Goals
Goal 1: Improve Prevention and Suppression
Guiding Principles:
Firefighting Readiness – Public and firefighter safety is the first priority in all fire management.
Prevention Through Education – Reduce the risks to homes and private property through prevention education.
Action:
- Improve Federal, State, and local firefighting resource capability and readiness to protect communities and the environment from wildland fires.
- Reduce the incidence of injury to life and property resulting from catastrophic wildland fires.
- Expand outreach and education to homeowners and communities about fire prevention through use of programs such as “Firewise.”
- Develop a consistent preparedness planning model, among the Federal agencies and others, that analyzes cost-effective fire protection among all administrative boundaries. In developing the model, consider State and local protection needs and resources in the wildland-urban interface.
Goal 2: Reduce Hazardous Fuels
Guiding Principles:
Hazardous Fuel Reduction – Prioritize hazardous fuels reduction where the negative impacts of wildland fire are greatest.
Action:
- Reduce the total number of acres at risk to severe wildland fire.
- Ensure communities most at risk in the wildland-urban interface receive priority for hazardous fuels treatment.
- Expand and improve integration of the hazardous fuels management program to reduce severe wildland fires to protect communities and the environment.
- Incorporate public health and environmental quality considerations in fire management activities undertaken for the hazardous fuels management program.
- Develop smoke management plans in conjunction with prescribed fire planning and implementation.
- Develop strategies to address fire-prone ecosystem problems that augment fire risk or threaten sustainability of these areas.
- Assure maintenance of areas improved by fuels treatment by managing activities permitted on the restored lands to maintain their resiliency.
- Conduct and utilize research to support the reduction of hazardousfuels in wildland urban interface communities and environments.
- Ensure local environmental conditions are factored into hazardous fuels treatment planning.
Goal 3: Restore Fire Adapted Ecosystems
Guiding Principles:
Rehabilitation – Prevent invasive species and restore watershed function and biological communities through short-term rehabilitation.
Restoration – Restore healthy, diverse, and resilient ecological systems to minimize uncharacteristically severe fires on a priority watershed basis through long-term restoration.
Using Science and Information – Promote the development and use of the best available science along with local and indigenous knowledge.
Monitoring – Monitor restoration and rehabilitation projects for effectiveness and share the results in order to facilitate adaptive implementation.
Action:
- In the short-term, perform burned area emergency stabilization and rehabilitation work to protect life and property, protect municipal watersheds, and prevent further degradation of critical cultural and natural resources.
- In the long-term, restore burned areas and repair and improve lands unlikely to recover naturally from severe fire damage.
- Place priority on at risk watersheds that have been damaged by wildland fire.
- Promote the establishment of sources of native seed and other plant material.
- Promote awareness of and training in the use of minimum impact suppression activities.
- Promote research and effective use of restoration and rehabilitation treatments.
- Eradicate or minimize the rate of spread of invasive species that negatively impact natural fire cycles and fire-adapted ecosystems.
- Improve the capability to decrease invasive species in burned areas through research and development.
- Research interactions between fire, land management actions, and other disturbances, and apply lessons learned to future management decisions.
Goal 4: Promote Community Assistance
Guiding Principles:
Increase Local Capacity – Where appropriate, stimulate local capacity to accomplish hazardous fuels reduction and rehabilitation work.
Incentives – Promote better fire prevention planning and actions in local communities through technical assistance and cost-sharing incentives.
Biomass Utilization – Employ all appropriate means to stimulate industries that will utilize small-diameter, woody material resulting from hazardous fuel reduction activities, such asfor biomass electric power, pulp and paper-making, and composite structural building materials.
Action:
- In the short-term, perform burned area emergency stabilization and rehabilitation work to protect life and property, protect municipal watersheds, and prevent further degradation of critical cultural and natural resources.
- In the long-term, restore burned areas and repair and improve lands unlikely to recover naturally from severe fire damage.
- Place priority on at risk watersheds that have been damaged by wildland fire.
- Promote the establishment of sources of native seed and other plant material.
- Promote awareness of and training in the use of minimum impact suppression activities.
- Promote research and effective use of restoration and rehabilitation treatments.
- Eradicate or minimize the rate of spread of invasive species that negatively impact natural fire cycles and fire-adapted ecosystems.
- Improve the capability to decrease invasive species in burned areas through research and development.
- Research interactions between fire, land management actions, and other disturbances, and apply lessons learned to future management decisions.