I am pleased to release the new National Prescribed Fire Resource Mobilization Strategy. This plan is one of the commitments I made in the National Prescribed Fire Program Review Report last year. It is a continuation of our dedication to improve the prescribed fire program and demonstrates our values of safety and service to protect communities and restore the health and resilience of the nation’s forests and grasslands.

The Forest Service continues to be a recognized leader in prescribed fire implementation, and we needed a plan to help us increase the pace and scale of these efforts, especially in the West. This plan will ensure our employees have the necessary tools and resources to successfully implement the 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy with partners and communities. At the same time, it will fundamentally change how we do business as we shift from a focus on individual unit goals and commit to stewarding the whole.

This mobilization strategy includes recommendations to align prescribed fire implementation, support and coordination agency-wide. It uses fire suppression concepts, processes and procedures to supplement and prioritize prescribed fire in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes. It also outlines a scalable management organization, in the form of regional prescribed fire implementation teams, sized to match the scope of projects. 
For this plan to be successful, we must commit to the following:

1. Share qualified personnel across units who can plan and implement prescribed fire. This will allow forests to take advantage of short burn windows, especially in the West. Supervisors must allow willing, qualified employees to be available for prescribed fire assignments. 
2. Qualify more line officers as prescribed fire agency administrators.  
3. Train more personnel to implement prescribed fire, which is why we are expanding our Prescribed Fire Training Center to the West. I will have more to share on this soon.  
4. Coordinate with tribes, partners, other agencies and communities in planning and conducting prescribed burns to incorporate their knowledge, understanding, capacity and support.

This year, the Washington Office Fire and Aviation Management staff will continue to work with the regions to pilot the prescribed fire implementation team concept. They will gather data on the pilots and develop a feedback loop for refinements and broader application of these teams.

To support these efforts, the Prescribed Fire Coordinating and Advisory Team worked together with Procurement and Property Services to expand the availability of contracted resources to support priority fuels work. This increased capacity ensures that doing this work will not fall squarely on our existing wildland firefighters.

In addition, all virtual incident procurement (known as VIPR) resources that were only available for wildfire suppression (engines, water and fuel tenders, heavy equipment, logistical support and Type 2 crews) are now available for prescribed fire. They now can be ordered through Interagency Resource Ordering Capability and filled by the host dispatch center. 

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Prescribed Fire Coordinating and Advisory Team and the National Incident Management Organization Team for tackling and sorting through multiple complex issues to develop this plan. Thank you also to fire management and operations, contracting, budget and public affairs experts who supported this work.

Implementing this strategy will take time and require us to continue our prescribed fire learning journey. The strategy will change and grow as we learn from pilot projects and make systemic changes. This is another example of how we continue to be a learning organization, hold ourselves accountable and serve the American people. Through this work, we will continue to reduce wildfire risk and create resilient forests that will benefit current and future generations.

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