User feedback on the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System

Monument Peak prescribed fire

By Josh Hyde, Eva Strand, Peter Noble and Kim Ernstrom

Land and fire managers are often tasked to plan complex fuel treatments and apply the best available science across jurisdictions to prioritize, plan, and conduct prescribed burns and other fire mitigation tactics.

Decision support systems – information systems designed to support management decision making – are a key tool for fuel treatment planning.

What follows are the key findings from a recent report by the team that develops the system.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

Historically, models and systems for fuels management have been developed independently without a great deal of coordination, leading to varying degrees of overlapping functionality.

Additionally, as Gail Wells noted in the December 2009 issue of Fire Science Digest, the onus of reviewing, selecting, and using a specific tool often falls on the fire manager.

To increase efficiency, reduce redundancies, and make the tool-selection process easier for fire managers, a solution was needed that incorporated several fuels management tools in one framework.

The Joint Fire Science Program, a collaborative initiative led by US federal agencies and researchers to sponsor and deliver science to the fire management community, initiated a study to design a system to meet these needs. The result was the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS). Initially, a proof of concept was developed by the consulting firm Sonoma Technology in concert with Joint Fire Sciences. Later, the system was approved for use by federal agencies in the United States and was redeveloped by IBM under the stewardship of the interagency Wildland Fire Management Research and Development Applications team in 2017.

BACKGROUND

In the United States, the National Cohesive Strategy in 2014 emphasized the importance of fuel treatments to proactively address wildland fire concerns. The Wildland Fire Crisis Strategy of 2022 built on this and other approaches by outlining a vision of large-scale fuel treatments over millions of acres of land of various ownerships, supported by funding from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act passed the prior year.

In 2022, the National Prescribed Fire Program Review by the US Department of Agriculture recommended better training and incorporation of spatial modeling for contingency planning.

Fuel-treatment strategies often require detailed and collaborative planning across multiple agencies and ownerships. The importance of detail was underscored in the spring of 2022 when escaped prescribed fires in New Mexico burned several square miles and forced a 90-day pause on USDA Forest Service prescribed fires. The pause triggered a National Prescribed Fire Program Review and among its recommendations were better training and incorporation of spatial modeling for contingency planning.

WHAT IS THE IFTDSS?

The system uses a landscape planning cycle approach to fuels management to bring together tools for fuels planning and decision support, including national geospatial landscape data from the LANDFIRE program, fire behavior models from the Fire Modeling Services Framework program, and several geospatial references layers used by land management agencies to help inform decision making. For those tasked with monitoring on federal lands, the system also allows users to enter data into a Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Monitoring repository. All these are included in one convenient online system (Figure 1). Managers can model and examine results in a map, export data for planning documentation, and create stand-alone summary reports for documentation, presentations, and briefings (Figure 2).

Figure 1. The Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System framework, pulling together tools from several sources.

In the United States users may also be familiar with decisions support systems designed to support multiple land management activities, such as Vibrant Planet’s Land Tender or those intended to support wildfire such as the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS). The Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System differs from these applications in that it is purpose built for cross-boundary planning of fuel treatments and is developed by an interagency team of fire management practitioners who are experts in planning and implementation; this is reflected in the affiliations of the more than 8,000 user accounts in the system. Roughly 60 per cent of users are federal, state, and local government, with most being United States Forest Service users. The remainder are non-government users including non-profits, universities, utility companies, and others. The system may be used for public and private lands, and anyone may access the system regardless of their affiliation, at no cost; this facilitates interagency collaboration by removing any cost and agency-specific barriers.

LISTENING TO USERS

The development of the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System is ongoing and is informed by the needs of the fuels and wildfire management community, so user feedback is key. During the operational life of the system, feedback has been solicited in several ways. In 2023, a formal survey was commissioned through University of Idaho partners who conducted hour-long interviews with 47 system users from a variety of agencies and backgrounds.

The goal was to gain a better understanding of a) how users employ the system b) what they find valuable, c) what they would like to see changed, and d) how they prefer to learn to use the system. That information provides an overall snapshot of how the fuels management community learns and uses the system and how well it supports the needs of the users in the field.

HOW THE SYSTEM IS USED

The most widely reported use of the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System among interviewees was prescribed fire planning and treatment planning, followed by National Environment Policy Act planning, and risk assessment (Figure 3).

Other uses included drafting community wildfire protection plans, developing prescriptions, assessing potential treatment impacts, and estimating contingency resources. Some interviewees also noted the use of the system in developing materials for funding or grant proposals to support fuel projects.

Participants in different positions tend to use the system for different goals. Those who worked as fire management specialists and assistant fire management officers tended to use the system more for prescribed fire planning and National Environment Policy Act planning, while those in fire management officer positions use the system more for treatment planning and risk assessment. For those who worked in a private or consulting role, risk assessment was typically their primary goal.

Figure 2. Common parts of the system interface.
– A treatment polygon overlaid on a landscape in Map Studio. – Fire behavior summary report indicating flame lengths.
– User interface for comparing fire behavior outputs under various weather conditions.
PERCEIVED BENEFITS

When participants described their use of the system, the primary aspects they found valuable included the following.

Ease of use

Participants described the layout of the system as simple and navigable, especially compared to existing modeling and mapping systems, an example being the way in which tasks were laid out in a process that approximates the landscape planning cycle.

“So, the way that the steps are set up, as in, it’s pretty clear from the get go. You can get in there and say, ‘start here’. Build the landscape, then do this, then do that, so the way that it’s laid out leads you through the entire process pretty clearly.”

The most common feature interviewees found useful was the relative ease of learning and using the system. Participants felt the quantity of data readily available in one system, combined with the relative ease of generating summaries, helped make the system easier to use. This was aided by the availability of helpful information in the system.

“There is an excellent set of resources and guides, along with [the system] that are very understandable in terms of what the inputs are, what inputs are required, what they mean and working through that is very good and easy.”

Increased efficiency

Several interviewees indicated the system saved time. Time savings came from the ease of use discussed above, the availability of existing data within the system such as landscape layers, and the ability to quickly create summary reports. Instead of implementing multiple systems, participants could save time by using one.

“I don’t have to go to Landfire and figure out an extent for a fire or project and then request that information. [The system] does that for me. It saves some time and saves some confusion with that.”

Facilitating communication and collaboration

Communication was also among the top areas in which users found value. Interviewees often spoke positively of the visual aids produced by the system reports and their utility in communicating potential fuel treatment alternatives and the reasoning behind them. Fuels planning is often a collaborative effort in which multiple landscape values must

be discussed among experts from several fields. When discussing communication using the system, multiple participants noted the benefits of being able to visually demonstrate their plans and the reasoning behind them to convey information to planners and collaborators regardless of whether they had background in wildland fire.

“It has helped us defend our scale of treatments on the forest. By having the tool available to us, it allows us to defend why we want to do the treatments we want to do to the public and to internal, both.”

“I really think that it’s just such a better visual tool to communicate what we expect with fire behavior in both the burn unit and the adjacent fuels outside the burn unit. Hands down, it’s just simpler and everyone can understand it regardless of specialty or training or education.”

RECOMENDED CHANGES

When asked about what changes they would recommend, interviewees tended to focus on features to enhance analysis capabilities or better facilitate collaboration among individuals using the system.

More modeling features and integration

Many participants wanted more weather and contingency planning features, such as querying weather data to generate fuel moisture and weather conditions within specific percentiles. Users also recommended having more control over which weather stations data was retrieved from, often expressing these as ways to better utilize data from within a single system.

Additional features for containment and contingency planning were also recommended. Participants explained the need to calculate resources needed to contain a prescribed fire in the event of an escape, an especially pertinent need following the prescribed fire escapes in 2022.

“So [containment] is the big one that’s being promoted right now because of the prescribed fire- the lens that prescribed fire is being looked at through right now.”

Landscape editing tools

The Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System provided a way to easily edit landscape information by creating custom edit rules or using a simplified set of editing rules. These simplified rules were appreciated by users but were found to be lacking in availability. They could only be used with older landscapes and several users recommended updating and expanding these  rulesets.

Suggestions included offering a wider range of thinning treatments to the rules and allowing them to project out for longer periods of time to help model fire behavior further into the future.

Collaboration

The ability to share data with other account holders, as can be done with the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) was another common suggestion. Participants suggested this would increase efficiency by reducing duplicated efforts among team members and ensuring everyone was working from the same dataset.

Figure 3. The most common uses for the system and the relative proportion of responses for each for each. Categories are not mutually exclusive.
LEARNING METHODS

Time isn’t just spent using a system but also learning to use it. Interviewees commonly described the methods they used to learn the system such as videos, the system’s online knowledge base, experiential learning, and online courses.

Videos were one of the most often cited learning methods that were used, preferred by users, and recommend for new users. Some participants found short videos focused on a specific task to be helpful, others found value in the way in which steps were laid out as part of a process.

“I’d have to say that’s probably one of the things that I like about where [the system] has put effort and time, is in the training. I could find and watch a video. I’ve become a big fan of watching a YouTube video.”

Experiential learning was another common method – logging into the system, exploring the interface, and running through various tasks. If needed, users would draw on additional learning methods such as an online knowledge base, videos, or consulting others. Some participants also noted the benefit of example tutorials to use as an overall framework into which they could substitute their own data and learn the system.

“I like watching things demonstrated, but I learned by doing and getting to really put that stuff together myself. I really like those step-by-step tutorials.”

Courses and workshops, in-person or online, were the fourth-most cited way of learning the system for participants. When it came to recommended methods for new users, courses, workshops, and instructional videos were most frequently recommended. In-person classes and workshops tended to be preferred to online ones. Some valued the dedicated interruption-free time that comes with an in-person environment, others found it an easier environment in which to ask questions. Self-led methods such as the online knowledge base and tutorials were also mentioned here, but less frequently than classes, workshops, or the use of videos.

BRINGING THE FINDINGS TOGETHER

Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System users interviewed perceived value in a system that is easy to use and enhances efficiency and communications. But more work is needed. Interviewees recommended additional capabilities in the system to help them perform their duties, allowing them to do more within a single system and better collaborate with others.

