Wildfire Crisis on the Tonto National Forest

Confronting the Wildfire Crisis

The USDA Forest Service launched a 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy to address the places where wildfire poses the most immediate threats to communities.

Strategy Website

Fire crews from the San Carlos Apache Tribe worked alongside Forest Service crews while beginning ignitions on the 531-acre Roadside prescribed fire, an area located 25 miles northeast of Globe and within the Globe Ranger District on April 30, 2024. (USDA Forest Service photo by Ellie Willard)

In January 2022, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service Chief Randy Moore announced a comprehensive response to the nation’s growing wildfire crisis – “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests.” The strategy outlines the need to significantly increase fuels and forest health treatments to address the escalating crisis of wildfire danger that threatens millions of acres and numerous communities across the United States.

In April 2022, the Forest Service identified the Tonto as one of four national forests that will treat approximately 47 percent of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative’s 2.4 million acres. Commonly known as 4FRI, it was one of the Forest Service’s 10 initial landscapes chosen for Bipartisan Infrastructure Law investment.

With additional funding under the Inflation Reduction Act, the Forest Service added 11 additional landscapes in early 2023. The agency again identified the Tonto as one of three national forests that will treat 3 million acres as part of the San Carlos Apache Tribal Forest Protection.

4FRI Landscape Investment

4FRI is a landscape-level effort to restore the structure, pattern, composition, and health of fire-adapted ponderosa pine ecosystems across 2.4 million acres in northern Arizona. The Tonto is actively restoring a landscape that encompasses six out of the top 10 highest-risk firesheds in the Southwestern Region. Furthermore, within the 4FRI footprint, nine out of the 10 high-risk fire areas in Arizona are being addressed.

A female fire ecologist in fire gear speaks to another fire employee, a male meteorologist — Tonto National Forest Fire Ecologist Mary Lata explains her data collection and documentation process to assess prescribed fire treatments on the landscape with meteorologist Ian Schwartz during a prescribed fire operation Nov. 7, 2023. (USDA Forest Service photo by Amanda Oliver)

Forest Service personnel, partners, volunteers, and contractors will use a full suite of restoration approaches to restore the landscape. Treatments will include mastication, biomass removal, timber harvesting, hand thinning and prescribed fire. Collectively these treatments will:

Restore forest ecosystems
Reduce threats of destructive wildfire to thriving forest communities
Support sustainable forest industries that strengthen local economies
Protect critical watersheds
Conserve natural resources

The Forest Service consults with 17 Native American Tribes as well as 10 Navajo Nation chapters on 4FRI. The Forest Service is partnering with federal, state and local agencies to implement the Wildfire Crisis Strategy in the 4FRI landscape.

San Carlos Apache Tribal Forest Protection Landscape Investment

a female firefighter walks by a prescribed burn area carrying an axe and a torch — Ignitions for the 5,465-acre Diamond Point/Pyeatt Draw prescribed fire began on April 17, 2024. Prescribed fire enables the Forest Service to increase the pace and scale of fuels and forest health treatments, and to reduce the threat of wildfires to communities and critical infrastructure in the Southwestern region. (USDA Forest Service photo by Madeline Bautista)

This landscape includes National Forest System lands and San Carlos Reservation lands. For cross-boundary landscape restoration, the Forest Service is working with the San Carlos Apache Tribe to build on the two Tribal Forest Protection Act projects they initiated. '

Work on the landscape will protect international waters shared with the Tribe, associated drinking water systems, and residential areas. Fuels reduction work will reduce wildfire exposure to the Mount Graham International Observatory and two telecommunications sites, which include primary communications systems for local law enforcement.

Working cooperatively with the San Carlos Apache Tribe and various partners, the Tonto is using contracts and other partnership agreements to enable hiring and training of San Carlos fire crews as well as on-the-ground fuels treatments and surveys.

Work on this landscape will reduce wildfire exposure to communities within the San Carlos and Fort Apache Reservations. Landscape treatments will reintroduce wildland fire into fire-adapted ecosystems in a culturally sensitive way while emphasizing sustainable uses of cultural forest products, including clean water, traditional medicinal plant cover, firewood, and culturally significant food sources such as acorns, berries, and wildlife. Work will also foster public understanding and sharing of culturally significant information to better guide our land management decisions.