Fire on the Ground
Controlled burning and cultural fire restore western dry forests
Every spring and fall, fire crackles on dry forest landscapes throughout the Western United States. Coaxed forth by trained experts during cooler and moister times of the year, the low flames clear overgrown vegetation and excess dry needles, wood and other debris—setting the stage for renewal and resilience.
Reintroducing beneficial fire
Western dry forests know fire well. These landscapes, which span 150 million acres of the present-day Western U.S. and Canada, are characterized by long, dry seasons and sweeping acres of ponderosa pine and mixed conifers. Most importantly, they have evolved to co-exist with regular intervals of fire that burn at low to moderate intensity, with lower heat and short flames that benefit the landscape.
Following decades of forest management practices that removed beneficial fire from Western dry forests, forests have become overgrown and vulnerable to high-intensity wildfires that kill large swaths of trees, destroy habitat and threaten communities.
Today controlled burn and cultural fire practitioners are returning beneficial fire to the landscape, and with that, offering hope for this critical ecosystem.
A history of fire and humans
Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have intentionally burned dry forests and other ecosystems as a means of land stewardship called cultural burning. Fire set by humans and lightning shaped the land—lowering the risk of intense wildfires by burning crowded and dead overgrowth and debris. These fires also produced First Foods and supported wildlife.
Beginning in the 19th century, a series of land management practices and policies largely removed fire from the landscape. Settlers introduced cattle, whose grazing removed the vegetation necessary to carry fire. Indigenous Peoples were displaced from the lands they stewarded, and cultural burning was criminalized. Fire exclusion policies, like the 1935 U.S. Forest Service’s 10 a.m. rule, which emphasized putting out all newly reported wildfires by 10 a.m. the following morning, all but extinguished fire, even beneficial low-intensity wildfires.
“That natural relationship between dry forests and fire was interrupted by settlement, by grazing, by logging, by fire suppression,” explains Kai Sauerbrey, TNC Oregon’s Fire Program director and a burn boss who regularly leads controlled burns.
Many forests were heavily logged and regrew at high densities. Without fire to regulate their composition, dry forests have become overgrown, unhealthy and susceptible to high-intensity wildfires, which burn hotter, spread faster and behave in unpredictable ways, compared to low- and moderate-intensity fire.
For this reason, people throughout the West are working to return beneficial fire to dry forests.
How burning supports land and people
In dry forests, beneficial low- and moderate-intensity fire has multiple positive effects on the surrounding ecosystem, wildlife and people:
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Reduced wildfire risk
Controlled burning and cultural fire reduce the likelihood of severe wildfire by removing dead and overgrown vegetation that could stoke hot, unpredictable and difficult-to-control blazes under the wrong conditions. An analysis of 40 studies found that controlled burning alone can reduce wildfire severity by up to 62%. In combination with forest thinning, that number jumps to 72%.
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Healthy plant life
Low- and moderate-intensity fires spark renewal. The fire adds nutrient-rich ash from burnt vegetation to the soil, nourishing plants on the forest floor. With this boost and less overcrowding, grasses, wildflowers and shrubs come back with renewed vigor. “It’s cleaning things up, it’s providing new places for seed, it’s nutrient cycling,” Sauerbrey says.
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Fresh water
Low-intensity fire has positive impacts for water. Severe wildfires can reduce forests’ ability to absorb water and make soil water repellent, causing erosion and runoff into water sources. By lowering the likelihood of severe wildfire, controlled and cultural burns help protect the water that people and wildlife rely on. “That healthy forest then has downstream effects for water users, agriculture and everything else,” says Will Joy, prescribed burn specialist with TNC New Mexico.
Putting fire on the ground
For many, the only evidence of a controlled burn is occasional smoke in the air or the char on the bark of a pine. What the eye cannot see are the months—sometimes years—of preparation that go into planning a single burn. It is precisely this—paired with careful choreography that is informed by ample training and experience—that helps keep burns safe and managed.
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Every controlled burn begins with a burn plan centered on a goal for a given section of forest. Goals vary: One burn may aim to create more space for herbaceous grasses and herbs, while another is intended to protect a nearby reservoir. Based on the given goals, a burn boss charged with leading the treatment will prescribe the fire needed to accomplish that objective.
“So we'll say like, okay, we want to see maybe like three- to four-foot flame lengths come through here because that would be tall enough and have enough duration to kill the shrubs, but it won't get into the canopies of the trees,” says Sauerbrey.
