| Protection from Fire |
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Program Background and Purpose
The Protection From Fire Program's main purpose is to protect 15.8 million acres (24,900 square miles) of private and public forestland from fire. The acreage protected includes 3.5 million acres of ´wildland-urban interface´, which are forest lands with residences and other structures within the reach of wildfire in that area. This is done through a complete and coordinated system of fire prevention, suppression and fuels management.
The goal of the program is to create and use environmentally sound and economically efficient strategies which minimize the total cost to protect Oregon´s timber and other forest values from wildfire while also minimizing wildfire damage to protected resources.
Specific objectives of the program are to:
- Ensure that landowners will continue to invest in forestry in the state, knowing that their lands have effective and reasonable cost protection from fire. The total "cost plus loss" resulting from wildfire in terms of suppression costs and damage to timber and forest values is held to minimum levels.
- Provide effective protection from fire to other forest values, such as water and watersheds, fisheries, wildlife, recreation, aesthetics, soil productivity and soil stability.
- Provide a cost effective system of fire protection that is well coordinated with local fire districts across the state and with federal and tribal wildland fire protection agencies.
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- Effectively manage high-cost fire suppression resources.
- Educate forest landowners and forest homeowners about the value of fire hazard and risk reduction measures and take positive action to minimize the threat.
- Maintain air quality through the administration of the Smoke Management Plan which regulates prescribed burning on private, federal, and state & local government forestland in Oregon.
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Fire Program staff and roles may be found here.
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