Fire
Wildfire & Safety
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Bitterroot National Forest Wildland Fire Management
The Bitterroot National Forest consists of three Ranger Districts (Stevensville, Darby/Sula, and West Fork) covering 1.6 million acres in southwest Montana and Idaho. Fifty percent of the Forest is designated wilderness, which is part of the largest expanse of continuous, pristine wilderness in the lower 48 states. This includes portions of the Selway-Bitterroot, Frank Church, River of No Return and the Anaconda Pintler. Another 25 percent of the Forest is inventoried as roadless.
Wildfire safety is critical to protecting both natural ecosystems and communities. The Forest Service plays a pivotal role in helping communities prepare for catastrophic wildfire, implementing fire prevention strategies, and responding effectively to wildfire emergencies to safeguard lives, property, and natural resources.
Community and firefighter safety is always recognized as the priority for fire management activities. Natural disturbance processes are recognized and accepted as essential to the health of ecological communities at various spatial scales. Life, investments, and valuable resources are protected using the full range of responses to wildland fire.
The Forest Service and its federal interagency partners, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Montana Department of Natural Resources & Conservation (DNRC), and County Fire Wardens, have entered into Fire Protection Agreements to provide the most efficient response to wildland fires. The FS and DNRC both protect federal, state, and private lands, while the counties protect primarily private lands and some scattered state lands.
The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy has three key components: Resilient Landscapes, Fire Adapted Communities, and Safe and Effective Wildfire Response. Read more on the U.S. Forest Service Wildland Fire page to learn more about these components.
Fuels Management
Treatments & Prescribed Fire
Because of the 100 plus years of successful wildfire suppression, the forests have largely grown to unnatural and unhealthy stand densities, producing higher intensity wildfires.
Fuels treatments on the Bitterroot National Forest are designed to return the forest to the Natural Range of Variability (NRV) resulting in: NRV defined - The natural range of variability is typically defined by the period 100-200 years before European settlement and is also surmised from knowledge of natural disturbance regimes. Natural range of variability is often used to describe disturbance processes, and the ecosystem variability that these disturbances create.
- Reduced wildfire intensity with the occurrence of wildfire.
- Fires in the Wildland Urban Interface threaten private land and improvements. Reduced wildfire intensity provides for increased probability of success in the initial attack phase.
- When wildfires exceed initial attack capability, fuel treatments would hopefully increase the resilience of forested landscapes, reducing the probability of stand replacement wildfire.
To do this, Fuels Management uses many tools. One such tool is using prescribed fire.
The 2025 proposed Spring prescribed burn treatment plan [ArcGIS interactive map]