They will model how the fire is likely to behave, based on factors like the amount of dry needles and vegetation on the ground, as well as weather and moisture.
“You’re getting your fire behavior from all the different fuel types on the burn unit,” says Mark Charlton, TNC Washington’s prescribed fire manager. Like Sauerbrey, he is also a burn boss. “That’s going to tell you the best and safest time to burn, what type of temperature and how receptive the land is going to be.”
All this, along with other information, such as plans for ensuring fire is contained within the planned perimeter and identified available backup firefighter resources, is then checked numerous times over by other burn bosses.
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Burn crews are charged with implementing the fire according to the plan. Most crews include several critical roles. The burn boss oversees everything, leading planning far in advance. They are flanked by firing and holding bosses.
The firing boss oversees the crew members igniting the fire with drip torches. They shape the fire’s behavior by telling the crew where and how to apply fire. Meanwhile, the holding boss is in charge of ensuring that the fire is well within the boundaries of where it’s supposed to be, according to the burn plan. They do so through the use of fire engines and crews.
In addition to the crews that work under these roles, people known as fire effects monitors continuously assess the weather and fire behavior. They report to the burn boss on how the fire is spreading, the height of its flames, the direction of smoke and how the fire is consuming the available dried vegetation and other fuel on the ground.
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Much preparation goes into the weeks leading up to a burn. Nearby landowners and community members are notified. Fire lines are identified to establish the parameters of the burn site. Water tanks, pumps and fire hoses may be set up, if a given location is difficult to access with a fire engine.
The burn boss will consult closely with a local meteorologist who is given the exact location and size of the planned burn, as well as information on the amount of vegetation and dry debris onsite. The meteorologist issues a forecast that helps the burn boss identify a window during which the weather conditions are optimal—a time when wind speeds will be low and moving away from nearby communities, there’s some humidity (but not too much) and temperatures are moderate. In other words, a Goldilocks window.
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When the day arrives, the real proving point occurs when a test fire is lit.
That test fire is set “at a location where we’ve got a good representation of the fuels that we’re going to encounter that day,” says Joy. “A location where we can put the fire out quickly if we don’t like what we see.”
Donned in yellow fireproof gear, the crew gathers into position, silently watching to see what the flames will do.
“That moment when the test fire gets put on the ground, it’s just this collective breath out,” says Sauerbrey. “Like ‘Okay, I have spent the last year-plus planning this thing, getting people here, doing all the modeling, playing out in my brain probably 60 times how this burn is going to go.’”
The burn boss, firing boss and holding boss huddle and, based on the fire behavior, decide whether the burn will proceed. If it’s a yes, the crew jumps into action. Against a soundtrack of radio chatter and the crackle of fire on leaves and needles, people fan out.
Drip torches set and manipulate flames, while the holding crew patrols the perimeter, using tools to cool the edges of the fire. Together, they ensure the right fire behavior is occurring according to the prescription outlined in the burn plan. Throughout the burn, they will continue to monitor the fire behavior and weather and be prepared to stop if conditions change. That monitoring extends to the days following a burn, when crew members patrol to ensure the site is cooling.
Reducing community smoke impacts
Controlled burn practitioners work with meteorologists to pick the optimal weather conditions when winds are more likely to move smoke away from nearby communities.
Returning cultural fire to dry forests
In parallel with efforts to expand controlled burning, Indigenous Peoples are working to return cultural burning practices to dry forests.
“For thousands of years, fire burned on a large scale, and it kept the land pretty clean. Many Tribal members understood that,” says Anna Merritt, a Klamath-Modoc Tribal member and cultural burn specialist with the Klamath Tribes, in a recent video series, Elements, which was produced by The Klamath Tribes and The Nature Conservancy.
Like controlled burning, cultural burning involves intentionally applying low- to moderate-intensity fire to the landscape. Critically, this work is led by Indigenous Peoples and may be done for a variety of purposes, including maintaining forest health, as well as supporting cultural resources such as plants that provide food, medicine and basket materials and serve as forage for wildlife.
Cultural fire with the Klamath Tribes (9:00)
Featuring Anna Merritt, a cultural burn specialist, “Elements: Fire” explores the role of fire in Anna’s life and its power to revitalize forests and First Foods.
