Editor’s note: Zander Evans is the Executive Director of the Forest Stewards Guild and holds a PhD from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Zander and the Guild have been longtime Fire Networks partners, particularly with involvement in the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network and Fire Learning Network.
This blog is the third in a special 2024 series on “managed wildfire.” As Zander notes in this blog, all wildfires are managed somehow. There is increasing interest in and action around doing so in a way that prioritizes safety while also considering how to use wildfires to achieve burned acres in ecosystems where it is appropriate. This blog series will explore the stories of practitioners who are finding ways to safely and creatively manage wildfires in their place. Stay tuned for future posts on this theme. All photos is in this post are courtesy of InciWeb.
Just considering National Forest System lands, there are about 80 million acres at high risk of wildfire across the United States. In 2023, the US Forest Service conducted fuel reduction treatments on 3.9 million acres of National Forest System lands and final treatments that mitigates wildfire risk on 1.4 million acres.1 At this rate, it will take 20 years to treat National Forest System (NFS) lands at high risk of wildfire even with the increased pace of treatment funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. These numbers are estimates for one land management agency and some may quibble with the generalizations, but the need to increase the pace and scale for community safety and ecosystem resilience is clear.2
Another way to put our work in context is to compare mechanical treatments with the impact of wildfire. During 2023, managers were able to thin 1.9 million acres of NFS lands which is well below the 2.7 million acres of NFS lands1 burned on average between 2018 and 2022.3 Of course, many of the acres burned benefited from fire, which is exactly the point. And as I look at the map of forests at high risk of wildfire and all the millions of acres and thousands of communities, working with nature seems the only hope. And so I’ve become a proponent of managed wildfire.
To be clear, managed wildfire is not a “just let it burn” strategy and all wildfires are managed.4 In fact, one of the chief barriers to using wildfire for community and ecosystem benefits is the confusion in names. We can’t agree on what to call the strategy, much less how to track it. Brad Pietruszka, research scientist with the US Forest Service, points out that phrases like managed wildfire don’t convey the data, analysis, tradeoffs, and risk management that go into strategic decisions. Brad says “our strategic vocabulary has contributed to this communication issue—which, in turn, has contributed to our wildfire crisis.”5 As with too many issues in recent years, approaches to wildfire have become politicized and polarized, which distracts from the science and on-the-ground experience with the strategy. Too often thinning and timber harvests and beneficial fire are painted as separate options when in fact they are necessary complements. We need both to build ecological resilience. The science is very clear that the most effective way to reduce wildfire behavior is the combination of thinning and fire.6
There is a long history of managing wildfire to benefit ecological resources and increase community safety. Indigenous stewards have used fire for hunting, crop management, increasing plant yield, pest management, fire hazard reduction, and warfare since time immemorial. Managed wildfire has been in use since at least the 1910s on federal land and currently benefits hundreds of thousands of acres each year. In depth research and anecdotal reports both highlight the ability of managed wildfire to reintroduce fire to fire-prone ecosystems, which means reducing tree densities, landscape homogeneity, fuel load continuity, and future fire behavior.4
The US Forest Service trumpeted a recent example of managed wildfire (though that term isn’t mentioned) in Arizona, where managers and the local community coordinated to take advantage of a wildfire to improve resilience. The Tonto National Forest managed the Valentine Fire across nearly 10,000 acres. Managing the wildfire cost one fifth of what mechanical treatments would have in a faction of the time. More importantly, “it brought people together and made community ties stronger.” 7
How can we replicate this success? A previous Fire Networks Blog post from Michael Caggiano and Ty Aldworth outlines a great series of lessons learned from fire management in southern Colorado.8 Their suggestions are useful for people within the fire management organization but also have direct implications for those of us who work outside the federal government in communities or organizations.
Mike and Ty highlight the importance of a leader’s intent to produce good wildfire outcomes. Social science supports the perception that fire management leaders need support. 4 There is little or no reward for a leader to step up and manage a wildfire to reduce future risk, but there can be significant personal or professional risk. Therefore, those of us who can help rally organizational and public support for leaders who manage wildfire are crucial. We can make it easier to do the right thing. Similarly, the research community needs to continue to provide science to help fire managers and policy makers understand the impacts of strategic choices and separate fact from fiction.
Both the Valentine Fire example and Mike and Ty’s blog emphasize the importance of investment in interest-holder engagement. Past forest management mistakes (both exploitative logging and fire suppression) in combination with our current societal struggles with misinformation and distrust mean we have an uphill climb to build trust with communities. The Fire Adapted Learning Network community, as well as the other Fire Networks, are well versed in the importance of long-term community engagement. Since managed wildfire is a poorly understood tool with real and perceived risks, it will require honest and open conversations over years for the public to feel comfortable with it.
Mike and Ty call attention to the power of new analytical tools such as Risk Management Assistance (RMA) dashboard and the Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) framework. New technology supports more complex decision making, which is essential for the complex conditions of fire management. These tools and processes are important for giving decision makers and fire managers the confidence to manage wildfires. Collectively working through the risk management for every wildfire seems a positive and paradigm-shifting approach. At the same time, the alphabet soup of acronyms and complex models can create barriers between experienced professionals and other interest-holders. Neighbors, Tribes, local governments, and the public need translations or summaries to stay engaged.
Another acronym, PODs – Potential Operational Delineations, are mapped fire management plans or possibilities that can provide a window into the complexity of wildfire risk management. Because PODs are mapped on familiar geography, they can be a tool for engagement with the wider community both before and during a wildfire. As the Colorado examples show, technology supported risk management joined with interest-holder engagement is a powerful combination for managing wildfires for community safety and forest resilience.
Thank goodness the tools we need are coming together, because as the climate warms and dries, managed wildfire as a restorative and cost-efficient tool must be part of our path to becoming a fire adapted society. These new tools must also come with support for leadership making tough decisions as well as community engagement to help communities understand the strategies land managers are using. Whatever you call it, managed wildfire must be a part of our future, and everyone has a role in making that both possible and beneficial.
References:
- USDA Forest Service 2025 Budget Justification
- See for example The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission 2023
- Congressional Research Service, Wildfire Statistics, 2023
- Much of this article draws on Managed Wildfire: A Research Synthesis and Overview 2023
https://www.swfireconsortium.org/2023/04/18/managed-wildfire/ - https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/rmrs/sycu/2024/sycu5_2024_05_misconceptions.pdf
- See Brodie and colleagues 2024 https://doi.org/10.1186/S42408-023-00241-Z Kalies & Yocom 2016 https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2016.05.021
- https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/valentine-fire-restores-forest-and-community
- https://fireadaptednetwork.org/choosing-a-fire-future-lessons-from-southwest-colorado/
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