• Biologist
• Steering Committee
• Mentor Application
• Mentee Application
• Letter
• Charter

Fire Mentoring Program

Fire Mentoring Program

The USFWS Fire Mentoring Program was designed to enhance fire employee development and performance by providing easily accessible, high quality career guidance to service employees. Mentor’s and mentee’s are paired to help meet individual goals and objectives of the mentee. This program provides individuals with additional means to gather skills and abilities to become high quality service employee and increases the skills.

The program is based for two years beginning with a face-to-face meeting of the pair. The individuals set ground rules and prepare goals and objectives for the relationship in the first meeting. Contact after the initial meeting can be either over the phone, Internet, or in person depending on the location of the individuals involved.

This program is designed to develop high quality individuals within the service and to promote high levels of personnel growth and development of our own employees.

FWS Fire Management Mentoring Announcement

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”

Thomas Henry Huxley, a great wildlife biologist during the late 19th century and supporter of Charles Darwin.

Though the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Fire Management Mentoring Program may only be a single rung in your career ladder, we believe it to be, for many, the first significant step in defining the height in which your career will reach. Every ladder needs solid support to prevent you from falling. The higher you wish to climb, the more support you need. A formal mentor can provide the necessary stabilization allowing you to take that next step up.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages public land in every U.S. state and territory, including 547 national wildlife refuges and 69 national fish hatcheries.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages 75 million burnable acres, including 24 million acres of forest/brushland and 4 million acres of grassland.

More than 50% of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands in the continental U.S. (and more than 90% in Alaska) include fire-adapted ecosystems with vegetation dependent on periodic fire.

An average of 500 wildfires burn 260,000 acres each year on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands. The Service also burns about 300,000 acres a year using prescribed fire.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service annual fire program budget is approximately $80 million.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employs more than 530 permanent fire professionals, along with 270 seasonal and temporary fire employees during fire season.

More than 3,000 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees are qualified to assist with wildland fire management on an interagency basis.

The U.S. Fish and Wildland Service Fire Management Program protects more than 700 communities and wildland-urban interface areas.

Historically, an acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day. This measures 90% of a football field. There are 640 acres in a square mile.

More than 90% of the hazardous fuels reduction by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is completed using prescribed fire.