Report

State, federal, tribal, and local government and non-profit partners in Washington have identified that prescribed fire – fire set by trained practitioners, under specific fuel, weather, and topographic conditions to simulate natural processes – is a necessary tool to improve the health of Washington’s forest lands and natural habitats for plants and animals, as well as a tool to reduce the ris

The National Association of State Foresters (NASF) and the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils (CPFC) worked collaboratively to produce the 2020 National Prescribed Fire Use Report. Since 2011, the two organizations have partnered to prepare triennial reports (in 2012, 2015, and 2018) on prescribed fire activity, state-level programs, and barriers to prescribed fire implementation.

This report focuses on a critical aspect of working towardscommunity fire adaptation: analyzing effective land use policy and regulatory solutions in thewildland-urban interface (WUI). The WUI is any area where the built and natural environmentscreate a set of conditions that allow for the ignition and continued spread of wildfire.

The USGS Wildland Fire Science Strategic Plan (hereafter, Strategic Plan) was developed by USGS fire scientists and executive leadership, and was informed by discussions with external stakeholders.

In 2019, Colorado State University entered into achallenge cost-share agreement with USFS Stateand Private Forestry to conduct independent researchon the implementation and developmentof Shared Stewardship efforts.

With exposure to wildland fire smoke projectedto further increase (Barbero et al. 2015) there is aclear need for efforts to better mitigate or adapt tosmoke impacts in high-risk areas. Such efforts relyon an understanding of how people perceive, planfor, and respond to smoke.

Wildfires were a frequent source of dis-turbance in forests of the Western United States prior to Euro-American settle-ment. Following a series of catastrophic wildfires in the Northern Rockies in 1910, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a broad wildfire suppression policy that has resulted in forests thick with small trees.

The NWCG Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed Fire contains information on prescribed fire smoke management techniques, air quality regulations, smoke monitoring, modeling, communication, public perception of prescribed fire and smoke, climate change, practical meteorological approaches, and smoke tools.

Prescribed burning is an effective method to reduce hazardous fuels and restore ecological conditions across a variety of ecosystems. Twenty-one states have laws or policies that direct state agencies to oversee formal training programs to certify individuals in safe burning techniques. Fifteen of these states have active certified prescribed burn manager programs (CPBM).

Because wildfires don’t stop at ownership boundaries, managers from governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Northern Colorado are taking steps to pro-actively “co-manage” wildfire risk through the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative (NCFC).