Putting fire on the ground
Fire personnel monitor the Crystal Reservoir prescribed fire near Colorado Springs, Colorado, on May 16, 2025. (Forest Service photo by Josh Cowden)
In places like the Pike-San Isabel National Forests across the country, fire has shaped the land for thousands of years. Many forests depend on…
#PrescribedFire, #Fire, #ControlledBurn, #FirePrevention, #WildfirePrevention, #WildfireRiskReduction, #PikeNationalForest
Post-wildfire restoration in the 2018 Camp Fire area on the Plumas National Forest
Editor’s note: Across the West, land managers are working together to accomplish what they cannot do alone — to restore massive areas affected by past wildfire while also strategically planning how to best suppress the next.Forest Service firefighter James Lico, and Julia Sidman, a forestry program manager for the Butte County Resource Conservation District talk about the work that's needed to…
#Campfire, #PrescribedFire, #ControlledBurn, #PileBurning, #Wildfire, #WildfireRiskReduction, #WildfireCrisis, #Fire, #PlumasNationalForest
Prescribed fire boosts community safety & forest health
USDA Forest Service’s Michael Moranda uses a drip torch to light an underbrush fire during a prescribed fire operation in the Weaverville Community Forest. (USDA Forest Service photo by Bob Doucette)
On the lower slopes of Jackass Ridge, smoke wafted through an oak woodland canopy, its…
#PrescribedFire, #Fire, #Wildfire, #ControlledBurn, #Safety, #Firefighters, #WildlandFire
A “typical” day as a burn boss (if there is one)
Prescribed Fire Burn Boss Cory Carlson discusses the plan for the Goldwater Prescribed Fire Project with Prescott National Forest Hotshot crew members. (USDA Forest Service photo by Ansgar Mitchell)
It’s 8 a.m.Cory Carlson is onsite and ready to start his workday as a district fire management…
#PrescribedFire, #ControlledBurn, #Firefighters, #WildlandFirefighting, #WildfirePrevention
Valentine Fire restores forest and community
Aerial fire ignitions conducted during the Valentine Fire. Spheres, about the size of ping-pong balls, filled with an incendiary cocktail of potassium permanganate activated by ethylene glycol, were dropped by firefighters to reduce the fuels available to the main body of the Valentine Fire. (USDA Forest Service photo by Danny Fairchild)
Smoke rising from a forest is ominous. Often it is the…
#WildlandFirefighting, #LandManagement, #ControlledBurn, #Arizona
Many hands tippin’ torches
On several occasions, precipitation pushed the Stanislaus landscape prescribed fire operation outside prescription. Crews turned to prep work within planned burn units. (USDA Forest Service Photo by Deanna Younger)
For a month in early summer 2023, firefighters, caterers, medics and other…