Interviewee feedback has been invaluable in better understanding the needs of the fuels management community. Because fuels management evolves over time, the system and other tools must do the same. As these needs evolve, continued dialogue with system users to involve them in development, will ensure newly developed features are addressing the users’ needs and providing the services they require for collaborative fuels management planning and actions into the future.

To summarize key interview points:

  • There were multiple reasons users employed the system, depending upon their roles.
  • The aspects interviewees valued most from the system included ease of use, efficiency, and facilitating communication.
  • The most recommended changes involved adding capabilities that would allow users to do more within the system, which would reduce the need to use multiple systems or models and provide more of a one-stop-shop approach.
  • Multiple methods are used to learn the system, often in combination with each other.

The authors wish to thank all the interview participants who generously provided their time, input, and perspective to inform the development and enhancement of the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System for the wildland fire community.

Read the Full Report.

Josh Hyde works for the University of Idaho developing and managing application support for the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System.

Eva Strand is a Professor in the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences at the University of Idaho.

Peter Noble works for the US Forest Service in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a fuels assistant fire management officer.

Kim Ernstrom recently retired from the National Park Service (Wildland Fire Management Research Development and Applications team). Ernstrom was the technical lead for training and technology transfer and assisted in developing the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System.

Almeda Aftermath: the impact of an Oregon wildfire

By Jennie Englund

The Ashland Pond, a riparian area at the foot of Southern Oregon’s Cascade and Siskiyou mountains, was just waking up on the morning of September 8, 2020. Red-wing blackbirds’ throats warmed in the rust-colored wind, and a family of otters slid over the dry bank to find food. The creatures were oblivious to the Red Flag warning issued by the National Weather Service.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

High winds and heat, and low humidity prompted critical fire conditions. But should an extreme weather event occur, the local fire service couldn’t count on help to protect the pond — or anything in the two districts of 45,000 citizens. Already, 2,000 structural firefighters from 179 agencies were responding to five megafires and a dozen others around the state. No extra resources were available.

The day fell on a C-shift for Jackson County Fire District 5. My husband, Dave, an engineer, had moved up to the captain’s seat. Around 11 am, when a grass fire was called in near the pond, three blocks from our house, he was immediately concerned.

“This is gonna go big,” Dave told his crew as they drove toward the point of origin. He read the smoke column: gusts lay it down, pushing hard with the potential to move it fast and far.

While I knew Dave would prioritize safety, I also knew he’d give everything to saving the people and property he was called on to protect. This was his community, where our kids rode bikes and went to school, where our friends lived, where, for decades, he had immobilized broken femurs, defibrillated cardiac patients, treated diabetic complications, and started IVs. Dave knew every street, every address in the urban and rural areas of our agriculturally rich region. He was no stranger to swift water and ropes rescue, to motor vehicle incidents, to grass and structure fires.

For 33 hours, Dave worked the Almeda Fire. Sustained 40 mph winds fueled flames through nine miles of the Bear Creek corridor’s cottonweed, poplar, and blackberry bushes. More than 3000 structures burned. Three lives were lost.

Almeda became Oregon’s most destructive wildfire in recorded history.

When the big blazes were finally out, Dave came home – grit in the lines around his sad eyes, in his knuckles, under his nails.

“We all worked hard,” he half-answered my attempt to gauge how hard he’d worked, the extent of what he’d been through.

The bottoms of his feet were bruised, his shins splinted, he told me when I pressed, and he “pulled a lot of hose.” That meant he worked his tail off.

 “I brought you a present.” Dave lined four perfect peaches on our kitchen table. Then, he went to bed.

He slept for a couple of hours. When he got up, he said things like “Colver Road.” And “Mobile Estates.”

Were these places that didn’t make it? I minimized my questions. The more I ask, I told myself, the less he’ll be able to process his own thoughts.

A No Vacancy sign sagged over the wreckage of an RV park. The 2020 Almeda fire was Oregon’s most destructive wildfire. Photo: Jennie Englund.

As the day went on, Dave was quieter, more withdrawn.

“What did you save?” I did ask, because the answer was a lot, and I wanted him to see it –  the proof was right there on aerial footage on TV. But he didn’t see it; he saw what he didn’t save, what he held himself responsible for not saving.

Five heavy days later, the sky was orange, and Ashland’s air quality was 495 – hazardous – from the Labor Day weekend fires, Oregon’s historically deadliest and most devastating.

It was Dave’s 49th birthday; he’d taken off the shift during vacation-bidding rounds nearly a year before.

“Wanna go on a drive?” he asked. The offer was a trip to his station to wash Almeda from his turnouts.

I took it.

Colver Road. He wanted me to see it, I didn’t know why. Was it an exceptionally hard loss? Homes he had responded to? Citizens he knew?

On the way to the station, Dave was required to show his badge at checkpoints and roadblocks staffed by the National Guard and the Department of Transportation.

 “It’s still a crime scene,” he told me. “It could’ve been arson. No one’s been arrested yet. They’re preventing looting, too.”

Police and sheriff vehicles wove through empty streets.

We drove past mounds of melted metal, rubble and soot. The fire ate up bike shops, auto repair, a Burger King; it swallowed half of one of the fire department’s stations. Custom homes, rentals, middle-class and working-class neighborhoods were flattened.

The sign sagged over the wreckage of an RV park that seemed to have never existed. “No Vacancy.”

Up the road, skeletal staircases climbed to nothing. A hunched man watered his fence. Just in case.

“Some people stayed here, they never left,” Dave sighed. “They’re still here.”

By the Minute Market, Urban Search and Rescue (USR) teams stood out in their white helmets, puffy suits against the gray wreckage around them.

“Body count,” Dave said.

I felt like telling him, ‘They don’t belong here,’ but I didn’t belong there either.

“Colver Road,” Dave repeated.

We couldn’t get in; the street was barricaded. I wouldn’t see what he wanted me to.

Along Highway 99, water was being restored. Utility crews pulled power lines from wreckage, re-strung them between poles in the haze.

“The bees made it!” Dave was uncharacteristically ecstatic about a Hymenoptera swarm. He took a picture – proof of life.

At the station, as Dave put in his laundry, I watched a relief crew from Portland hosed off their rigs.

“They came from the Obenchain Fire,” a District 5 captain explained. “You wash off where you came from; you leave that dirt behind.”

A half-eaten breakfast burrito wilted on the station counter. I sat at the kitchen table with the guys I’d known for almost 20 years – C-shift – Dave’s shift, back on duty. And yet, I didn’t know them anymore. The fire changed them.

One guy in particular looked really worked over. A weightlifter who coached his kids’ baseball teams, I’d never seen him like this – beat down.

“Have you slept?” I asked, and though he said yes, I could tell it wasn’t true. Adrenaline, nightmares, and physical pain would make sleep impossible for a while.

“This looks like actual food!” An engineer, giddy over a donated salad, grabbed a box and joined the crew at the table: another engineer, two captains, a few firefighters, and a seasonal hire who’d gotten more than he’d signed up for.

Help had finally come. Out-of-area strike teams helped mop up hot spots. A crew from the northern part of the state helped run District 5’s calls — to cardiac arrest, nosebleed. A visiting officer vacuumed. Another rolled up an American flag.

The table talk was of cats — some missing, others found. And then, talk of blisters. Bruises.

Not all a firefighter’s wounds, I reminded myself, are visible. Some of these lives wouldn’t seamlessly continue. Things could fall apart – marriages, knees, health, community, even the department itself. No one was immune to the trauma, displacement, and physical, emotional and financial stress. The what ifs – terror, regret, blame, and grief – could stack like the coolers around the station.

Those coolers crammed the kitchen, the patio, the barbecue area; they covered counters and floors, leaning against every wall, spilling out toward the bay. Folks had brought them, with cookies and cards, candies and baskets, bell peppers from their gardens – how, with the road closures?

The coolers had stayed behind — boxy, burdensome, empty. Lurking. Unsettlingly permanent.

“No resources . . .” The talk of blisters and bruises prompted more about the fire.

“That was nonstop!”

 “Those blackberry bushes . . . ” “Colver Road . . . ”

“My feet hurt so bad!”

“How’d you get your boots to dry out?” “No resources . . . ”

“Where’s your family staying?” “The baby’s off his schedule.”

“Do you think you’ll move back when it’s rebuilt?”

Where’s Dave? I wondered. I should leave the station to the crew, let them grieve and heal together, I thought. The crew was finally able to eat fresh food, to get off their feet, and I was as out of place as the USR team – all white suit, moon boots.

Thankfully, Dave walked in. “On the drive here,” he told C-shift, he’d thought about the houses they’d saved in the past. “Once, we put out those house fires, now it’s all for nothing.”

Heads nodded in unison. “Well, let’s go,” Dave told me.

It was hard to know what I should say to the crew. I said the only thing I knew. “Look for the flowers. They’ll come back; I saw them last spring after Paradise.”

The crew knew Paradise, the site of the Camp Fire – California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire. The blaze ignited less than two years before, only three and a half hours south.

The worked-over guy’s hope surprised me. “Really?” he asked. He wanted it to be true.

“Wild roses, hollyhock, poppies,” I promised.

A few months before Almeda kindled, I had stopped in Paradise on my way back to Oregon from Chico. I hoped to see recovery efforts and share them with the fire officer academy recruits I taught.

“Rebuilding the Ridge,” Paradise’s welcome sign pledged. An impeccable Taco Bell perched on perfect pavement beyond a patch of dirt. A few new frames dotted flattened neighborhoods. Family camps cropped up under skeletal pines. The town had a long way to go.

But the fire hadn’t stopped spring’s arrival. Pinks, purples, yellows, reds pushed through char. Peony, snap pea, lilac, butterfly bush – I tucked the blooms in my memory.

In the hours, days, weeks, months after Almeda, crews reviewed, debriefed, detoxed, wrote reports, restored vehicles and equipment; they were offered physical examinations, peer support, equine therapy, massage therapy, cryo-therapy, meals, thank-you notes.

The cumbersome coolers were returned one by one to their owners, and the station’s counters became clear again, the stacks on the patio and against walls shrinking little by little.

Spring was months away. But it would come. In an extraordinary occurrence, Willamette daisies – pink, purple, white – would ring the Ashland Pond.

