Fire
Fire Management on the Huron-Manistee National Forests
Since the beginning of time, fires have burned in the forest, playing a vital role in keeping the land healthy. Fire reduces dead vegetation, replenishes nutrients in the soil, stimulates new growth, and maintains biological diversity. Without fire, our forests become overcrowded and vulnerable to attacks by insects and disease.
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide safe, efficient and economical fire management while sustaining, protecting and restoring ecosystems and cultural resources.
The Huron-Manistee National Forests (HMNF) has a diverse Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) program which is strongly committed to the management of all aspects of wildland fire operations. In addition to initial and extended attack of wildland fires, this includes planning, fuels management, prescribed burning, prevention, suppression, and using state-of-art tools and technology.
The HMNF FAM stands behind the agency's top priority to maintain and improve the health, diversity, and productivity of forest ecosystems for the enjoyment of current and future generations by reducing hazardous fuels, improving forest health, and returning fire to our ecosystem in a deliberate and dedicated manner.
The HMNF FAM program maintains strong relationships with collaborators and partners, including international, federal, tribal, state, and local agencies. In addition, FAM personnel work with all resource areas—biology, archaeology, timber, wildlife, lands and minerals, and range–to address the many challenges that come with managing wildland fire and fuels in a fire-adapted ecosystem.
Wildfire and Initial Attack
More than 73,000 wildfires burn an average of about 7 million acres of private, state and federal land in the U.S. each year. Annually, the HMNF responds to an average of 120 wildfires.
Most all wildfires the HMNF respond to are human-caused wildfires from debris burning and abandoned campfires to fireworks and powerlines. Less than one percent are caused from lightning.
Over the last few decades, the wildland fire management environment has profoundly changed. Longer fire seasons, bigger fires and more acres burned on average each year, more extreme fire behavior, and wildfire suppression operations in the wildland urban interface (WUI) have become the norm.
To address these challenges, the Forest Service and its other federal, tribal, state, and local partners have developed and are implementing a National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy that has three key components: Resilient Landscapes, Fire Adapted Communities, and Safe and Effective Wildfire Response.