Under current policy, fire managers may use natural ignitions (i.e., lightning) to allow fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, while meeting objectives for firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection as allowed by an existing, approved land or resource management plan that articulates strategies and objectives to meet specified natural resource objectives (i.e., forest plan for National Forest System lands, area management plans for Bureau of Land Management). This strategy has gone by many terms such as, “managed wildfire,” “wildfire managed for resource objective or benefit,” or “other than full suppression fire.” Recently, wildfire managed for resource benefit has also been referred to as part of a broader strategy to “enable beneficial wildfire,” which also includes prescribed fire and cultural burning, by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.
Over the past few years, the Ecological Restoration Institute and other Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) have worked with numerous partners to explore different facets of this topic. Building from ERI’s extensive body of ecological research on the topic, recent efforts have focused on distilling the state of knowledge on managed wildfire and providing recommendations for using managed wildfire as part of a proactive strategy to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and improve the health of forested systems and communities. This has included the following outputs:
- In 2023, the ERI produced a special report, in partnership with the Forest Stewards Guild and Southwest Fire Science Consortium, that provided a research synthesis and overview of managed wildfire.
- Also in 2023, the ERI produced a white paper titled, “The Evolution of Wildfire Policy Governing Management of Natural Ignitions” that provides a policy analysis and overview of the current state of policy affecting management of natural ignitions. A fact sheet is also available.
- Lastly, SWERI produced a short briefing paper synthesizing much of this work, which was provided to Congress as part of an independent analysis of managed wildfire. This briefing paper includes several recommendations, including identifying consistent terminology, framing all responses to fires with a risk-informed, strategic approach, increasing leadership support and incentives, and using risk-informed, science-based decision support systems.