The U.S. government is resuming prescribed burning of National Forest lands across the nation to clear brush and small trees after a three-month pause to review and respond to climate change and risks of runaway wildfires.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said newly prescribed burns will require same-day authorization to keep pace with weather and ground conditions. – The U.S. Forest Service is resuming its practice of intentionally lighting fires to clear brush and small trees from forested areas nationwide after a three-month hiatus to review the risks of runaway wildfires under increasingly severe climate conditions, the agency announced Thursday.
He said the Forest Service will adopt mandatory tactics, taken from an in-depth review and public consultation process, that include a more robust scientific analysis of burn plans and a final on-site evaluation of the potential for human error linked to fatigue or inexperience.Permission to light fires and other communications will be standardized to avoid missteps, amid efforts to learn from the small share of prescribed fires that escape control.
“Our climate is changing and we have the science to back that up,” Moore said. “We need to increase the amount of work that we’re doing by up to four times. We do feel that if we want to make a difference on that landscape, between forest thinning and prescribed burning, we really need to ramp it up. And we need to do it in a way that is safe, in a way that really instills public trust.
Owen Burney, director of the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center at New Mexico State University, said the Forest Service could instill greater trust in prescribed burns with independent oversight from outside the agency — not just Forest Service administrators. The Forest Service typically ignites 4,500 prescribed fires a year, aimed at treating more than 2,000 square miles across the National Forest system. Very few of the fires escape control — a fraction of 1% by Forest Service calculations.