Prescribed Burns

Prescribed burns are fires that are intentionally set in a controlled manner in accordance with specified weather limitations, laws, policies, and regulations. Prescribed burns are used by management teams with fire expertise to restore health to fire-dependent ecosystems. They are also used to reduce fuel loads to prevent ecosystem and community damage from catastrophic wildfires (USFS 2016, NWCG 2023). Cultural burning has been used by Indigenous people in the United States from time immemorial (Lake 2021). As a result of excessive fire suppression starting in the late 1880s, many ecosystems that relied on fire have been deprived of regular burning crucial to maintaining their ecosystem health. A primary goal of prescribed burning is to bring the fire-adapted ecosystem back to a fire regime consistent with the historical regime (Greco 2018). The Joint Fire Science Program defines a fire regime as “the general temporal and spatial patterns of fire behavior and effects within a particular vegetation type or ecosystem” (Sommers et al. 2019). Prescribed fire as a fuel treatment alongside forest thinning is an effective approach to reducing catastrophic wildfires.