Prescribed Burning

The Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act is fairly simple: it directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study obstacles to conducting wildfire mitigation projects on land with multiple owners or jurisdictions. Within two years, the GAO is expected to share its report and recommendations.

One of the studies found that over seven recent years, U.S. Forest Service projects helped communities avoid $2.8 billion in fire-related harm.

When wildland firefighters are on prescribed fires, they’re breathing the same smoke and facing many of the same hazards found on wildfires, but they don’t get the same hazard pay. That could soon change.

Local elected officials across the region are worried that changes in federal policy are putting their communities at risk from wildfire. But public land agencies say some of the concerns are overstated.

As wildfires get more intense, there are questions about how effective prescribed fire and other fuel treatments can be. New research suggests that they can still have real impacts.

A group of mostly Western U.S. Senators is demanding answers on why the U.S. Forest Service has fallen behind on efforts to reduce hazardous wildfire fuels. The 12 senators – all Democrats – are from Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and other wildfire-impacted states.

Data analyzed by the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters shows that prescribed fires and other hazardous fuel reduction efforts have fallen by nearly 40% across the West this year.

Wildfires have grown substantially in size in recent decades, but they’re also burning much more intensely, with high severity areas growing much faster than fires overall. New research projects additional significant jumps in the scale of wildfires that kill most trees unless major management measures - like prescribed fire - are carried out.

Prescribed burns are widely recognized as an effective wildfire mitigation tool. Now, using satellite imagery, land management records and fire emissions data, a team of researchers has put hard numbers to those impacts.

The Forest Service's new chief recently published a letter that called for wildfires to be suppressed "as swiftly as possible." That may sound prudent to many, but it raised eyebrows among some who study fire policy. They worried that it may signal a return to aggressive suppression that has been linked to growing wildfire severity.