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Management

The Forest Service has been managing wildland fire on National Forests and Grasslands for more than 100 years. But the Forest Service doesn’t – and can’t – do it alone. Instead, the agency works closely with other federal, tribal, state, and local partners. The Forest Service and our partners have developed a National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy that has three key components: Resilient Landscapes, Fire Adapted Communities, and Safe and Effective Wildfire Response.

Prescribed Fire and Fuel Treatments 

Forest management in the United States has changed dramatically over time. Sixty years ago forests were primarily used as a source of timber. Today they are managed to provide a wide range of benefits for society. These benefits include recreation, timber, water, and wildlife habitat. Given the current health conditions of our forests, active management is needed to provide these benefits to the public. Part of the active management includes prescribed fire to improve forest health and resilience to large wildfires.

A century of fire suppression has led to crowded forests that are dead or dying, and are highly vulnerable to attacks by insects, diseases, and wildfires. These dense stands represent a threat to homes that border our forest from severe, high-intensity wildfires. Without human intervention, these forests leave us at an increased risk of catastrophic wildfire. Through the use of thinning, logging, burning, and other forest treatments, our goal is to restore thousands of acres to conditions that are compatible with frequent, low to moderate intensity wildfires. A successful prescribed burning program increases the health of the forest and provides socio-economic benefits we need today and into the future.

Prescribed Fire Status:

  • Active - Unit is planned to be burned shortly, is currently being burned, or was burned recently.
  • Planned- Unit is being considered for burning.
  • Completed - Active burning has concluded, and the unit will be patrolled until declared out.

View Malheur National Forests Prescribed Fire Projects here.

Managing Fuels

After many years of fire exclusion, an ecosystem that needs periodic fire becomes unhealthy. Trees on the forest are stressed by overcrowding, fire-dependent tree species disappear, and flammable fuels build up and become hazardous.

Prescribed fire, in the right place, at the right time will:

  • Reduce hazardous fuels, protecting human communities from extreme fires;
  • Minimize the spread of insects and disease;
  • Reduce unwanted species that threaten species native to an ecosystem;
  • Provide forage for game;
  • Improve habitat for threatened and endangered species;
  • Recycle nutrients back to the soil; and
  • Promote the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other plants.

Planning Process

The Forest Service manages prescribed fires and even some wildfires to benefit natural resources and reduce the risk of unwanted wildfires. So how do our land managers decide when and where to use prescribed fire? The National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) requires Federal agencies to consider environmental effects that include, among others, impacts on social, cultural, economic, and natural resources. The Forest Service, following the NEPA process, takes an interdisciplinary approach to identifying proposed actions based on multiple resource needs on the landscape, including prescribed fire.

Proposed actions are further developed through a collaborative process involving the public, partners, Malheur National Forest staff, and other interested agencies. They are reviewed by a team of specialists representing a variety of disciplines such as botany, fisheries, recreation, wildlife biology and more. Interested individuals or organizations have the chance to officially comment on proposals during designated stages of the planning process, as well as to engage in proposal development during open houses and field trips to the planning areas.

Proposed actions may include a variety of treatment activities such as logging for commercial products, thinning for desired forest conditions, or aquatics restoration for listed fish habitat, among others. Treatment activities such as logging and thinning are conducted in areas in need of mechanical treatments. Often prescribed burning is the last step in a series of actions proposed to restore the landscape.   

Specialists write burn plans for prescribed fires to meet specific objectives for an area of the forest. Burn plans identify – or prescribe – the best conditions under which trees and other plants will burn to get the best results. Burn plans consider temperature, humidity, wind, moisture of the vegetation, and conditions for the dispersal of smoke. Prescribed fire specialists compare conditions on the ground to those outlined in burn plans before deciding whether to burn on a given day. When choosing whether or not to burn, safety is of the utmost priority. In 2022, the Forest Service conducted a through prescribed fire program review to ensure the decision-making process incorporates the most recent scinece and best practices.

Keep in mind that prescribed fire is not appropriate for all forested areas, as each area of the forest is managed for different benefits.

Prescribed fire is an integral part of the 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy announced in 2022. The Forest Service committed to increasing the pace and scale of prescribed fire over the next decade in an effort to address wildfire risks to critical infrastructure, protect communities, and make forests more resilient.

Partnerships

To learn more about how prescribed fire is implemented on the Malheur National Forest, check out the following links to our local partners.

Weather

Wildland fire behavior is governed by three major factors: Fuels (amount, arrangement, and availability of flammable material), Topography (slope, aspect, and general layout of terrain), and Weather (wind, temperature, and humidity).  Of these, weather changes the most drastically and rapidly and is generally the greatest influencing factor on wildland fire behavior.