Jennie Englund is an award-winning author and veteran teacher whose work has appeared in literary magazines and news outlets. A Harvard Global Studies scholar in climate and culture, Englund is a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and a Vashon Artist Resident alum. Englund’s memoir, Sap-Souled: A Personal History on Lake Tahoe, is forthcoming.

The 2020 Almeda, Oregon fire ate up bike shops, an auto repair business, a Burger King, half of one of the fire department’s stations. Neighborhoods were flattened. Photo: Jennie Englund.

Perspectives from the IAWF president

Trevor Howard, IAWF President.

A conversation with Trevor Howard, National Manager Prescribed Burning Strategy, AFAC and President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, with AFAC Deputy CEO and Executive Director, Strategy, People and Performance Erin Liston-Abel.

This article first appeared in Fire Australia Magazine, Issue 1, 2026

Could you please tell us a bit about your career in the sector and your current responsibilities as National Manager, Prescribed Burning Strategy at AFAC?

From an early age my ambition was to work in the bush and have a life of adventure.  My career started in forestry in Queensland in December 1975.  I’ve since worked with land management agencies and rural fire services across the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia in operations and program management.  Along the way I completed a degree in anthropology and worked with traditional owners across northern and central Australia.  I’ve also been involved in numerous major incidents, as an incident management team member and state agency commander as well as conducting post-incident reviews, preparing inquiry submissions, addressing recommendations and managing organisational change.

After many years in an agency contributing to the AFAC National Burning Project, I joined AFAC in 2022.  My role has three focus areas: 1) supporting member agencies with program and operational reviews, and advice on policy, research utilisation, risk management and operational best practice, 2) developing new initiatives to address workforce changes and declining national capability, especially for complex prescribed burning, and 3) engaging with national NGOs and other organisations involved in supporting and using fire for conservation, forestry, agriculture, emissions abatement and Indigenous livelihoods.  I’m fortunate to be hosted at the Bushfire Centre of Excellence in Western Australia by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.  DFES is a unique organisation leading fire and other hazards across a vast state spanning southern forests, central deserts and tropical savannas, as well as managing a large aerial burning program in the Kimberley and an innovative Cultural Fire Program.

I’m also President of the International Association of Wildland Fire.

Source: International Association of Wildland Fire

Throughout your career, have you noticed many changes in prescribed burning practices?

Several things characterised the 1970s when my career started.  Forestry had been the leader in fire science, innovation in equipment and technology, and a professional approach to prescribed burning and bushfire management.  The use of fire by farmers, graziers and pastoralists was widespread, and departments of agriculture conducted research into fire, pastures and production and supported primary producers with extension programs.  Rural fire services played a similar role in supporting community-based brigades and land managers. Society was generally more aware of rural matters and supportive of prescribed burning, but there was very little understanding or acknowledgement of Aboriginal burning.

While the grass still grows and forest fuels still accumulate, the major changes have been in rural land use, a growing urban interface, organisational arrangements including the decline of forestry and the dominance of fire and emergency services, increasing environmental regulations, and divergent socio-political viewpoints.  Many operational practices continue, largely unchanged, but there are now  increased constraints requiring careful and sometimes protracted planning and approvals, as well as attracting greater scrutiny.  There are many positive changes including an emphasis on safety, equipment design, and multi-disciplinary science including a much closer relationship with meteorologists, some of whom are embedded in agencies to support burn programs.  The historical use of fire by local people is now returning to many landscapes with the rightful recognition of Indigenous connections to land and the importance of cultural burning.

With climate change bringing more intense and frequent extreme weather, and as the higher risk weather season becomes longer, how are the emergency services adapting prescribed burning practices?

Adapting prescribed burning to the uncertainties of weather, seasons and climate change is perhaps one of our greatest challenges.  On one hand, prescribed burning is becoming even more important for protecting humans, infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems from the impacts of extreme wildfires, while on the other hand increased governance and scrutiny can be a barrier to organisational agility.  There’s an ongoing need to optimise approaches to burn programs, burn preparation and operational planning, to maximise windows of opportunity which may occur unexpectedly.  There is some progress in this area, but much more needs to be done, including research and development for better seasonal outlooks, forecasts and decision support tools specifically for prescribed burning.

How do different agencies work together on prescribed burns and how important is interagency collaboration?

Each jurisdiction has made significant progress with interagency collaboration and interoperability.  With land management agencies having diverse portfolios, including nature conservation, recreation and visitor management, marine parks and wildlife regulation, fire management is just one activity.  Likewise, fire and emergency services deal with multiple disciplines and hazards as well as protracted year-round events including cyclones, floods and bushfires, so resources and capacity can be stretched.  Working together is not an option, it is essential.  We see the benefits of interstate and international resource sharing, well-managed year-round by the National Resource Sharing Centre.  Resource sharing for prescribed burning is the next frontier which could bring enormous benefits, not just in managing fuels and protecting communities and the environment, but in the sharing of expertise across jurisdictions.

How is Indigenous cultural fire knowledge incorporated into prescribed burning practices?

While both prescribed burning and Indigenous cultural burning are concerned with putting fire into the landscape, Indigenous burning involves a unique connection to Country that has been informed by thousands of years of traditional beliefs and values, shared understandings of human-environment relationships, the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, and the responsibility for ongoing stewardship.  Like a doctor prescribing medicine for a particular ailment, prescribed burning is often purpose-driven, planned and formulated according to empirical science and derived models.

The commonalties are also important.  The significance of Indigenous fire stewardship has become widely accepted, while the effectiveness of prescribed burning has sometimes been questioned. Prescribed burning though, despite its association with western science, is founded on the same principles, real-world observations and evidence base that Indigenous cultures worldwide have learned from and relied upon.  Fire can be used as an effective tool, fuels and wildfires can be managed, and a well-managed landscape is a healthy, productive and resilient habitat for humans and other species.

In northern Australia, for example, after decades of disruption to Indigenous burning, and destructive large scale late dry season wildfires, vast areas are now back under traditional stewardship. With land title changes and incentive schemes such as carbon credits, the north is being transformed.  Across Australia, fire and emergency services and land management agencies are actively working with indigenous Australians to enable and support their aspirations in fire management, access to Country and cultural burning needs. Much progress is being made. As these relationships further mature, so too will the two-way learning accelerate and deepen. Even though the journey has just begun in some parts of the nation, Australia is on a new, positive and irreversible path to a future informed by the wisdom and experience of the past.

How do lessons learned from past burns influence planning going forward?

The AFAC National Burning Project was a valuable initiative that is still providing value. Workshops were held across the country to gather knowledge on best practice for strategic planning, program planning, operational planning and burn implementation. This initiative produced numerous publications, documenting evidence, knowledge, case studies and lessons learned from all regions of Australia. The final book in 2020 remains an authoritative text which not just drawn upon by AFAC members. Others including Indigenous organisations with carbon projects are applying the principles to demonstrate the rigour in their program management.

Each agency and jurisdiction has processes for post-incident reviews and the management of lessons learned. While primarily for bushfires and other incidents, these processes are applied to prescribed burns each year, although much more could be done. Through the AFAC Prescribed Burning Network, some agencies are sharing case studies which will assist with learning and improvement across the sector as well as efforts to communicate with the public about the professionalism and efficacy of burning.

The most valuable learning takes place in the bush. Competency based training programs are important, but experience in the field, especially under the guidance of highly experienced practitioners, remains essential for career development.  The decline of forestry and other workforce changes have been accompanied by a loss of knowledge, which is becoming critical nationwide, affecting the delivery of burn programs and the more complex operations.  AFAC has been working to address this and is seeking funding for a masterclass program that will take experienced practitioners and expose them to unfamiliar environments and operations in different jurisdictions, while being mentored by sector veterans.  Program graduates with ongoing support as a community of practice will provide future leadership and expertise.

Are there innovations or new technology being used to improve the planning or delivery of prescribed burning?

Technology for prescribed burning has continued to change, from the Indigenous firestick to the drip torch to the aerial incendiary. The 1960s saw revolutionary advances in prescribed burning technology with the pioneering of aerial burning. Today, aerial ignition remains an essential tool to conduct prescribed burns and for other bushfire suppression strategies. Other major users include non-government conservation organisations, the pastoral industry, and Aboriginal corporations and Indigenous ranger groups across vast areas from Cape York to the Kimberley. Satellite remote sensing and end user applications such as the North Australia Fire Information website have supported planning and monitoring for these activities over the last couple of decades.

Drones are the emerging platform for delivering prescribed burns, allowing operations to be conducted in a safer and more targeted and timely manner. As for burn planning and monitoring, the use of artificial intelligence is likely to be the next revolution, if its power can be harnessed and integrated with fuel conditions, weather models, observations and decision support systems as well as human factors, workflows and organisational cultures. I recently attended a conference in Canada, and one of the exhibitors had developed a robotic and remotely controlled snake that could slither along a fire or burn edge at night, checking for hot spots, and applying water and additives up to a kilometre from the operator. There are more innovators than ever before, and the next revolution could be just over the horizon. While the gadgetry is important, fire management including prescribed burning remains primarily a people business and we must continue to invest in human capability.

Source: Trevor Howard

Europe burns – a view to the summer of 2026

European wildfire 2025, by European Forest Fires Information System.

by Guillermo Rein

After two decades studying wildfires across continents, and watching Europe burn every summer, I keep returning to the same uncomfortable conclusion: this is not a failure of the fire service or a government. It is a failure of society.

In this guest post, Professor Guillermo Rein peers into the near future to assess Europe preparations for the 2026 wildfire season, based on the historic recent wildfire seasons.

The 2025 wildfire season in the European Union finished with a total burnt area of 1,034,552 ha, according to the European Forest Fires Information System. The European Commission confirmed 2025 to be the worst for wildfire since records began in 2006.

Wildfire activity was especially high in Portugal, Spain, southern France, southern Italy, Greece, Türkiye, Ukraine, and parts of the UK. Most fires over 5,000 ha (purple circles) occurred in the western Iberian Peninsula, though central and eastern Mediterranean areas were also affected. Smaller fires were widespread across continental Europe and Scandinavia, showing extensive wildfire risk and incidents in 2025.


