is carried out) have been reduced by 210 million hectares. Economically, this means that Russia has committed itself to extinguishing in a huge additional territory, which requires new aircraft departments, personnel and infrastructure. In the Siberian Federal District for 2026, funding for fire safety measures was increased by 1.5 billion rubles precisely because of the maintenance of former control zones.
The dynamics of the seasons show that the system works. In 2024, 8.9 thousand fires were registered on the lands of the forest fund on an area of 8.3 million hectares. In 2025, the area was almost halved – to 4.3 million hectares with 6.8 thousand fires. As of August 3, 2026, 6.6 thousand fires were registered, which is more than on the same date in 2025 (5.5 thousand), but the area was 2.8 million against 4.2 million hectares. The average fire size fell by about 44% – about 424 hectares per registered fire against 764 hectares a year earlier. This cannot be attributed only to an increase in funding: the weather, geography and causes of fires vary greatly. But it is also wrong to write off investments in early detection and aviation.
Regression problem: who pays for someone else’s fire
One of the most revealing stories concerns the return of money from the perpetrators of fires. In October 2025, Rosleskhoz reported that 817 fires with a total area of 435 thousand hectares were transferred to the forest fund from lands of other categories. With a total extinguishing cost of 8.2 billion rubles, the regions by that time had filed claims for reimbursement of costs of only 1.4 million rubles – about 0.017% of the cost. Rosleskhoz demanded that the regions prepare claims for all such fires, so 1.4 million is an interim snapshot, and not the final amount of recovery. However, as an indicator of the weakness of the regression mechanism, the figure speaks eloquently.
The causes of fires also require careful interpretation. The Minister of Nature of Transbaikalia said that in 2025 90% of the reasons were related to the human factor. At the same time, Rosleskhoz pointed out that a significant area of large fires in Transbaikalia and Buryatia was in remote areas, where dry thunderstorms became the main cause. A person can dominate in the number of spots, but several wildfires in hard-to-reach areas give most of the area covered by the fire and the cost of extinguishing.
World studies add another risk factor. An analysis of extreme fire seasons in forest regions of the world for 2002-2023 showed that in extreme years, the area of fires was at least five times higher than usual, and anthropogenic climate change increased the likelihood of such seasons. Planning for the “average past year” is becoming less reliable.
Why the official ten billion is not the full price
The Russian technique itself explains the gap between official damage and the real cost of disaster. In the explanation of Rosleskhoz, it is said that the real damage to forests corresponds to the cost of wood at the root at the rates established by the state. With an established violator, the calculation includes the costs of extinguishing, cleaning the territory, and restoration. The act on forest fire provides for preliminary estimates of losses of wood on the root, harvested forest products, buildings, structures, machinery and equipment. It does not take into account the cost of diseases of the population due to small dispersed particles, lost working time in a smoky city or global climate damage from carbon emissions.
The area covered by the fire is also not equal to the area of the destroyed forest. Rosleskhoz emphasizes that on average only about 10% of the plantings on the area covered by the fire die. A million hectares in fire statistics cannot be automatically multiplied by the market price of a mature forest. However, living damaged forest can perform less well in ecological functions, even if its wood is not recognized as lost. The difference between “did not die” and “there are no economic losses” is fundamental.
The regional figures illustrate the double counting problem well. Ural Federal District: Rosleskhoz estimated the consequences of the 2025 season at about 950 million rubles, along with the cost of extinguishing. Of these, 675 million fell on extinguishing and 275 million – on the cost of dead wood. Almost three-quarters of the amount accounted for is related to the cost of fighting, not burned capital. In Transbaikalia, the final estimate for 2025 amounted to about 2.8 billion rubles (damage to the forest fund for 168 fires – 1.955 billion plus 1.081 billion costs for extinguishing 440 fires). In December 2025, the government allocated another 2.6 billion from the reserve fund to reimburse the regions for the costs of eliminating the consequences – these are additional costs after the season, not the planned budget.
