The NPS and USFWS have led the way in promoting fire use, but the other federal fire management agencies are increasing their involvement in fire restoration work, to

FUSEE member Mike Beasley managing a prescribed fire.

o, despite onerous budget incentives and cultural biases that strongly favor fire suppression.

Even with a regressive executive branch, the fire community has seen remarkable progress in the move toward restoring fire to its natural role in ecosystems despite growing populations in and near forests. FUSEE board members, Steve Clarke and Mike Beasley, prepared and implemented the burn plan for a prescribed fire in Yosemite National Park, the first-ever collaborative project between FUSEE and the NPS. The escaped prescribed fire at Bandelier National Monument in 2000 dramatically set back the cause of fire reintroduction, but each successful prescribed fire helps the public and policymakers regain confidence that fire can be safely and effectively managed to reduce wildfire hazards and restore ecosystems.

Wildland Fire Use has been on the rise too, most notably in Alaska where FUSEE board member, Mary Kwart, was Fire Use Manager on two groundbreaking fires on the Kenai Peninsula last July, which made the front page of the Anchorage News and caused a stir in the fire management community from Fairbanks to Boise. Given the good publicity and heavy tourism on the Kenai Peninsula, these fire use fires offered the public a great educational opportunity that helped advance fire use in Alaska and elsewhere.

fire management from the ground-up. This includes helping the public and policymakers better understand the challenges and opportunities for crafting a new ecological ethos and restorationist mission for fire management.

FUSEE members working within the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service put us in a position to monitor internal policy debates and changes inside the federal agencies. We are keenly interested in seeing fire restored to its natural role in public land ecosystems to the fullest extent possible given human settlements. In the Southwest and Rocky Mountains, researchers know that frequent fires are a keystone element of forest ecology that affects everything from forest structure to wildlife populations. Likewise in the Pacific Northwest including Alaska and northern California, fire plays a key role in promoting diverse forest conditions and diverse plant and animal populations that depend on them.

As we move into the new century most land management professionals are aware that unquestioned and unconstrained fire suppression is counter productive to healthy wildlife and forest conditions. Almost all federal agencies are now engaged in prescribed burning to reduce fuel build ups, and “fire use” where lightning-caused fires are allowed to burn for ecological benefit within landscape-based boundaries.