Weather also heavily governs our opportunities for prescribed fire. A range of weather parameters are listed in the Burn Plan to help identify the ‘windows’ of opportunity to be considered for prescribed fire. Common Burn Plan weather factors (listed as environmental factors) are like those that influence wildfire (wind, temperature, and humidity) and hot end and cool end listings are used to identify the parameter range of environmental conditions. If conditions are:

  • Too hot, dry, and/or windy: the fire likely will burn too hot to meet objectives set by specialists and could present challenges to hold the prescribed fire.
  • Too cool and wet: the fire will not spread and nor meet objectives and could produce excessive amounts of smoke.
  • The middle range of parameters: fire spread likely is to be at a more moderated pace to meet objectives of consuming down fuels, grass, and timber litter on the forest floor, as well as any ladder fuels (brush, small trees, and lower limbs on larger trees.) Also, smoke production can be reduced due to the ‘cleaner’ burning of these fuels.

For more information on the current fire weather forecast, visit the National Weather Service, Pendleton Fire Weather Forecast site: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/firewx/?wfo=pdt

Smoke

Inhalation of excess smoke is widely known to be a health hazard. We manage this hazard by burning at times that reduce production of smoke, as well as provide favorable winds that disperse smoke away from more populated areas.

Unfortunately, we can never fully eliminate the health hazards of smoke. Wildland fire and the associated smoke production is a “pay now or pay more later” proposition.  Burning prescribed fires in a controlled manner allows us to reduce smoke, and to use the local winds to transport smoke away from populated areas.  By burning in this controlled manner, we are able to “pay a little now”, by minimally impacting the public. Or, we “pay later” by not treating the forest, and increasing the risk of a wildfire burning aggressively during fire season.  With a wildfire there is no control over smoke production.  The smoke is also much more likely to impact large portions of the public by settling into populated areas.

Smoke forecasting and monitoring is accomplished through cooperation with the Oregon Department of Forestry, as well as the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.  For more information about our smoke dispersion program visit:

Oregon DEQ smoke monitoring information: https://www.oregon.gov/deq/wildfires/Pages/default.aspx

Oregon Department of Forestry Smoke Management Forecast: http://www.odf.state.or.us/DIVISIONS/protection/fire_protection/Daily/Smi.htm

Wildfire                                                                                   

To reduce the chances of a catastrophic wildfire, the Fuels program on the Malheur National Forest works to reduce combustible fuels in the forest. The most effective and appropriate sequence of fuel treatments depends on the amount of surface fuel present. In forests that have not experienced fire for many decades, multiple fuel treatments are often required to achieve the desired fuel conditions. These fuels treatments may include:

  • In the most degraded forested sites, heavy mechanical treatments such as logging may be needed to increase crown spacing. Crown spacing is important because properly spaced trees do not compete for resources. Trees properly spaced are less likely to carry a crown fire, and fire is less likely to kill entire tree stands.
  • Thinning on the forest reduces ladder fuels, increases tree crown spacing, and reduces fuel accumulations near the forest floor.
  • The forest pile burning program is used to remove the woody fuels from thinning and logging activities.  Piles are usually burned in the fall and winter, when there is little chance the burn piles will spread beyond their foot print.
  • Prescribed broadcast burning on the forest is an efficient fuels treatment.  Burning removes litter on the forest floor, thins small trees, removes ladder fuels, and can be used to increase crown spacing. Because prescribed fire removes such a wide variety of fuels, it is the most effective at returning the forest to a healthy state, as well as reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Fire Crews

The Malheur National Forest is spit in to two zones. The North Zone includes the Blue Mountain Ranger District and the Prairie City Ranger District, both are dispatched out of John Day Interagency Dispatch Center. The South Zone is Emigrant Creek Ranger District which is part of the Burns Interagency Fire Zone (BIFZ), dispatched out of Burns Interagency Dispatch Center. Fire resources on the zones include engines, handcrews, prevention, fuels, and fire lookouts. The Forest also hosts the Malheur Rappel Crew (MRC), located in the heart of the Malheur National Forest at the John Day Regional Airport in John Day, Oregon.

Forest Service Jobs in Fire

All current Forest Service job vacancies are posted on USAJOBS. The web-based applications of USAJOBS provide an opportunity for job candidates to create a profile, search for jobs, sign-up for vacancy announcements, apply for jobs, and check the status of jobs for which they have applied. 

Places to check:

Last updated March 10th, 2025

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