In his extraordinary book ‘Collapse’, Jared Diamond offers a framework that is forensically useful. He describes four generic ways societies fail when facing existential challenges. Applied to European wildfires, the fit is disturbingly close. The four failures to anticipate, perceive, attempt or succeed.

I. Failure to anticipate.
Europe did not anticipate a shift towards systematically more flammable landscapes. Slow fuel accumulation from rural abandonment, climate change, expanding built areas close to forests, the early stages of wildfire exclusion, and the disregard of hard international lessons from North America and Australia, were all treated as separate issues rather than as a comprehensive and evolving hazard.

II. Failure to perceive.
Early signals from southern Europe were framed as exceptional summers or problems of disorderly countries, not as indicators of a changing wildfire regime. At the same time, public voices from independent scientists and practitioners were often ignored, sidelined, or dismissed as bizarre or alarmist, instead of recognised as the warnings.

III. Failure to attempt to solve.
Once the destruction trend became visible, summer after summer, even in northern latitudes, action lagged and often lacked coherence. Landscape-scale forest management and protection of rural areas remained politically difficult. European research funding on wildfires arrived late, sometimes very late, and is frequently fragmented or poorly aligned with the realities of wildfire behaviour.

IV. Failure to succeed in solving.
In the absence of a real understanding of the European wildfire problem, resources flowed mainly into suppression and firefighting. Suppression is only one layer of protection, the last resort, yet it was treated as the only solution. Prevention, detection, compartmentation, evacuation, and hardening of communities lagged behind, while wildfire destruction exceeded known levels.

The current situation reveals failures that accumulate quietly over decades.

If Europe wants to mitigate wildfire disasters and protect its citizens, it must stop asking how to fight more wildfires, and speed up asking how to understand and manage them better.

Guillermo Rein is a Professor of Fire Science at Imperial College, London. He created and leads the research group Imperial Hazelab.

Smoke Blankets the Iberian Peninsula, 15 Aug 2025. NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data

A lasting lesson and teaching event legacy of the 1961 Western Australian bushfires

Dwellingup, Western Australia, 1961.

In 1961, from 20 to 24 January, a series of large, destructive bushfires burned in the forested south-west region of Western Australia.

A subsequent Royal Commission investigated causes and made recommendations to enhance controlled burning that had profound implications, not only in the tall eucalypts of the south-west WA, but across Australia for many years.

Guest writer John O’Donnell looks back on the anniversary of the 1961 fires and sees lessons for today.

The 1961 south west Western Australian bushfires provided a classic, rare case study where the recommendations of a Royal Commission and lessons learnt by firefighters were taken seriously by the government, and land and fire management agencies, in particular the Western Australian Forests.

Over time, virtually all of the and recommendations and lessons learnt were implemented. This resulted in significant decline in the annual area burnt by bushfires, and consequent bushfire losses.

Of all the major bushfires in Australia’s history, the author believes none has left such a deep and lasting legacy as the 1961 bushfires in Western Australia. They were not the deadliest fires Australia has seen but they were among the most influential. The 1961 Dwellingup fire in particular became an important case study for how bushfire was understood, managed, and mitigated in the decades that followed.

Sadly, in many bushfires in Australia, the bushfire mitigation and suppression lessons are not adequately captured nor retained over long periods.

Dwellingup, Western Australia, 1961.
Dwellingup, Western Australia, 1961.

A defining moment in fire management

The 1961 bushfires swept through vast tracts of forest in Western Australia, igniting between January and March across Dwellingup, Pemberton, the Shannon River region, and Augusta-Margaret River. The fires razed towns like Dwellingup and Karridale, destroyed 160 buildings, and caused an estimated $35 million in damages. Remarkably, no lives were lost – a testament to the skill and bravery of firefighters and the resilience of local communities.

What set these fires apart was not just their scale but the response they triggered. The Western Australian government convened a Royal Commission, led by Forester G.J. Rodger, to investigate the causes and recommend reforms. The inquiry’s 27 recommendations were not only logical but transformative, laying the foundation for a new era in bushfire management.

The author’s full report is here.

A forested landscape at risk

Prior to 1961, prescribed burning in Western Australia was limited and largely ineffective. Forest management focused on narrow buffer zones around assets, allowing fuel loads to accumulate dangerously across vast areas. Technical limitations-poor weather forecasting, lack of trained personnel, and rudimentary fire behaviour knowledge hampered efforts to implement broader burning strategies.

The result was a tinderbox. When lightning ignited multiple fires under extreme weather conditions, suppression efforts were quickly overwhelmed. Smoke rendered tower-based detection systems useless, and outdated equipment failed under pressure. The fires spread rapidly, culminating in the destruction of Dwellingup.

Capturing the 1961 bushfire teaching event and lessons

The Royal Commission’s findings resulted a comprehensive overhaul of fire management in Western Australia. Key reforms included:

  • Enhanced Equipment and Communication: Investment in modern radios, improved tanker trucks, and standardized pumper units.
  • Fire Behaviour Research: A dedicated program to understand fire dynamics and develop safer prescribed burning techniques.
  • Prescribed Burning Programs: Systematic fuel reduction became central to fire mitigation, with rotational burning schedules tailored to forest types.
  • Spotter Aircraft: Replacing unreliable tower systems, aerial detection improved response times and fire mapping.
  • Interagency Cooperation: Agreements between government bodies, local councils, and volunteer brigades fostered unified fire strategies.

These reforms were not merely theoretical. They were operationalized, tested, and refined over decades, resulting in a dramatic decline in bushfire extent and severity across the region.

Reinforcement of 1961 bushfire teaching and lesson capture in 1978 and 2023

The effectiveness of the 1961 reforms was reaffirmed in subsequent fire events. In December 1978, 27 fires ignited over one weekend due to lightning strikes. Thanks to regular fuel reduction and improved detection, crews contained all fires swiftly – most using only hand tools and knapsack sprays.

Similarly, in November 2023, 26 fires erupted south-east of Perth. Fuel-age mapping revealed that 20 of these were burning in areas treated within the last four years. Firefighters prioritized the remaining six, successfully containing them with minimal damage. These case studies underscore the critical role of fuel management in wildfire control.

The role of prescribed burning and fire systems

Prescribed burning emerged as a critical component of the Western Australia’s fire strategy. Research showed that under severe weather, fuel older than five years in jarrah forests and seven years in karri forests could carry uncontrollable crown fires. Burns less than a year old could halt fire runs, while areas with fuel less than five years old allowed for effective suppression.

To maintain safe fuel levels-below 8 tonnes per hectare in jarrah and 15 tonnes in karri – rotational burning schedules were implemented. These were informed by ongoing studies into fuel accumulation, fire intensity, and ecological impacts. Aerial burning techniques, pioneered jointly by the Forests Department and CSIRO, further enhanced efficiency and coverage.

Prescribed burning was just one component of a holistic fire management system. Other innovations included:

  • VHF/UHF Radio Systems: Replacing HF radios, these systems improved reliability under adverse conditions.
  • Structured Training and Command Systems: Ensuring readiness and coordination during emergencies.
  • Wildfire Threat Analysis: Prioritizing protection of high-value areas through strategic buffers and integrated planning.

Together, and with other measures, these measures created a robust framework that protected lives, property, and ecosystems for decades.

A warning from the past

Since the early 1990s, prescribed burning rates have dropped, leading to increased bushfire extent. Peet and Williamson (2025) warn that the forest estate now resembles its pre-1961 condition-dense, fuel-laden, and vulnerable.

This graph from the Bushfire Front (below) starkly illustrates this trend: as prescribed burning decreased, wildfire area has increased. Without ongoing commitment to fuel reduction and fire science, the hard-won gains of the past risk being undone.

Conclusions

The 1961 Dwellingup fire was a tragedy, but it was also a turning point. It taught Australians that suppression alone is insufficient, that science and planning are essential, and that communities must be prepared with a “Plan B.” It demonstrated the power of coordinated response, informed policy, and sustained commitment.

In south-east Australia, it is essential that such a critical lesson and teaching event is examined and all possible lessons captured, including optimised fire mitigation programs.

John is a retired district forester and an environmental manager for hydro-electric construction and road construction projects. His main interests are the mild maintenance burning of forests, trying to change the culture of massive fuel loads in our forests, establishing healthy and safe resilient landscapes, fire fighter safety, and town and city bushfire safety.

LA Fires: What have we learnt from the research?

Idaho Taskforce 4 experiencing southern California traffic en route to the Palisades fire on Saturday, Jan. 11. Photo Kelly Martin

In the year that has passed since the deadly Los Angeles fires many have sought to make sense of what happened and why, and questioned could it happen again, somewhere in the world. This is a week that will recall painful memories for those close to the LA fires.

As a mid-summer heatwave moves across southern Australia this week, fire fighters are facing multiple fire outbreaks. Natural Hazards Research Australia CEO Andrew Gissing looks at what the research into the LA fires is telling other fire-prone communities, in Australia and elsewhere.

The two fires that broke out on 7 January 2025, killed more than 30 people and destroyed over 17,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles County. The Palisades Fire scorched LA’s coastal Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The Eaton Fire razed the town of Altadena northeast of LA. This photo gallery by the Associated Press shows the progress in rebuilding these communities.

By Andrew Gissing

The devastating Los Angeles fires in the very heart of a built-up urban interface sparked global interest, including in Australia as communities, media and governments asked how the fires happened and could such a catastrophe happen here.

One year on from the fires researchers have focused on understanding the causes and impacts of the fires as well as evaluating vulnerabilities and resilience features that contributed to the patterns of destruction and the efficacy of emergency management.

Causes and impacts

Despite occurring during the winter months that typically see less wildfires, extremely dry conditions, combined with strong winds (reaching almost 160 km/h) created hazardous fire conditions. Dozens of fires ignited in early January 2025, two of which grew to become the Palisades and Eaton Fires which spread through adjacent suburbs.

The fires burned 37 000 acres and destroyed more than16 000 structures, driven by intense house-to-house fire spread, known as conflagration. According to Swiss Re, the fires were the costliest wildfire event ever globally with insurance losses estimated at $40 billion. Some sixteen times greater than Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires.

