Fire Policy
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Managed burning of forests can provide benefits to society including mitigated wildfire risk, improved habitat, and more. However, adverse outcomes of escaped fire or smoke pose risks. I reviewed the evolution of the law regulating forest management burns, explored the current legal architecture, and analyzed the economic incentives for involved actors, in order to identify policy options. Liability standards through most of the twentieth century increasingly placed risk burden on landowners and burners, but increased recognition of the benefits of burns led many States to reverse this trend and limit the liability for a subset of qualified burns. Still, there is broad uncertainty about the liability, which can lead to increased costs for all sides. In view of the societal benefits of burning, States may consider how best to provide legal clarity, how to balance associated risks, and where to place the liability burden.
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This paper uses qualitative data from a long-term ethnographic research project. Data include detailed fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews, and agency documents, which were systematically coded and thematically analyzed. In addition to the triggering effects of fatality incidents and agency initiatives to change organizational culture, external factors also directly impact the development of firefighter safety policies and practices. These include sociodemographic, material, political, and social-environmental factors. Identifying and understanding the influence of multi-scalar external factors on firefighter safety is essential to improving safety outcomes and reducing firefighters’ exposure to hazards.
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Respondents reported that while flexible federal policy and interagency guidance was important, suitable landscape conditions, organizational capacity, support from national and regional leadership, updated management plans, increased monitoring capacity, and adequate performance measures also influence the decision to use OTFS strategies.
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Enactment of the Clean Air Act (CAA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), three of the primary federal environmental laws, all coincided with the height of fire suppression and exclusion in the United States. These laws fail to acknowledge or account for the importance of fire in many fire-adapted and fire-dependent ecosystems, particularly in the American west, or the imperative for fire restoration to improve resiliency and reduce wildfire risk as identified by western science and Indigenous knowledge. We review the statutory and regulatory provisions of these federal laws to identify how the existing policy framework misaligns with the unique role of fire in ecosystems and with Tribal sovereignty, identify specific barriers and disincentives to beneficial fire use, and propose specific policy reforms.
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In response to this event, Rocky Mountain Research Station’s (RMRS) fire management specialist Brad Pietruszka and colleagues wanted to understand how often fires like the Tamarack Fire occur, the driving factors behind the initial decisions in those fires, and, in turn, how they may feed the “let burn” misperception. With perspective as a fire manager, Pietruszka suspected a communication failure; and as a researcher, he turned to empirical research to investigate this question. “We wanted to see how often this type of outcome has occurred to understand what may be informing the ‘let burn’ dialogue,” Pietruszka says.
Webinar recording (1:04:22).
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The article analyses current wildfire policies in fire-prone countries, highlighting regional variations and the need for an integrated management strategy. It offers country-specific recommendations based on the participants viewpoints, for coordinated efforts to mitigate wildfire risks and promote sustainable forest management.
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Initial strategies were driven by resource objectives for only six of the 32 wildfires; firefighter hazard mitigation was the primary driver of all others. No fire exhibited every characteristic of the Tamarack Fire. Analog fires accounted for a small percent (3.4%) of large (> 121 ha) USFS lightning-caused ignitions. These fires were responsible for 61.6% of structures destroyed and 25.8% of total personnel commitments of large lightning-caused USFS fires.
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The Yellowstone fires of 1988 are considered an early fire event signaling the rise of the wildfire crisis we are experiencing today. After building for decades, the crisis erupted in the 2000s as wildfires destroyed lives, homes, and communities on a rising scale. The national response, though initially swift, has not kept pace with the growing impact of catastrophic wildfires. In January 2022, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a 10-year strategy for confronting the wildfire crisis in the United States (Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests).
At the core of the strategy is ramping up fuel and forest health treatments across land ownerships to match the scale of wildfire risk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and the wildland fire community have laid the foundation for collaboration across landscapes to reduce wildfire risk. Recent influxes in funding, including new funding authorities in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, are helping fuel and forest health projects hit the ground on priority landscapes and high risk “firesheds.”
For decades the Rocky Mountain Research Station has focused on fire science studying topics relevant to wildfire hazard, risk, behavior, and ecology, and providing knowledge support to land managers and a myriad of partners. The expertise and tools developed over decades by RMRS is now central to providing a scientific basis to addressing the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. This series of hour-long seminars took place January 12 – March 23, 2023, to share the individual contributions of RMRS scientists to the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.
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Our systematic review returned a sample of 222 publications that met these criteria, with an increase in wilderness fire science over time. Studies largely occurred in the USA and were concentrated in a relatively small number of protected areas, particularly in the Northern Rocky Mountains. As a result, this sample of wilderness fire science is highly skewed toward areas of temperate mixed-conifer forests and historical mixed-severity fire regimes. Common principal subjects of publications included fire effects (44%), wilderness fire management (18%), or fire regimes (17%), and studies tended to focus on vegetation, disturbance, or wilderness management as response variables.