As most of you have likely heard, escaped prescribed fires this spring have drawn national attention. While I understand that escapes are rare, it is imperative that we recognize changed conditions on the ground. Effects of climate change and mega-droughts in many parts of the country are causing both wildfires and prescribed fires to behave in ways we have never seen before, a reality that will shape how we adapt as an organization. Our ability and commitment to change when deemed necessary is fundamental as a learning organization.

It is why I decided on May 20th to pause all of our prescribed fire activities, pending a 90-day program review, to conclude at the end of August. I considered other options to allow prescribed burning to continue in some parts of the country. Ultimately, I decided a national pause was the best way to ensure that as an entire agency, our prescribed burn program is anchored in the most contemporary science, policies, practices and decision-making processes.

Make no mistake: I am firmly committed to our prescribed fire program and to the work that all of you do in the field to care for the nation’s forests and grasslands. That’s why we launched a 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy and committed to increasing fuels and forest health treatments by up to four times current treatment levels to match the actual scale of the wildfire risk. A century of scientific data has shown that strategically placed prescribed fire and mechanical treatments are essential to reducing forest fuels. They change fire behavior and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. This temporary cease in prescribed burning will have minimal impact on these objectives over time, because we conduct more than 90% of our prescribed burning outside of June, July and August. Pausing now to assess and make necessary adjustments will make our work better and safer in the long run.

The core purpose of this review is not to make it harder to conduct prescribed burning. The purpose is to ensure you have the resources, tools and support you need to carry out the important work we need to do, and to strengthen public confidence and understanding in our prescribed fire activities. We must have both to combat the wildfire crisis and better protect communities, critical infrastructure, and amazing landscapes and ecosystems.

We have formed an interagency team to review our prescribed fire program, from its foundational science to on-the-ground implementation. Lessons learned from the review and any resulting program improvements will be in place before we resume prescribed burning after the 90-day period.

The Prescribed Fire Review Team is led by Steve Lohr, director of Renewable Resources for the Rocky Mountain Region, and Bill Avey, a retired forest supervisor and acting national director for Fire and Aviation Management. Experts from across the wildland fire and research communities have joined the team, including current and former Forest Service employees, state foresters and representatives from Tribes, nongovernmental organizations and the U.S. Department of the Interior. The team includes researchers in such fields as climate science, meteorology, social science, predictive services and wildland fire science. Practitioners on the team include fire management officers, fuels management specialists, burn bosses, private practitioners and Tribal representatives for their current and traditional ecological knowledge about the use of fire.

The team will use information from past escaped prescribed burn reviews, the best available science, on-the-ground experience and other sources to conduct a thorough review  of how conditions have changed on the ground. They have identified four key areas to examine how various issues affect our prescribed fire activities, including: (1) agency culture; (2) climate change; (3) tactics, policies and training; and (4) agency capacity. Subteams will investigate key questions in each area. For example:

• Does our prescribed fire program incorporate the most current research on climate change?
• Do we use our climate models to add to the expertise of decision-makers on the ground?
• What in our burn plans might need to change?
• Do we have access to accurate weather forecasts?
• Do we have enough personnel for the scale of prescribed fire needed to match the scale of wildfire risk across the landscape?
• Do our existing policies and authorities affect our ability to make sound decisions on the ground?

Based on the answers to such questions, the team will identify immediate actions for safely lifting the prescribed fire pause as well as actions for structuring a longer-term comprehensive review of the program.

The wildland fire community was in a similar place in 2000 when an escaped prescribed fire resulted in the Cerro Grande Fire in New Mexico. Following the incident, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior conducted a similar wildland fire management policy and program review. The review helped improve our policies and practices. It helped us safely and effectively incorporate wildland fire “as an essential ecological process and natural change agent” into our fuels and forest health treatments for sustaining and restoring fire-adapted landscapes.

I look forward to similar improvements resulting from this review, and I am confident we will be better together for it as an agency into the future.

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