US building codes relating to the wildfire urban interface became operational in 2008, however, much of the building stock destroyed was built before then which meant wildfire resilience measures were not uniformly adopted.

Rapid urban growth has also increased wildfire exposure across the United States, with a study concluding that exposure grew 40% between 1990 and 2010.

Deaths were reported at 31, however, research found 440 indirect deaths linked to the fires from factors such as poor air quality, stress, disruption to health systems and mental health impacts. A further study found a 46% increase in visits for heart attacks to a Los Angeles hospital in the first 90 days following the fires when compared to the same period over the previous seven years.

Built environment vulnerabilities and resilience

Investigations led by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IIBHS) determined key factors that contributed to the loss of structures were lack of structure separation, connective fuels and building materials used, concluding that:

  • Each additional 10 ft (3 m) of separation between structures increased the likelihood of no damage by 7-13%, up to 30ft no matter the structure type, After 30 ft, the impact of additional separation flattened off.
  • Vegetation and other flammable materials and household items adjacent to buildings such as decks, garbage bins, hot tubs and pergolas acted as connective fuels, creating significant vulnerability to structures.
  • Vegetation growing alongside non-combustible fences compromised its resilience. Where there was 25% fuel coverage in the 1.2 m directly surrounding a structure there was an 87% to 100% chance of damage or destruction.
  • Most structures inspected included at least one resilient building feature. However, few had adopted a comprehensive resilient system allowing flames, radiant heat and embers to exploit building vulnerabilities.
  • Often resilient characteristics, such as non-combustible exterior wall cladding were paired with vulnerable ones such as windows, doors, vents or eaves increasing the overall vulnerability of the structure.
  • Structures with four resilient components were 54% more likely to experience no damage regardless of separation distance, this reduced to 36% likelihood of no damage with only one or two resilient components.

A recent Berkeley Fire Research Lab study analysing data from five of the most destructive Californian fires before 2022 identified similar results suggesting that home retrofitting and defensible space can double the number of homes and other structures that survive a wildfire. Notably, the study found that removing all combustible material within 1.2 m of homes could reduce structure losses by 17%, compared with 5% for retrofitting alone.

The study also found that separation distance between structures is the most influential factor driving structure loss, especially in densely built areas.

Resilience implications

Research overwhelmingly found a systematic approach to wildfire resilience is key, underscoring that no single resilience measure is sufficient on its own.

At the household level, a combination of resilience measures including building codes, retrofitting, adequate structure separation and the removal of connective fuels has been proven to have the greatest impact on reducing risk. The IIBHS conclude that when resilience measures are adopted on a neighbourhood-wide scale the number of structure ignitions can be reduced, slowing fire spread and reducing impacts.

Much debate following the fires has centred around new Californian regulations to limit flammable materials within 1.2 m (5 ft) of homes, known as Zone 0, to create an ember-resistant area to prevent structure ignition. According to CAL FIRE the purpose of Zone 0 is to:

Reduce the likelihood of structure ignition by reducing the potential for direct ignition of the structure from flame contact, by embers that accumulate at the base of a wall, and/or indirect ignitions when embers ignite vegetation, vegetative debris or other combustible materials located close to the structure that result in either a radiant heat and/or direct flame contact.

Originally directed by the Legislature in 2020, the impending legislation stalled until the 2025 fires, when the Californian Governor directed the completion of the Zone 0 regulation by the end of 2025. Public debate over the issue has since pushed expected completion to 2026. Despite this, some Californian cities have already implemented Zone 0 policies, with some offering grant programs to support implementation.

The new regulation will build upon existing defendable space policies dating back to 1965, which mandated a fuel reduced area extending to 10 m surrounding a property, and which were supplemented in 2008 with a requirement for fuel reduction to around 30 m or to the edge of the property. These regulations include maintenance of grass, space between vegetation, removal of fallen leaves and clearance space around sheds and wood plies. The key difference is that in Zone 0 there should be no fuel, while in the outer areas, fuel is to be minimised and managed.

It is proposed Zone 0 will apply to all new construction in California’s State Responsibility Area. For existing structures home and business owners will have three years to clear the vegetation and other combustibles within 1.2 m around the structure. CAL FIRE has estimated that 17% of all structures (some 2 million houses) across California will be affected by the regulations.

Regulations are proposed to include combustibles such as wood-based mulch, woody plants, dry grass, synthetic lawns, stored timber, storage sheds, wooden gates and fences attached to a structure, small trees and other landscape materials within the first 1.2 m of the structure and any attached decks. Trees would be allowed within the zone if they are pruned and maintained appropriately.

A recent UCLA expert panel debate noted that while combustible materials near structures pose clear fire risks, vegetation management is more complex. Reducing tree canopy may contribute to extreme heat exposure, and communities have resisted vegetation removal due to aesthetics and cost, framed in the media as ‘anti-garden policy’. Some residents argue well-watered plants in Zone 0 offer protection, but recent IIBHS research confirms even hydrated vegetation will ignite under extreme fire conditions.

Observations for Australia

Australian experience has seen significant bushfire losses within urban areas. For example, in 1967 fires burned to within 2 km of Hobart CBD claiming 62 lives and in 2003 fires burned into Canberra suburbs destroying close to 500 homes.

Similar to California, many Australian properties were not designed to withstand bushfires, and the number of homes in at-risk areas continues to increase. The risk of conflagrations in Australia compared to California, however, must be better understood. The two environments are different and significant risk factors such as structure separation may differ.

Natural Hazards Research Australia funded research led by UTAS investigating the wildfire urban interface found that creating defensible space around a home can reduce house losses. Finding that guidelines for the creation of defensible space should identify the closest area surrounding a home as a stand-alone zone (similar to Zone 0), to ensure focus on this critical area.

A systems approach to household resilience requires clear, evidence-based measures that prioritise efficacy and efficiency. While guidelines exist to address existing buildings, their implementation remains largely voluntary, highlighting the need for incentives to encourage adoption. Fire agencies play a crucial role to communicate these measures, but systemic change is essential to ensure widespread resilience.

To help remove barriers to improving the resilience of Australia’s building stock the Productivity Commission recently recommended the development of a nationally consistent climate resilience rating system for housing and for a national strategy to improve the resilience of Australia’s housing stock over coming decades.

In its submission to the Productivity Commission inquiry on net zero transformation, the Centre noted that a resilience rating system could be mandatory for all new properties at the time a property was sold or leased. For example, California now requires sellers in areas of high wildfire risk to report completed retrofit works. Such rating systems should consider both physical attributes of a structure and features surrounding a structure such as garden design.

Transparency of household resilience alone, however, will unlikely be insufficient to overcome barriers to improving the resilience of existing housing stock. Incentive measures such as subsidies, low-interest loans, insurance discounts and build back better provisions in insurance policies should all be considered.

Natural Hazards Research Australia is continuing to support Australian fire services to explore implications of the Los Angeles fires through new research focused on understanding the risk of conflagration in Australia.

In short, Australia needs:

  • Incentive measures such as subsidies, low-interest loans, insurance discounts to promote retrofitting to enhance property resilience.
  • National Resilience Strategy for housing stock inclusive of the management of bushfire fuel on private land
  • Resilience rating system, mandatory for all new properties and when properties are sold or leased

Building capacity: workshops to master prescribed burns

Participants in an agency administrator workshop about to ignite the prescribed fire, some for the first time, in Missoula, Montana, in May 2025. The workshops help the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service reach its goal of expanding use of prescribed fire. Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.

By Erin Myers and Steven Miller

The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service has ambitious goals: to treat an additional two million acres of hazardous fuels on national forests and grasslands annually; and to support partners by treating an additional three million acres of hazardous fuels annually on other federal, state, tribal and private lands.

To achieve these goals, the use of prescribed fire needs to expand significantly; an increase in prescribed fire is dependent on growing the workforce capacity. Agency administrator workshops are one way to expand that capacity.

This article is published in the latest issue of Wildfire magazine. Read the full edition here.

The benefits of experiential learning (learning by doing) have long been recognized by the wildland fire community. In wildland fire in the United States, this is best exemplified by the position task book system of training; trainees are assigned a book of the many tasks necessary to be fully successful in a role, and they perform those functions under the watchful eye of a fully qualified mentor. Experiential learning is one of the quickest methods to expand the capability of the workforce.

The desire to increase workforce capacity through experiential learning led to the establishment of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (Center) in 1998. The Center’s mission is to maintain a national interagency center of excellence for prescribed fire, with an emphasis on actual field experience, to increase skills and knowledge and to build confidence in the application of prescribed fire.

Participants igniting the burn unit under the supervision of instructors / mentors at the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana in May. Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.
Participants igniting the burn unit under the supervision of instructors / mentors at the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana in May. Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.

Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Center originally focused on actual prescribed burning qualifications through 20-day field sessions. During those 20-day trainings, participants traveled to several remote sites to take advantage of prescribed burning and learning opportunities with a variety of agencies, fuel types, and challenges such as the wildland-urban interface. The training locations were in areas where hosts had well-established burn programs with broad prescription windows and high levels of interagency cooperation.

In 2002, the Center began hosting workshops on prescribed fire specifically designed for agency administrators to develop knowledge, skills and confidence in oversight of a prescribed fire program. An agency administrator is defined by the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group as “the official with the delegated authority, responsibility, and qualifications for decision making on incidents or prescribed fires within a particular administrative unit. The managing officer of an agency, division thereof, or jurisdiction having statutory responsibility for incident mitigation and management.” Examples of agency administrators are federal line officers, state forest officers / delegates or fire managers, tribal chairpersons, fire chiefs, police chief, sheriffs, mayors or county representatives.

Regarding wildland fire management, either prescribed fire or fire suppression, the agency administrator is the responsible person representing a particular agency. With prescribed burning the agency administrator has administrative responsibility and delegates the responsibility of technical fire operations to the burn boss. Agency administrators must be prepared to make critical and informed wildland fire management decisions related to land and assets under their span of authority.

“I strongly believe this should be REQUIRED for new line officers in the USFS within the first two years. The mix of hands on, situational, and classroom learning really made this a dynamic and effective course to learn more about both [prescribed burns] and the role of the [agency administrators] in [prescribed burns].”

