• Wildland Urban Interface

Living With Fire

Living With Fire

The majority of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service lands have evolved with fire. The wildlife and plants supported by these forests, grasslands, wetlands, and deserts depend on fire for their survival. Lack of periodic fire in these wildlands (due to fire suppression or fragmentation of landscapes from human development) has increased the risk of catastrophic wildfire.

The dangers of excluding natural fire include large and damaging fires resulting from the accumulation of flammable vegetation above historic levels; loss of life or serious injury to firefighters and the public; property loss and damage; adverse health effects and impaired visibility from intense or extended periods of unmanageable smoke; loss of plant and animal species and their habitats; and damage to soils, watersheds and water quality.

The Service has been using prescribed fire safely, cost-effectively, and regularly on a landscape-scale since the 1930s. This practice has resulted in Service lands being in relatively healthy ecological condition overall with a low risk of catastrophic fire.

Service biologists and fire managers recognize that there is no ecological equivalent to fire; no other fuels treatment method or natural disturbance yields the identical or complete range of benefits that result from the occurrence of wildland fire within ecosystems that have evolved with fire.

The Service's fire management program benefits the environment and society in many ways including keeping firefighters and the public safe, reducing the effects of smoke produced by unwanted fire, reducing damage to natural resources and private property from wildfire, and protecting and sustaining plants and animals that depend on fire.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages public land in every U.S. state and territory, including 550 national wildlife refuges and 70 national fish hatcheries.

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

More than 80% 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 300,000 acres each year on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands. The Service also burns more than 350,000 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 500 permanent fire professionals, along with 200 seasonal and temporary fire employees during fire season.

More than 2,000 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.