Cultural burning is to take care of the foods—all the foods, not just the bitterbrush and the camas and the roots, but also the big game that are eating all that bitterbrush.
“And then to understand we can use the bitterbrush as humans. We can use the rabbit brush. We can use all these foods for ourselves, for our own health and well-being," Merritt says.
Cultural burn practices vary by Tribe and Nation and are informed by traditional ecological knowledge.
Today, there is a growing movement to share that knowledge with a new generation of Indigenous burners. Elders remain central teachers—demonstrating how fire shapes cultural resources to younger community members. Further, organizations and partnerships, such as the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, led by Elders and fire practitioners, are advancing this important work.
“Fire is going to teach us how to live again, through culture and identity,” Merritt says.
Spreading knowledge of beneficial fire
With the rate of severe wildfires increasing, there’s a need to increase the number of people with the knowledge and skills to apply beneficial fire. Fortunately, an array of organizations and people are creating opportunities to develop expertise.
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Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges—known as TREX—are learning events offered across the world to advance the use of beneficial fire. Participants explore local fire ecology and gain practical experience applying beneficial fire alongside a team structured like an actual burn crew.
Attendees come from a range of backgrounds and include Indigenous Peoples and fire practitioners from government agencies and nonprofits, like TNC, who join to hone their expertise and train for different roles. For others, such as students, landowners and community members, TREX events offer opportunities to develop skills they can use to support more resilient communities.
“It really gives people the exposure that they wouldn’t get elsewhere and the opportunity to be included with people with various amounts of experience,” says Charlton, who has attended TREX events and helped host one in his community.
As of early 2026, there have been more than 180 TREX events hosted in western U.S. dry forests and other locations, including Australia, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa and Spain. More than 5,000 people have been trained, burning 225,000 acres.
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In other parts of the West, prescribed burn associations (PBAs) are forming. These community-led initiatives aim to empower landowners and neighbors to come together and burn on private land, with the purpose of reducing fire risk in their areas.
PBAs are supported by expert fire practitioners and other local resources, such as volunteer fire departments, as well as scrappy teams comprised of people who provide knowledge about everything from local plant ecology to the social media savvy needed to communicate about planned burns.
While they are a relatively new development for the Western U.S. (the first of its kind, the Humboldt County PBA, was established in California in 2017), the idea has been spreading like fire. There are nearly 30 PBAs in California alone, as well as multiple other states, including Oregon and Washington.
“It’s been amazing for them to watch community members connect with fire and reframe it so it’s something different from past negative experiences they have had with wildfire,” says Sauerbrey.
Community-led burning (7:38)
Prescribed burn associations in California are expanding community-based burning on private lands, helping support more resilient dry forests across the region.
The Future of Beneficial Fire
Amid the building momentum, most fire practitioners and forest managers will tell you there is still much work to be done to expand the application of beneficial fire in the West.
Coalition building
Progress toward increasing beneficial fire on dry forests depends on people and organizations working together across jurisdictions, land ownerships and disciplines.
“We need the future to be an all-hands, all-lands approach,” says Charlton.
Policy progress
There are policies to advance to remove barriers to controlled burning and cultural fire alike. In recent years, insurance options for prescribed burning have dwindled, making burning financially risky for landowners and fire practitioners. To address this, TNC has helped pass laws in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington that have resulted in individual states creating claims funds to reduce financial liability. Additionally, many state and federal laws still inhibit cultural burning. More policies, like California’s Senate Bill 310, which passed in 2024, are needed in recognize Tribal sovereignty and enable Indigenous Peoples to conduct cultural burns on Tribal lands.
Stable funding and resources
This work will also require stable sources of funding, as well as the trained workforces dedicated to beneficial fire, thinning and other forms of dry forest restoration.
Community support
Through grassroots movements, prescribed burn associations and locally based organizations, more community members are seizing the opportunity to engage with controlled burning—to have meaningful conversations about what it may mean to reintroduce fire to nearby landscapes. In some cases, they are even the ones applying the fire. And with more people stepping up to learn, lead and burn, the West is reclaiming fire as a tool for renewal.
Continue learning
Our Work in Dry Forests
TNC’s Western Dry Forests Program leads and convenes efforts to restore forest resilience and reduce the severity of wildfires across the West. Learn more about how we’re partnering with state programs and other partners to restore dry forest ecosystems.
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