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Restoring the Positive Role of Fire

Five-year Partnership Will Restore Fire’s Natural Role to Improve Landscapes and Protect Communities

Arlington, VA— March 15, 2007— The U.S. Forest Service, the Department of the Interior land management agencies and The Nature Conservancy are renewing an innovative agreement to restore fire’s natural role in maintaining landscapes for the benefit of communities and ecosystems.  Fire, Landscapes and People: A Conservation Partnership is a successful partnership which unites local and national stakeholders in a coordinated approach to fire planning and implementation.

A recent study by The Nature Conservancy reinforces the need to work cooperatively.  It reveals that while most ecosystems in the lower 48 states depend on relatively frequent fire occurrence for their existence, up to 80 percent have been altered from an ecologically acceptable condition.  Urban encroachment, invasive plants and decades of fire exclusion in many of our wildlands have disrupted normal burning cycles and led to uncharacteristically intense fires.  Climate change poses a further threat with increased droughts and longer, warmer summers lengthening fire seasons and contributing to a larger number of hotter fires that are more difficult to manage and place communities and landscapes at greater risk.

“This renewed partnership will enable us to work with each other and local communities to find and implement appropriate solutions to our country’s fire management issues,” said Ayn Shlisky, Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Global Fire Initiative.

The focus of the partnership is to reestablish and maintain ecosystems where fire is a natural presence and reduce fire-related risks to the people who live there.  It reflects a growing awareness that managing, rather than continually excluding fires, is the most effective way to protect communities and restore habitats.   Providing regional fire management training, accelerating treatment of fire affected landscapes and raising public awareness are key partnership themes.  
 
"This partnership allows federal agencies, The Nature Conservancy, communities and other interests to address a serious problem in a positive way.  The challenges we all face are more than any one of us can solve. We're pleased to be a part of this forward-looking, effective partnership," said James M. Hughes, The Bureau of Land Management's acting national director.

Communities, private land owners, non- profit groups and local agency personnel are working together to implement fire management strategies in their regions.  In the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma for example, U.S. Fire Learning Network participants are working with local cattle ranchers on the restoration of grasslands.  By adjusting their grazing patterns, ranchers have helped to stagger the timing and locations of burning treatments enabling the prairie to recover.
 
 Building on the successful efforts of the past five years, the strengthened partnership provides a way forward in carefully restoring the positive role of fire in our landscapes.  The partnership plans to improve ecosystem resilience in the face of a changing climate by reestablishing natural burning cycles that prevent the buildup of hazardous fuels.

The renewed partnership will provide funds for continued cooperative activities over the next five years. Training and education efforts will broaden to include policy makers in addition to land managers and fire crews.  New areas such as the Central Appalachians will be integrated into the U.S. Fire Learning Network.

The Network partnership launched in 2002 has benefited hundreds of communities, helped initiate the treatment of over 458,000 acres of land and trained over 1600 people.  The Federal Agencies recognized The Nature Conservancy and the impact of this partnership with a National Fire Plan Award in 2003. 

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working to protect the most ecologically important lands and waters around the world for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.