Prior to 2022, the Center’s activities were primarily in the Southeastern United States and included two agency administrator workshops annually. The 2022 National Prescribed Fire Review called for the Center to expand westward by January 2023. The agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, May 1-7, 2025, was the third session held in the western United States. Other workshops were in Bend, Oregon, in May 2024, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 2024.

“I recognize that communication between line, fuels and the rest of the district is critical to success.”

Workshop participants are selected from numerous agencies across the United States including the Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Defense as well as partners such as states and The Nature Conservancy, a global non-profit dedicated to conserving land and water.

The workshops help agency administrators develop the core competencies necessary to hold decision-making authority for wildfires or prescribed fires. Participants learn about:

• Risk-informed decision making.

• Wildfire response and incident management processes.

• Wildland Fire Decision Support System / Integrated Fuel Treatment Decision Support System and other decision support tools.

• Fuels management and prescribed fire processes.

• Fire prevention, mitigation, and education processes.

• Social, political, economic, and environmental impacts of wildland fire management activities, including prescribed fire.

• Effective communication.

• Collaboration with partners and stakeholders.

• Fiscal management.

“I learned the importance of Leader’s Intent to support and grow my fire program.”

(According to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, the Leader’s Intent is a statement that outlines what people must know to be successful for a given assignment including tasks, purpose and end state – how things should look when successful completed.)

The objective of agency administrator workshops is that upon completion the agency administrator will:

• Demonstrate the knowledge and confidence necessary to grow or sustain a safe and successful prescribed fire program.

• Demonstrate an understanding of national policy, agency administrator responsibility, accountability, and authority to approve all prescribed fire management actions.

• Identify the principles, policies and procedures to effectively provide oversight of a prescribed fire management program.

A key strength of the training program is the instructors’ proficiency with prescribed burning. The cadre of instructors includes agency administrators and prescribed fire practitioners, who, as a group, have more than 550 years of experience in every aspect of a successful prescribed fire program.

The cadre – composed of federal employees, cooperators and private consultants – is organized into two groups: one focuses on development of exercises, burns, and logistics; the other concentrates on providing mentoring and presentations. The groups interact seamlessly to coordinate instruction and facilitate learning moments as they arise. (A cooperator is defined by the National Fire Coordinating Group as a federal, tribal, state or local agency that participates with other agencies in planning and conducting fire or emergency management projects and activities.)

An important element of the agency administrator workshop is the opportunity for mentoring between the cadre and the participants. Mentoring is a critical consideration in all aspects of the workshop including the formation of the agenda, the selection of the instructors and even the selection of the facilities. The instructors are fully committed to this concept and have arranged for every opportunity to stay involved with the participants including at meals, breaks and social hours. Small group formation is continually reorganized to maximize one-on-one mentoring opportunities and peerto-peer interaction. The overall design of the workshop maximizes the opportunity for mentoring.

The curriculum is designed around several foundational elements including risk management, overcoming constraints, effective internal and external communication, protocol and policy on escapes, burning in the wildland-urban interface, building successful programs, air quality and smoke, liability, land management plans, fire management plans, burn plans, landscape wide application, program monitoring, review and approval responsibility, accountability, oversight and developing partnerships. While the curriculum is consistent, it is also highly adaptable. On the first day of the workshop, participants provide their expectations for the workshop and the instructors then tailor agenda items to the expectations.

Each workshop includes two prescribed burn days. Each burn day has a specific set of objectives designed to give agency administrators hands-on experience. The objectives of the first burn day are to provide the participants with a better understanding of the burn-day organization and the roles and responsibilities of the agency administrator, burn boss, and firing boss. The objectives of the second burn day allow participants to experience simulated pressures, time constraints and the need for flexibility that employees experience on every burn day. This is achieved by allowing the participants to plan, organize and implement a small, prescribed fire with minimal input from the host unit or instructors.

A classroom presentation during the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, about how to build an action plan. Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.
A classroom presentation during the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, about how to build an action plan. Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.

Attrition at the agency administrator and burn boss levels leads to loss of institutional knowledge and experience. Land-management agencies need a system for transferring institutional knowledge and experience to new agency administrators and less experienced burn bosses, especially with respect to complexity analysis and burn-plan review processes. The workshops are one tool to facilitate the transfer of that knowledge and experience.

Workshops are planned for; Jan. 29-Feb. 3 in Florida (location TBD); and May 14-19 in Redding, California.

“It was obvious why each cadre member was selected. They were experts in their field with decades of experience, and they each had a passion for both their work and teaching others.”

Steve Miller

Steve Miller served on the board of directors for IAWF from 2017 through 2023, serving as vice president in 2022. Miller has worked in fire since joining the Texas Forest Service in 1985. Since 2018, he has been employed by the US Forest Service, as the director of fire and aviation management for the eastern region.

Prior to joining the USFS, Miller spent 31 years working for the State of Florida. He has a passion for prescribed fire and teaching, having served as adjunct instructor for the University of Florida and the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point.

Erin Myers

Erin Myers joined the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center cadre in 2023, after completing the agency administrator workshop in 2022. Myers became a Florida state certified burner in 2005 and primarily assisted private landowners with prescribed fire planning until 2020, when she became a refuge manager with the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System in Southwest Florida.

In 2018, Myers started training to become a public information officer for wildfire and prescribed fire. She works closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Zone 3 fire team in South Florida, assisting with prescribed burning on multiple refuges as either a public information officer, FFT2 or agency administrator. Myers loves sharing information about the benefits of prescribed fire on the landscape with partners and communities.

Born of the flames: founding Lebanon’s Akkar trail firefighting team

Members of the Akkar Trail team pause for a quick selfie in front of their two vehicles, “Shouh” and “Lzab” before tackling a fire near Ain Yaacoub that threatened the Bezbina Nature Reserve. Despite steep, rugged terrain and strong winds, the team managed to save the reserve and halt forward progression of the fire after a five-hour battle. Photos courtesy of the Akkar Trail Wildland Firefighting Team.

By Khaled Taleb

It was a typical Sunday – August 22, 2020. I had just wrapped up a hiking trip and returned home early, expecting a quiet afternoon. But within minutes, the news spread like wildfire: A massive blaze had broken out in Wadi Haql al-Khirbeh, quickly reaching one of the most important cedar forests in our Lebanese village, home also to centuries-old juniper trees.

I rushed to our group chat on WhatsApp and typed: “I’m heading toward the fire. Whoever wants to join me, meet me in front of our association’s center – Akkar Trail.”

This article is published in Wildfire magazine. Read the full edition here.

Akkar Trail is an environmental non-governmental organization dedicated to ecotourism, mountain trails, and biodiversity documentation.

In just minutes, four volunteers from our mountain guide team assembled, carrying simple tools we usually used for trail maintenance: a pickaxe, a shovel, a pruning saw, and backpacks filled with water and snacks.

We hurried toward the upper reaches of the village. The closer we got, the thicker and darker the smoke became, tinged with a bronze hue. That’s when we realized the extent of the unfolding disaster, reminiscent of the great fire of 2010 that had burned for five days.

Once at the scene, I launched my drone and began documenting and scouting the fire from above. In less than three hours, the fire had consumed about 100 hectares, racing down the slopes from 1,700 meters to 1,000 meters at terrifying speed.

Though we had no prior firefighting training, we decided to act. Using our basic tools, we dug a firebreak and started fighting the blaze; against all odds, we managed to contain a large portion of it. Meanwhile, the only civil defense truck in the area – an old tanker – was unable to access the rugged terrain, limiting its role to offloading water from afar.

We spent two full days battling the flames using agricultural tools, pickup trucks, tractors, and pesticide sprayers. Eventually, we managed to control the fire, but the damage was significant.

The flames had devoured our memories – those ancient trees that had stood by our sides on every hike, silent companions we had carved our names into over the years.

In moments like these, we were reminded of a cherished Lebanese village tradition: Al-Awneh – the collective mobilization of residents to help in times of crisis, rooted in solidarity and communal responsibility.

That spirit gave us the courage to take the next step: the founding of the Akkar Trail Forest Firefighting Team.

We called on friends and supporters to help us raise funds to buy and equip a small, agile firefighting vehicle. To our great surprise, the response was overwhelming – we raised nearly $20,000. With it, we purchased a used Nissan Titan and locally outfitted it with basic equipment. Despite the vehicle’s simplicity, it proved to be remarkably effective in rough terrain. A second vehicle followed the next year.

We named the two trucks Lazzab (after the juniper tree) and Shouh (after the fir tree) – both iconic symbols of Akkar’s forests.

Over the next four fire seasons, our team evolved from a group of amateurs into a respected, professional force. What fueled that transformation? Passion, commitment, continuous learning, adoption of international good practices, modern technology, and a rigorous process of reviewing and learning from past mistakes through annual reports.

With an annual budget of just $15,000, we’ve carried out more than 220 firefighting missions – both in Akkar and beyond – responding to every call for help.

During mid-2025, the Akkar Trail team headed to Syria amidst an unprecedented environmental disaster to assist in fighting devastating wildfires that ravaged thousands of hectares of forests and farmland. Despite limited resources and the setback of the main response vehicles out of service, the team chose to intervene out of a deep sense of humanitarian, environmental, and fraternal duty. What seemed at first like a symbolic gesture turned into a pivotal experience filled with valuable lessons, from gaining field expertise in tackling massive fires, to learning about aerial monitoring technologies, strengthening regional cooperation, and testing readiness under harsh, real-life conditions.

This experience proved that learning from others and sharing the field with them is a necessity, not a luxury, and that true solidarity knows no borders. In addition to our quest for evolving the knowledge and capacity of our own team, we have also organized training camps and shared our experience with teams from across Lebanon. One of our key events was the annual forest fire training camp, inspired by the Polish Forest Camp attended by one of our members, through the invitation of our dear friend Lindon Pronto, senior fire management expert with the European Forest Institute in Germany, and Wildfire magazine associate editor.

