Fire Management Handbook

FWS Fire Management Handbook

The FWS Fire Management Handbook is a program reference guide that documents the standards for operational procedures and practices for fire management activities in the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. These standards and practices are based on current Service, Departmental, and Interagency policy, and are intended to provide program guidance to ensure safe, efficient, and effective wildland fire operations.

The Fire Management Handbook is formatted similarly to the Redbook which should be familiar to all involved in fire management. To minimize duplication, the Fire Management Handbook references, instead of restating, supplemental guidance in the Redbook and other policy and guidance documents.

Individual chapter links are portable document format files (pdf) and requires the Acrobat Reader plug-in. A complete portable document format version of the Fire Management Handbook is available for viewing on line, downloading for viewing off line and printing. Each chapter can also be viewed on line, printed, or downloaded and saved for viewing off line using the Acrobat Reader save and print functions.

Links from pdf files to pdf files using Microsoft Internet Explorer may cause an ActiveX security error. Installing and using Firefox or a non-Microsoft browser is recommended.

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.