The invisible bill: smoke, carbon and ecosystem services
A study of Russian forest fires on satellite data for 2016-2021 estimated the average area of burning forests at 8.3 million hectares per year and emissions of about 193 million tons of carbon per year, while official reporting for the same period showed about 79 million tons. 193 million tonnes of carbon corresponds to approximately 708 million tonnes of CO₂. These are gross fire emissions according to the research method, and not a ready-made monetary assessment of damage, but the scale of the discrepancy with official reporting speaks for itself.
Ecosystem services is a separate article. The World Bank has estimated the total damage from the 2024 fires in Brazil at $35.9 billion, or 1.5% of the country’s GDP. The estimate includes $17.1 billion in production losses, $9.8 billion in carbon costs, $7.1 billion in premature mortality burden and $1.9 billion in other lost ecosystem services. The World Bank itself notes that the calculation remains the lower limit. This is the best international analogue of what Russian extended statistics could look like: not one indicator of the cost of dead wood, but a damage matrix.
For water resources, the fire risk is also not reduced to burnt trees. Intense fires alter runoff, erosion, sediment input and source water quality, creating water supply risks. The forest operates as an infrastructural ecosystem catchment service, its cost manifests in downstream expenditure. A hectare of forest has two different prices: the price of wood and the price of the potential and services that this forest has been producing for decades. Russian damage accounting sees the first much better than the second.
Los Angeles and the global context of the cost of disasters
Munich Re’s final estimate for 2025 is about $53 billion in total losses from the January fires in Los Angeles, of which $40 billion was covered by insurance. Munich Re calls it the costliest fire disaster in its base’s history. About 30 people died, more than 16 thousand buildings were destroyed (9 419 during the Eaton fire and 6 845 during the Palisades fire), about 2 thousand more were damaged. UCLA Anderson researchers in a preliminary analysis estimated property and capital losses in the range of $76-131 billion. The difference with Munich Re does not mean an error: models count different objects according to different methods.
Munich Re annual global statistics for 2025: $224 billion in total losses from natural disasters and $108 billion in insured. Weather disasters provided 92% of the total and 97% of the insured amount. Of the $108 billion in insured losses, about $40 billion fell only on the Los Angeles fires – 37% of all insured losses from natural disasters in the world for the year.
It is pointless to compare Russia with California directly: there a fire comes to dense urban development with expensive houses and high insurance costs, and a significant part of the Russian millions of hectares burns in hard-to-reach areas. However, international experience refutes the simplified formula that insurance shows the “real cost” of a disaster. Insurance makes visible damage to insured assets but does not cover air pollution, uninsured forest, biodiversity loss or public health damage. Developed insurance creates a second independent layer of risk assessment through the market value of assets. In Russia, there is no such layer for a huge part of forest areas, and budget statistics remain the main tool.
Extinguish, prevent or restore: what the budget assesses
For 2026, Rosleskhoz reports 3.5 billion rubles of federal funding to increase the area of reforestation against 2.5 billion in 2025. On this budget line, the fire department of 26.6 billion is about 7.6 times more. But the wording “eight times more for extinguishing than for restoring” is too rude. First, 26.6 billion is not pure extinguishing, as well as monitoring, readiness and prevention. Secondly, 3.5 billion is not all the money for forest reproduction: there are regional expenses, tenant responsibilities, compensatory reforestation. The federal project “Preservation of Forests” for 2025-2030 received 71.4 billion rubles, which includes expenses for forest seed production, nurseries, care, equipment, video monitoring and fire protection. For 2026, Rosleskhoz named 12 billion for the project, of which 7 billion for the regions.
The quality of recovery is a separate pain point. In March 2026, Rosleskhoz announced that it would check the quality of artificial reforestation: over the past ten years, in a number of regions, the share of decommissioned forest crops annually exceeded 60%, and in Ingushetia – 100%. “Restored hectare” does not mean “restored all the functions of a mature hectare of forest.” State statistics measure the completed forestry activity, and survival requires care and control.