During our training camps, we met firefighting teams from all over Lebanon, including from the south. Among them were members of the Risala Scouts Association, brave responders who had paid a heavy price during the most recent Israeli aggression on Lebanon. Their ambulances were deliberately targeted – even though they were clearly marked – resulting in dozens of casualties. These were brothers who had broken bread with us, laughed with us, trained beside us – and are sadly no longer with us.

The Israeli assault has been relentless, and has been an additional driver of wildfires in the region. White phosphorus was used against civilians and forested lands, as confirmed by hundreds of photos and videos. Even after the ceasefire, Israeli drones claimed more lives – one of them a dear friend from the Lebanese Civil Defense, a passionate environmentalist who had repeatedly risked his life to fight wildfires alongside us. He belonged to no political party – just a public servant, targeted nonetheless, while doing what he did best – helping others.

Akkar Trail team members assisting during the 2024 wildfires in Mount Lebanon Governorate. The team has grown to around 22 volunteers; some are university students, others are agricultural engineers, and some are mechanics or paramedics — an incredible mix of specialties united by a shared love for the land and nature.
Akkar Trail team members assisting during the 2024 wildfires in Mount Lebanon Governorate. The team has grown to around 22 volunteers; some are university students, others are agricultural engineers, and some are mechanics or paramedics. Photos courtesy of the Akkar Trail Wildland Firefighting Team.

Yet despite all this, our faith remains unwavering. We know we are on the right path – working to protect the forests and rich biodiversity of our region. More than that, we believe in the power of sharing this experience across Lebanon and even abroad, alongside loyal friends and partners.

We have done so much – on less than $80,000 in five years – including the purchase of vehicles, equipment, operations, and maintenance. These numbers tell a powerful story: when even limited resources are used wisely, incredible things are possible. It is no secret that there have been many development aid projects in Lebanon, including projects for capacity development for fire fighting. While a small handful of efforts have proven effective, many have wasted money on poorly planned activities and in our view have misplaced resources. We are therefore very proud to have set such a positive example and affected change in our communities even with the very limited resources at our disposal.

So here’s our call to the global wildfire community:

Support those who’ve proven their worth.

Support those who stood their ground when everything (literally and figuratively) burned around them.

Our team’s vehicles are aging and need replacement.

New volunteers must be recruited and trained. We need stable funding to keep going.

Yet no matter the challenges, we will stand firm.

We will fight to protect what matters.

And we will always live by our motto: “We Extinguish to Protect!”

At a painful moment, we bid farewell to our dear comrade Mahmoud Sultan, the team’s maintenance lead, who tragically passed away in a traffic accident. Mahmoud was the heart of the team, known for his generosity, quiet strength, and reassuring smile even in the most intense situations. He was always present when it mattered most — rushing to repair equipment under fire and smoke so the mission could go on safely. He helped displaced families during war, built hiking trails in the mountains, and protected the land and its people with unwavering dedication. His spirit, kindness, and laughter left a mark on everyone he met. Mahmoud’s passing is a deep loss, but his memory will live on in every trail walked, every tree saved, and every challenge overcome by the team drawing strength from his legacy. May he rest in peace, and may his loved ones find comfort. His spirit will continue to guide our path.

Khaled Taleb is founder and leader of the Akkar Trail Forest Firefighting Team and has worked as a consultant for various UN-funded projects in Lebanon. Taleb is also an environmental representative appointed by the governor of Akkar, a trail guide, an internationally award-winning photographer, and expert in Lebanese paleontology and botany. Taleb’s discoveries include the recording of new Cretaceous amber outcrops and the documentation of rare and previously unrecorded plant species in Lebanon. His love and fascination for the rich biodiversity of Lebanon is what motivated him to establish Akkar’s firefighting team dedicated to protecting nature through forest fire response and sustainable conservation.

Support the Akkar Trail Wildland Firefighting Team on this GoFundMe page.

Photos courtesy of the Akkar Trail Wildland Firefighting Team.

Recommendations for change: the way ahead for a fire-literate and fire-adapted Europe

A prescribed burn in a maritime pine stand in central Portugal at the Malcata Nature Area in 2010. Photo by Tiago Oliveira.

By Tiago Oliveira

A new era of wildfire mitigation and prevention in the European Union has been defined by two new wide-ranging reports, with the added support of a new global agreement with similar objectives.

• A report by the European Academies Science Advisory Board presented in Brussels on May 19 calls for an integrated European Union framework for landscape fire risk governance and the prioritisation of prevention.

Changing Wildfires – Policy Options for a Fire-literate and Fire-adapted Europe

• The European Academies report followed the publication in April of a proposal by Firelogue – a coalition of research projects – for an integrated wildfire risk management strategy.

View the United Nations global fire management hub initiative

• And on June 17, G7 leaders and guests meeting in Canada signed the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter, endorsing that nations adopt a whole-of-society approach to wildland fire, focus on prevention, leverage research, and build shared capacity to mitigate and respond.

[This article is published in Wildfire magazine. Read more wildfire news and articles here.]

The European Academies report, Changing Wildfires: Policy Options for a Fire-Literate and Fire-adapted Europe, synthesises state-of-the-art fire science and argues that forest ecosystems and European citizens will be exposed soon to a growing wildfire risk. The report recommends the articulation of policies, actively managing forests, and educating and engaging communities.

Already wildfires in the European Union burn, on average, half a million hectares yearly – almost twice the size of Luxembourg. In 2025, almost 1 million hectares burned.

Worked on by 23 scientists nominated by their respective national science academies, the report highlights the complex drivers behind the surge in wildfire risk.

Amplified by climate change, the drivers tie down to rural depopulation and land use changes. As droughts and declining summer rainfall are predicted to double the fire hazard by 2100, rural abandonment of farmland and unmanaged vegetation growth have created vast landscapes of flammable biomass.

The report notes the firefighting trap or paradox – the over-reliance on fire suppression rather than fuels and land management exacerbates future fires – argues that fire suppression alone is not sufficient, and questions the efficacy of EU policies for their overwhelming focus on fire suppression and emergency response.

The report presents European political bodies with eight recommendations:

1. Invest in integrated wildfire risk reduction, including prescribed burning and fuel management.

2. Implement nature-based solutions such as grazing and native species reforestation.

3. Embrace the role of fire allowing planned burns to maintain ecological balance.

4. Invest in education and communication to increase “fire literacy” and preparedness.

5. Invest in landscape management to reduce vulnerability, design and maintain resilient landscape that reduces wildfire risks.

6. Harmonise sectoral policies across agriculture, environment, and urban development to reduce conflicts and risks.

7. Promote compact urban development to limit wildland-urban interface expansion.

8. Encourage sustainable private land management to help landowners adopt fire resilient practices.

While the Mediterranean remains Europe’s highest-risk region, the report warns that a continental fire crisis is brewing, and Alpine and Boreal regions must also prepare for a new era of fire.

“The changing regime with larger, more intense blazes is driven not only by weather, but also by structural socio-ecological shifts,” said Orsolya Valkó, co-chair of the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council’s wildfires working group, in a statement in May.

“Many new areas, such as Central Europe and rapidly warming mountainous areas, will probably be exposed to severe fire weather. This marks a fundamental shift with major consequences for environmental and public safety.”

Firelogue – the coalition of research projects – supports wider calls for an integrated European wildfire risk management strategy.

“Following the example of Portugal, we propose that the creation of a strategy should include some key elements such as the creation of an Inter-agency at the EU level, to work transversally with the various agencies and European Commission directorates (DGs) to operationalise the implementation of inter-agency articulation and coordination, to avoid overlaps and gaps,” the Firelogue report says.

“Also, several of the measures proposed in this document concern the activities of some of these agencies including, for example [Directorate-General Environment, Directorate-General Climate, Directorate General European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support]. In line with this, we also advocate the implementation of a European Wildfire Management Directive as a regulatory framework to guide wildfire risk management activities.”

Building a handtool fire line and checking its effectiveness in Northen Portugal in 2016. Photo: Tiago Oliveira
Building a handtool fire line and checking its effectiveness in Northen Portugal in 2016. Photo: Tiago Oliveira

The Kananaskis Wildfire Charter means that G7 nations –Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – in addition to guest participants Australia, Mexico, India, the Republic of Korea, and South Africa, will move to integrated fire management and high hopes expressed by the G7 for the United Nations Global Fire Management Hub initiative, which is expected to play a pivotal role in fire-era diplomacy.

For the European Union in particular, the way forward is about interoperability, incident command system-based qualifications, common procedures and operational standards, and also the use of knowledge and science to better determine expansion of fire use as a tool in sustainable forest management, nature-based solutions, and Indigenous land management practices including cultural fire risk reduction measures around communities, buildings, and Infrastructure”

To be fire-literate and fire-adapted in Europe, as recommended in the May 19 report, challenges institutions and politicians. The 2023 Landscape Fire Governance Framework, which brings together governments, businesses, academia, and members of civil society to develop and implement balanced and technically supported solutions to landscape fire management, might be helpful for European institutions and decision makers to improve cooperation among civil protection and forest and conservation agendas and organizations, assuring that the pursued objectives are tackled and best practices are adopted.

Tiago Oliveira
Tiago Oliveira

Tiago Oliveira is a PhD and forest engineer with 30 years of experience in national and international activities specialized in the topics of wildland fire risk management and governance. Oliveria was appointed by the prime minister in the aftermath of the 2017 wildfire season to lead the creation of the Integrated Rural Fire Management System in Portugal. He has been chairman of the board of the Portuguese Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management since January 2019 and is the former head of the Department of Innovation and Forestry Development (2016-2017) at The Navigator Company. Oliveria was head of forest protection, responsible for fire prevention and suppression operational programs and R&D projects, from 2008 to 2016. Oliveria is has been a member of the IAWF board since 2023.

Two medium engines from a private wildland firefighting company, holding a line during the 2015 fire season near Porto in Portugal. Photo: Tiago Oliveira
Two medium engines from a private wildland firefighting company, holding a line during the 2015 fire season near Porto in Portugal. Photo: Tiago Oliveira
Related Wildfire Today article Global wildfire cooperation agreement signed by G7 nations

The wildfire crisis: underlying barriers that impede mitigation

Photo: CALFIRE

By Jerry Williams

Difficult and dangerous wildfires can and do occur across a wide variety of fuel types, all over the globe. But many of the worst fires occur in the western United States. Nowhere in the world is firefighting capability and capacity greater, yet the impact of wildfires is becoming worse.

