The federal wildland fire agencies have struggled for decades to come up with a good label for fires that are not fully suppressed but are herded around in order to allow them to replicate how fires burned before humans intervened, to the extent possible after considering and mitigating numerous risk factors.

In the 1970s they were called “Let Burn” fires. That sounded too much like land managers ignored them and let them run amok. Later “Prescribed Natural Fires” and “Natural Wildland Fires” came into vogue. After the 1988 fires that burned a large portion of Yellowstone National Park, descriptions longer than two words appeared, and we saw terms like “Fires Managed for Resource Benefit”. A few others were thrown around over the next 20 years, but what we’re seeing often now is “Managed Fire”. While it is short (which is important) it does not accurately differentiate a “Managed Fire” from other fires… wildfires. All large fires are managed — by Incident MANAGEMENT Teams, for Pete’s sake. So how is the public supposed to know that a “Managed Fire” is different from one that is aggressively managed but fully suppressed?

I think we should resurrect the term “Prescribed Natural Fires”. Of course that would restrict them to fires caused by lightning or volcanoes.

What are your thoughts? What other names have been used, and what should we call them now?