The Russian model is gradually opening a private capital channel through forest climate projects. Changes to the Forest Code, effective from January 1, 2025, have expanded the possibilities for the implementation of such projects. A concrete example is the RUSAL project in the Krasnoyarsk Territory: in June 2025, the company and Rosleskhoz extended the agreement until 2033, the project provides for the release of more than 5 million carbon units, by the time of signing more than 1.3 million were credited. The project is associated with the support of fire brigades, equipment, monitoring and extinguishing on an area of more than 500 thousand hectares. Fire prevention transforms from a pure budget service into an asset that creates a measurable climate outcome.
Prevention as a measurable return investment
Economically, the question of “extinguish or restore” is posed incorrectly: restoration begins after a significant part of the cost is destroyed. The optimal budget chooses between an additional ruble of prevention, early detection, extinguishing and post-fire recovery, taking into account what expected damage each of the elements prevents.
A study in the journal Science that covered nearly 300 fires in 11 western U.S. states in 2017-2023 used a quasi-experimental design to assess forest thinning and controlled fire. The treatment reduced the spread and severity of fires and avoided approximately $2.8 billion in damage. The average estimate is $3.73 prevented damage for each $1 cost. When the fire met the treated area, the total area was about 36% less, and the share of the territory with moderate and high fire severity was 26% lower. The World Bank estimated the benefits of fuel handling for one California catchment to be 1.9 to 3.3 times higher than the costs.
The $3.73 coefficient cannot be used as a Russian standard. The American situation with the accumulation of combustible biomass after suppressing natural fires is not identical to the situation in the boreal territories of Russia. However, the study proves the general point that prevention can be evaluated as an investment with a measurable return, and not just as a mandatory cost item. In Russian geography, early extinguishing itself can be a preventive investment if a small hearth near a settlement can become large. It is also not rational to extinguish every fire at any cost: for a distant focus, the potential damage may be less than the cost of delivering people and equipment.
The budget optimal sequence looks like this:
- reduce the number of preventable fires;
- detect dangerous spots as early as possible;
- prioritize extinguishing by expected damage;
- reduce the fire load in advance where it is environmentally justified;
- restore only where natural recovery is insufficient
- control the result for years.
What is important for budget policy
The main drawback of budget logic is that the costs of prevention are visible immediately and completely, and the prevented damage does not appear in any budget line. If an additional 500 million for aviation does not allow the fire to grow, 500 million expenses and a small fire remain in the reporting. Billions of salvaged property, health and ecosystems exist only in a counterfactual scenario. Prevention programs structurally look “expensive” until the state begins to count the expected prevented damage.
It would be more useful for the Russian budget to publish annually the expected annual damage before and after risk mitigation measures, and not just the actual burned area. In such an accounting, one region could look like this:
- expected damage without measures,
- cost of prevention,
- cost of readiness,
- cost of extinguishing,
- actual residual direct damage,
- health,
- carbon,
- ecosystems,
- recovery.
This would make it possible to answer the question, the answer to which is now impossible by open Russian figures: what next billion brings the maximum reduction in the expected damage – another aircraft, air separation, video monitoring, fire fighting with the population, fuel treatment or restoration of a specific catchment.
A fire is not a one-time natural disaster with a price tag after extinguishing, but a long-term financial risk. The Russian budget pays for it at least four times: for readiness and prevention, for extinguishing, through direct damage and through restoration. Human health, carbon and ecosystem services remain outside the top official figure. 10 billion and 27 billion do not contradict each other – they measure different parts of the same accounting.
Until the state estimates in one model the prevented damage to health, atmosphere, infrastructure, water and future forest productivity, it does not know the economic return. International experience shows that prevention can return several units of prevented damage per unit of cost. The Russian task is to learn how to count this effect before a fire, and not just wood and the cost of extinguishing after it.
By Andrey Khoroshilov, General Director and founder of the Save the Forest environmental service, member of the Skolkovo Foundation