Despite enormous increases in funding for fire fighting, wildfires have become more destructive and more deadly since the United States government organized for wildfire protection in 1905. Civilian fatalities have not been higher since the turn of that last century. Take that in for a moment.

The convergence of uncharacteristically dense biomass, over-accumulated fuels, droughts, extreme weather, and unconstrained growth at the wildland-urban interface have brought the western United States to this crisis.

This opinion piece is dedicated to the memory of Robert (Bob) W. Mutch (1934-2024), proud smokejumper (1954, 1955), esteemed fire ecologist, friend.
This article was drawn from the keynote address, at invitation, for the Zig Zag Hotshot crew’s 50th reunion in Zig Zag, Oregon, May 9-11, 2025.
It is published in the latest edition of Wildfire Magazine.

Since 2000, more than 300 wildfires, each with reported suppression costs of $20 million or more, have burned over the 11 western states. The fires burned out of control until firefighters got some relief in weather or could exploit a break in fuels. These incidents blackened more than 25 million acres and cost more than $13 billion to suppress. As staggering as these costs were, they represented only a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars in property losses, infrastructure destruction, natural resource damages, human health impacts from smoke and other wildfire related consequences that go mostly unaccounted.

The wildfire crisis in the western United States is defined by the scale and scope of present dangers and future threats. Mega-fires have deep and long-lasting social, economic, and ecological impacts and can no longer be dismissed as aberrations; they require actions that are more far-reaching and more comprehensive than we are accustomed to thinking about.

The crisis is not so much a fire-management crisis as it is a land-management crisis that traces to the deterioration of fire-adapted ecosystems and the vulnerable condition of fire-prone landscapes, including houses. Building resilience in these ecosystems will be key to reducing wildfire severity.

“Nowhere in the world is firefighting capability greater—yet nowhere are wildfires growing more destructive.”

An open Ponderosa forest of 1897, frequently underburdened by lightning fires or tribal burning, and a changed Ponderosa pine forest circa early 1990s, where fire has been excluded. It is on these dense, dry sites that fire managers and communities have experienced some of the most dangerous, destructive and costly wildfires in the United States.
An open Ponderosa forest of 1897, frequently underburdened by lightning fires or tribal burning, and a changed Ponderosa pine forest circa early 1990s, where fire has been excluded. It is on these dense, dry sites that fire managers and communities have experienced some of the most dangerous, destructive and costly wildfires in the United States.

An open Ponderosa forest of 1897 (left), frequently underburdened by lightning fires or tribal burning, and a changed Ponderosa pine forest circa early 1990s (right), where fire has been excluded. It is on these dense, dry sites that fire managers and communities have experienced some of the most dangerous, destructive and costly wildfires in the United States.

A recent assessment that I conducted with my colleague Matt Panunto, a GIS specialist with the Bureau of Land Management, found that while many of the worst wildfires in the western United States occurred in perennially dangerous chaparral brushlands, two-thirds of the highest cost incidents were in conifer forests within the natural distribution of Ponderosa pine. A century ago, these open forests were among the most benign in terms of potential wildfire severity. Today, these same forests are choked with laddered, overabundant biomass and over-accumulated fuels. These sites are high risk because they are commonly where people and development are most concentrated in the forested areas of the intermountain western United States.

Changes in species composition, stand structure, and ecological function underpin the wildfire crisis.

The most aggressive firefighting tactics, the largest airtankers, and the most novel re-organizations cannot buck these changes or ignore the ecologies involved. The biggest challenge confronting government is not continuing to build greater, faster firefighting capacity, but instead building a mitigation workforce and reconciling the myriad regulatory requirements, fiscal rules, land management policies, social disincentives, and other factors that impede restoring resilient conditions on fire-adapted, fire-prone landscapes.

Some examples:

1. Under current environmental requirements, wildfires are treated as excepted events; their impacts are presumed to be unavoidable accidents of nature. Although man’s influence in predisposing many wildfire outcomes establishes an argument against this exception, the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), the Clean Air Act (1972), the Endangered Species Act (1974), and other regulations do not anticipate, measure, or consider wildfire impacts with respect to the intent of the laws. Consequently, today’s wildfire impacts are often imperiling the very values these laws set out to save.

If this is a crisis, governing environmental regulations need to level the playing field. Proposed mitigation treatments should be weighed against probable wildfire outcomes in the absence of those treatments. A mechanism to comprehensively compile the cumulative impacts from wildfires needs to be established as the means to measure the consequences of avoiding mitigation treatments over the long term.

2. Under current fiscal rules, wildfires are considered emergency events, funded from unlimited reserve accounts. National shared resources (aviation assets, retardant bases, smokejumpers, hotshot crews, incident management teams, tool caches, dispatch centers, fire training facilities) and other firefighting assets are funded off the top, as a priority. A total mobility concept supports the firefighting effort. Resources from anywhere in the United States (and sometimes from the military and other countries) can be brought to bear in dealing with a wildfire emergency.

On the other hand, mitigation work operates from a constrained budget, often subject to several overhead cost deductions throughout the organization and dependent on whatever local resources can be obtained. Projects requiring the sequencing of selective harvest, understory thinning, and pile burning, followed by lower intensity prescribed burning are especially difficult to budget for. Although US Forest Service researcher Kimberly Davis and her team, in a recent 30-year meta-analysis, found this approach to be the most effective in reducing wildfire severity, it is seldom attempted in the western United States. Sequenced treatments have the added benefits of improving margins of safety, reducing prescribed burn intensities, lowering smoke impacts, and reducing the risks of escape.

Now, nearly always, a wildfire is a higher priority for funding, skilled personnel, and specialized assets than a prescribed burning or other mitigation work.

If this is a crisis, federal and state government needs to fully fund restoration work at scales commensurate with the wildfire threat, even if it requires multiple entries to mechanically thin or reduce fuels ahead of prescribed burning. The agencies need to mobilize for prescribed burning opportunities and other mitigation work the same way they now mobilize for wildfire emergencies with a dedicated workforce. It can no longer be “easier”’ to fight bad fires than it is to mitigate the hazards that fuel them.

3. The US Forest Service is a functionally oriented organization that operates from a budget arranged on line items. Budgets for wildlife habitat, timber production, watershed management, fuels reduction, and other activities are allocated with an expectation for acres treated or board-foot volume outputs. There is no line-item allocation or target that measures the health and resilience of fire-adapted ecosystems. Many natural resource objectives – by design or by default – aim for or result in undisturbed conditions. Ironically, under drought conditions, managing for undisturbed conditions in deteriorated fire disturbance regimes often threatens the resource aim.

If this is a crisis, the US Forest Service needs to better align natural-resource objectives with the dynamics of fire-adapted ecosystems and instead of attempting to maximize outputs, aim to optimize outcomes in the context of fire’s ecological role. (Across long-needle pine forests in the southern United States, foresters have successfully integrated frequent, low-intensity burning to optimize several goals, including those for wildlife, timber and wildfire protection; it has been a common practice since the early 1930s.)

4. Perhaps no place challenges wildfire protection more than the wildland-urban interface. Roles and responsibilities for protection are often confused or altogether abrogated. There are few incentives for homeowners to take precautions. In many places in the western United States, insurance companies have dropped coverages because they see the risks as too great.

Protecting lives and private property is almost always the priority, the vulnerability of the wildland-urban interface is told by the property losses and fatalities that continue to climb. Increasingly, this vulnerability has the federal government prioritizing the protection of private property at the expense of public values (air quality, watersheds, critical wildlife habitat, and others). The impacts to these public values are becoming more significant but are mostly overlooked.

“The solution isn’t more suppression— it’s restoration, resilience, and the courage to change how we manage fire.”

If this is a crisis, federal, state, local governments, and homeowners need to reconcile roles and responsibilities for wildfire protection. Government needs to find incentives for private property owners to reduce the flammability potential of their properties and their communities so governments can better redeem their responsibilities for protection of public values.

The costs of mitigation are high, contentious, and not without risk, but total wildfire costs, losses, and damages are much higher and are likely to go higher still.

The wildfire crisis is a systemic problem. Aspirations to mitigate wildfire threats and restore resilience are hamstrung by regulations, fiscal rules, institutional behaviors, behaviors at the wildland urban interface, and other factors. Until these factors are comprehensively confronted and reconciled by lawmakers and policymakers at all levels of government, it is difficult to see how the wildfire crisis will ever be brought to heel.

If this is a crisis , the nation’s political leadership needs to act on the factors that stifle mitigation work. The country’s wildland fire leadership needs to help them.

If this is a crisis, the United States needs to organize, staff, and fund for the scale of mitigation work needed much like the wildfire emergency response is now organized, staffed, and funded.

As a nation, the United States is asking much of its firefighters. Wildland firefighters represent the best of a can-do spirit. But there are narrow margins that separate can-do from make-do, and make do from tragedy. It is time to stop making do, get serious about mitigation, and do wildfire protection right.

To think the United States can meet greater wildfire threats with greater suppression force seems to miss the mark. In 1991, wildland fire researchers Stephen Arno and James Brown introduced the wildfire paradox; it holds that the better we get at putting fires out during moderate years, the worse wildfires become in extreme years. On the mitigation side, there is a corollary: The less we use prescribed fire and other mitigation work when we can, the harder it is to put fires out when we have to. Think Sun Tzu, not Clausewitz, where the least costly, least dangerous, most sustainable wildfire protection approach fights on favorable terms or avoids having to fight at all.

More in Wildfire magazine

Jerry Williams’ career in the United States Forest Service (1969-2005) spanned the transition between the fire control model and the fire management concept. Williams began as a firefighter and smokejumper; he received his career appointment as a supervisory smokejumper. Following completion of his master’s degree in forest fire science (University of Washington, 1979), Williams went on to lead fire management programs at the district, forest, regional, and Washington-office levels. Williams worked toward bringing an ecological basis to fire management policies and programs. Williams retired from the senior executive service as the Forest Service national director of fire and aviation management.