Fire Management

Objectives

Provide appropriate wildfire suppression responses that will help meet resource management objectives.

Use prescribed fire to meet resource management objectives. This will include but not be limited to fuels management for wildfire hazard reduction, restoration of desired vegetation conditions, management of habitat, and silvicultural treatments.

Adhere to smoke management and air quality standards of the Clean Air Act and State Implementation Plan for prescribed burning.

Land Use Allocations

None.

Management Actions/Direction

Management Actions/Direction - General

Apply the management actions/direction in the Special Status and SEIS Special Attention Species section.

Address fire/fuels management for all land use allocations as part of watershed analysis. This will include determinations of the role of fire and the risk of large-scale, high intensity wildfires at the landscape level.

Coordinate fire management activities in rural interface areas with local governments, agencies, and landowners. During watershed analysis, identify additional factors that may effect hazard reduction goals. Minimize the impacts of wildfire suppression actions.

Management Actions/Direction - Riparian Reserves

Determine the probable risk of large-scale, high intensity wildfires, which would prevent or delay the attainment of Aquatic Conservation Strategy and riparian reserve objectives through the period established for retention. Describe the need to use prescribed fire to reduce fuel hazards and the risk of large-scale, high intensity wildfires.

Design fuel treatment and fire suppression strategies, practices, and activities to meet Aquatic Conservation Strategy and riparian reserve objectives, and to minimize disturbance of riparian ground cover and vegetation. Strategies will recognize the role of fire in ecosystem function and identify those instances where fire suppression or fuel management activities could be damaging to long-term ecosystem function.

Locate incident bases, camps, helibases, staging areas, helispots and other centers for incident activities outside of riparian reserves. If the only suitable location for such activities is within the riparian reserve, an exemption may be granted following a review and recommendation by a resource advisor. The Area Manager, through the resource advisor, will prescribe the location, use conditions, and rehabilitation requirements. Normally these activities will be included with the Wildfire Situation Analysis.

Minimize delivery of chemical retardant, foam, or other additives to surface waters. An exception may be warranted in situations when immediate safety imperatives exist, or, following a review and recommendation by a resource advisor, increases in fire size would cause substantial long-term, unacceptable resource damage.

Establish an emergency team to develop a rehabilitation treatment plan to attain Aquatic Conservation Strategy and riparian reserve objectives whenever the reserves are significantly damaged by a wildfire or a prescribed fire burning outside of prescribed parameters.

Consider allowing some natural fires to burn when they are identified as being consistent with Aquatic Conservation Strategy and riparian reserve objectives, and upon completion and approval of a fire management plan. Until watershed analysis is completed suppress wildfires to avoid loss of habitat and to maintain future management options.

Mop-up plans for both prescribed and wildfires should consider rapidly extinguishing smoldering coarse woody debris and duff.

Locate and manage water drafting sites (sites where water is pumped to suppress fires) to minimize adverse effects on riparian habitat and water quality consistent with Aquatic Conservation Strategy and riparian reserve objectives.

Management Actions/Direction - Late-Successional Reserves

Determine the probable risk of large-scale, high intensity wildfires, which would prevent or delay the attainment of resource management objectives through the period established for retention. Describe the need to use prescribed fire to reduce fuel hazards and the risk of large-scale, high intensity wildfires.

Emphasize maintaining late-successional habitat in wildfire suppression plans.

Manage fuels in accordance with guidelines for reducing risks of large-scale disturbances. Use risk assessment as a tool to allow for interdisciplinary decision making such seeks to prioritize fuel treatment need based on potential loss of critical habitat.

During fire suppression activities, ensure that unacceptable habitat damage from suppression activities is minimized.

Until a fire management plan is completed for a reserve or group of reserves, suppress wildfire to avoid loss of habitat and to maintain future management options. Under an approved fire management plan, allow some natural fires to burn when they are identified as being consistent with resource management objectives.

Prepare a fire management plan as a component of the late-successional reserve assessment, prior to any habitat manipulation activities. Specify fire suppression, fuels management and prescribed fire use to meet resource objectives.

Apply prescribed fire based on the role of fire within each landscape in a manner consistent with ecosystem management objectives, including fuel hazard reduction and retention of coarse woody debris.

Consider allowing some natural fires to burn under prescribed conditions. This decision will be based on additional analysis and planning.

During wildfire suppression operations, consider rapidly extinguishing smoldering coarse woody debris, snags, and duff in areas that are deficient of crucial stand components.

Management Actions/Direction - Adaptive Management Areas

Explore and support opportunities to research the role and effects of fire management on ecosystem functions. Test the concepts of using prescribed fire to mitigate long term risk of conflagration type wildfires.

Emphasize fire/fuels management cooperation across agency and ownership boundaries.

Management Actions/Direction - Matrix

Plan and implement prescribed fire treatments designed to minimize:

intensive burning, unless appropriate for specific habitats, communities, or stand conditions;
consumption of litter and coarse woody debris;
disturbance to soil and litter that may occur as a result of heavy equipment operations; and
the frequency of treatments.

Management Actions/Direction - Wildfire Suppression

Minimize the direct negative impacts to wildfire suppression on ecosystem management objectives.

Respond to all wildfires by taking appropriate suppression responses. In most cases, responses will consist of aggressive initial attack to extinguish fires at the smallest size possible.

For wildfires that escape initial attack, perform a Wildfire Situation Analysis to develop a suppression strategy to evaluate the damage induced by suppression activities compared to expected wildfire damage.

Rehabilitation plans should consider the use of available soil seed banks, the use of native species, and/or sterile aliens for both emergency and large scale wildfire rehabilitation work.

Management Actions/Direction - Fuels Management (including Hazard Reduction)

Using prescribed fire throughout the planning area, identify the need for prescribed fire to restore and/or maintain crucial wildlife habitat, key plant associations, plant communities, and fire dependent/adapted species emphasizing special status plant and animal habitat need.

Modify fuel profiles in order to lower the potential of fire ignition and rate of spread; protect and support land use allocation objectives by lowering the risk of high intensity, stand-replacing wildfires; and adhere to smoke management and air quality standards.

Reduce both natural and activity based fuel hazards through methods such as prescribed burning, mechanical or manual manipulation of forest vegetation and debris, removal of forest vegetation and debris, and combinations of these methods.

Management Actions/Direction - Prescribed Fire Use for Ecosystem Maintenance and Restoration

Base the use of prescribed fire on the risk of high intensity wildfire and the associated cost and environmental impacts of using prescribed underburning to meet protection, restoration, and maintenance of crucial stands that are current susceptible to large-scale catastrophic wildfire.

Reintroduce underburning across large areas of the landscape over a period of time to create a mosaic of stand conditions. Treatments should be site-specific because some species with limited distributions are fire intolerant.

Identify opportunities to use prescribed fire to make stands more resistent to wildfire.

Revise, where appropriate, landscape objectives for coarse woody debris, down logs, green-tree retention, and snags, consistent with the natural role of fire and protection standards through the Watershed Analysis Process.