Planning

The Northwest Forest Plan covers 24.5 million acres of federally managed lands in California, Oregon, and Washington. It was established in 1994 to address threats to threatened and endangered species while also contributing to social and economic sustainability in the region. After nearly 30 years, the Northwest Forest Plan needs to be updated to accommodate changed ecological and social conditions. 

Learn More & Get Involved

With our National Forests in a state of emergency, the Six Rivers National Forest is taking action to address wildfire risk as well as the decline in forest health and resilience that is being exacerbated by a changing climate. The authorization of the Six Rivers Hazardous Fuels and Fire Management Project (Fire & Fuels Project) in 2023 allowed us to conduct a series of prescribed fire and fuels management treatments across the entire Forest, approximately 1.17 million acres, with ongoing tribal and community engagement and participation in the implementation process.

Motivated by urgent calls for action by tribes and communities to address hazardous fuels, we launched public engagement forums beginning in 2019. The objective was to create a platform for the Forest Service to collaborate with other land managers and cultural practitioners across borders to modernize fire management through the Fire & Fuels Project. 

To accomplish this, the Forest applied a condition-based management (CBM) approach. CBM provides flexibility to better respond to the dynamic processes of ecosystems over time, so treatments occur in the right place and right time using the right treatment tools to achieve desired conditions before and after wildfire events. In addition, this approach aims to reduce unnecessary procedural burdens and delays.

The project’s design also aims to live in balance with our natural environment to benefit wildlife, fisheries, soil, and watershed resources, tribal values, and community wildfire protection interests, rather than focusing on single resource. Ultimately, the mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of our forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

Project Milestones

Local Climate Vulnerability

Both forest ecosystem integrity and biodiversity play a key role in capturing and storing vast amounts of carbon, which help reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Projected changes in temperature, precipitation, climatic water deficit, and snowpack associated with climate change all have the potential to further compromise the integrity of plant communities and their ability to recover after severe disturbances. 

Interannual variability is expected to increase, meaning there will be more years that are either very wet or very dry. These projected climatic changes are expected to impact the mixed conifer, evergreen, and ponderosa pine forests on the Six Rivers by reducing tree growth, particularly at the southern edges of species' ranges, on southern slopes, and during drought years-which are expected to become more frequent and severe in future. Impacts on these areas include increased risk of large-scale forest die-offs following drought events; increased vulnerability to disease and insect outbreaks; increased wildfire size and severity, and changes in post-disturbance dynamics, including potential shifts in species composition or type conversion (e.g., from mixed conifer forest to hardwood-dominated systems). 

The Fire & Fuels Project embraces the goals of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (Cohesive Strategy) by applying fuels reduction coupled with beneficial prescribed fire to restore fire as a natural process, necessary for the health and maintenance of many ecosystems. Across the Six Rivers NF, twentieth-century fire exclusion and historic wide-spread logging of large, old, fire-tolerant trees have dramatically altered forest successional conditions and fire regimes. Climate-driven changes to vegetation, fire, and other change mechanisms (e.g., insects and disease) are rapidly changing habitat and species distributions, as well as terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem processes. Increases in greenhouse gases and temperature, as well as altered precipitation and disturbance regimes (e.g., fire, insects, pathogens, and windstorms), are expected to have profound effects on biodiversity, socioeconomics, and the delivery of ecosystem services over the next century).

Reviving Ancient Traditions

Ecosystems within the project area landscape provide and support a broad range of ecocultural resources important to tribes including foods, medicine, materials, and non-material values. Tribal communities continue to foster longstanding customary relationships with natural resources and are impacted by land management of culturally significant sites and resources. Tribes hold deep connections to ancestral lands managed by the Forest Service and rely on effective forest management of tribal resources to maintain those connections. The ability of all tribes to obtain ecocultural resources from public lands in the desired quality and quantity has been compromised due to social, climate, and biophysical factors. The combination of fire exclusion and lack of tribal stewardship have resulted in a decline in many cultural species, partly due to unchecked growth of competing native vegetation, and encroachment of non-native vegetation (i.e., invasive plants).

Tribal economies have long been linked directly to the health and abundance provided by human-natural systems. Indigenous communities typically could not generate excess for trade or specialty items, such as ceremonial regalia, without first fulfilling basic and local needs. As tribes adapt and transition into a climate-change era, there is an opportunity to plan for tribal economic futures that restore former responsibilities and values, beginning with restoring ecological health as a key element of economic sustainability.

Applying Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

Under the Fire & Fuels Project, the application of beneficial prescribed fire would begin to reverse fire exclusion and the encroachment of fire-sensitive trees impacts to culturally significant grassland- and woodland-associated high-value species, causing a decline in culturally important ecosystems. By design and application, cultural burning is likely to result in patchier burns to promote a fine-grained mosaic of unburned, low, and moderate effects, rather than creating continuous areas of constant burn severity. There are also often cultural preferences for fall burning to avoid undesirable effects on animals, including denning mammals and nesting birds, which can further mitigate the effects of this practice. The high frequency of cultural burning is important to promote culturally important understory plants and services including huckleberry production, hazel growth for nuts and basketry, and other plants used for basketry materials including willow and beargrass. Cultural burning has long been used to reduce the incidence of filbert weevils and worms that infest nuts harvested by Native Americans, also consumed by wildlife. These practices can also deter encroachment by conifers and other vegetation in ways that support rare plants, including lilies.

As phased treatments are implemented over time, along with other forest projects, opportunities for tribal-initiated cultural burning would increase, access to gathering places would improve, and the protection of cultural resources from high-severity wildfire would be enhanced. The Fire & Fuels Project would contribute to revitalizing Traditional Ecological Knowledge through inter-generational projects that build upon a cumulative wealth of knowledge, repeated practice, and long-standing beliefs that can be passed on orally and learning from experience. Over time, the Fire & Fuels Project would set the stage for traditional Indigenous-cultural burning practices across ancestral lands that would otherwise be unsafe due to widespread, high fuel concentrations.

Project Documents

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