The Mountain Journal posted this story yesterday, Aug. 24….
Excerpt:
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz argues full suppression is essential for this hazardous summer. And Brian Fennessy, director of the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, defends a policy shift it’s made: Federal officials who want to promote forest health can no longer make the final call about whether to let a fire burn.
Public land managers have toggled back and forth about a full-suppression strategy over the past decades. Many believe that the full suppression strategy both overextends limited firefighting resources and ignores basic science about how fire affects forests.
“We don’t think wildfire should be divorced from the land,” said Bill Avey, president of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees. “That’s been a policy failure.” Decades of extinguishing wildfires and climate change-induced drought have left Western forests full of dry fuels, contributing to conditions that can produce catastrophic fires. Making full suppression the default response, they argue, could perpetuate that problem while demanding more firefighting resources than the government has available.
Bull crap! Putting fire in landscapes without first treating residual fuels and/or modifying stem dynamics (canopy bulk density) is not only crazy, but counterintuitive! I always argue the “Regionality” crisis that continues to cloud progressive thinking; the West ain’t the South, the East, nor the Great Lakes!
If anything has been shown the past 25 years is we are not capable of “managing” fire, without extreme consequences for private lands and structures!
PUT THEM OUT FIRST!
Everyone knows we aren’t going to suppress our way out of this crisis but the default of the retired line officers seems to be, “if you change anything you’re just going to make things worse” and it smacks of fear mongering and an exercise in reputational damage control for the policy decision results of the last generation or even two.
To be fair, what I hear from retirees is “it worked when we were doing it as line officers.” In 2012 at a Retirees’ Reunion, retirees were concerned about line officers without fire experience having decision authority. Many new line officers don’t have that experience, their backgrounds are much more diverse. Some of my FS friends were even involved in an effort to train new line officers in fire, which knowing them, probably worked.. still there was an ongoing concern. Some probably effectively deferred to their fire folks, some maybe not.
I think we may have a real-world experiment this year, with the FS and the USFWS using different approaches. Maybe someone will study the results. Sadly, despite requests, I have been unable to find out from BLM exactly how they are planning to work with USFWS on projects with prescribed fire and mechanical treatments.
Phil, uh, no! We’re talking about millions of acres of incineration due to negligence, caused by lack of understanding fire science! And, having witnessed multiple failed experiments of managing a wildfire, the damage done to the physical and emotional collateral damage to private property, it’s not long before Congress inserts itself into the mix! We know hope that generally turns out…..
Managed fire is not indirect attack; most fire terms have morphed over the years, mainly by ignorant journalists trying to out scare their opposition and some of the new fire leaders who can’t tell smoke from fog!
Reputational damage? 🤣🤣🤣. You must not know a heck of a lot…..Put them out! If opportunities for Rx fire present themselves, that’s what we build upon….
Jim, I don’t think Phil was saying that.. he is not a fan of MF as far as I have been able to tell.
Sharon, I went back and reread Phil’s comment several times, looking for how I misread the intent. I didn’t find it!
However, we are all entitled to our opinions on the matters of public land management; God help us if we lose that opportunity! If it was easy, we’d all be Planners….🤣🤣🤣
If planning was easy, we’d do more of it. 🤣🤣🤣
So, why not make suppression the default – unless there is a plan for wildfire use?
I would hope that that alternative is on the table..
We discussed previously what full suppression actually means and that it’s not the 10AM rule. I think we need to be careful of reporters eliding different concepts, especially when it seems more like an elaborated talking point rather than an actual exploration of what’s happening on the ground. Which is, if you look at what’s happening this year.. not exactly as painted here.
This story seems to imply the same as the earlier AP story about firefighter deaths (which I continue to think is fairly creepy).
https://forestpolicypub.com/2026/07/20/ap-story-deaths-tied-to-10-am-policy-tied-to-full-suppression-policy-tied-to-private-aviation-profits/
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If we take a look at what’s actually going on this year, it looks like folks are continuing to go indirect tactically, with the idea of restricting fire acreage. What I see the difference is is the degree of discretion over Wildfire With Benefits. Which, to me, needs to be a larger discussion anyway, because people have all kinds of concerns about the practice.
“We don’t think wildfire should be divorced from the land.” Thank you. What has happened to us? I thought we were so much better. Like a former Forest Service Chief would often state, “just tell the truth.” We know that fire is a critical piece of land stewardship. Separation of fire management from landscape scale conservation into a national wildfire service will lead to the destruction of an American legacy. I simply do not understand why there is not an outcry of stopping this foolishness and the dismantling of right for a suite of wrongs. Share your voices to halt this foolishness. Please.
Very respectfully
Michael, wildfire in physical world can’t be divorced from the landscape. Wildfire is the biggest by acre of all impacts to vegetation and overwhelms our puny little 1000 acre fuel projects. So we’re talking about a change in bureaucratic structuring on federal lands.
Right now, the exact same fire folks who worked for land managers before, are working together with other fire folks in Interior. Fuels projects of all kinds will still have to go through NEPA, and follow RMPs and get input from specialists of all kinds. What is it exactly that you are worried about.. that these fire folks won’t make good decisions about fire or …?
My “truth” is that we have to wait and see how Interior manages the interactions between USFWS and land management before we can conclude anything.
Sharon, did you mean “USWFS” (US Wildland Fire Service) rather than “USFWS” (as in US Fish & Wildlife Service)? In the context of the post and your replies above, I think maybe so? As a former wildlife biologist (retired) who spent almost all of my career with the USFS, the acronym “USFWS” essentially was imprinted on me. The potential acronym confusion between the two services is just a “bonus” now.
To continue with some thoughts on the post above and the newly created USWFS since it was mentioned in replies, I think the creation of the USWFS was an unnecessary construct that will not likely have any measurable meaningful impact on wildland fire management outcomes at the national scale, annual acres burned, or other comprehensive wildfire metrics. To my understanding, it could cause more issues or some unnecessary challenges by severing and essentially compartmentalizing “fire suppression” personnel and organizations from the important and interrelated fuels reduction planning and implementation (e.g., prescribed broadcast burning and tree thinning projects for ladder fuels management). For that reason, I think it was positive that the FS fire fighting organization was left out of the USWFS for now. I believe this point has been made by others in some past posts. I think the creation of the USWFS is unlikely to make much difference, because during my FS career, it appeared to me that the wildfire suppression problem (if you can call it that) was not how the deck chairs were arranged among the various agency fire suppression forces, but that wildfire during extreme or semi-extreme weather conditions (especially high wind conditions) is not much different than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or earthquakes. It cannot be controlled and will burn through or over all types of landscapes, whether there has been previous fuels reduction or other vegetation management/clearcuts (and natural openings). Yes, the burn severity may sometimes be reduced when such a fire burns through fuels reduction units, but those treatments typically will not stop the fire during those conditions. As has been documented, the large majority of wildfire acreage and high severity fire burns during high winds when firefighting efforts are futile and ineffective, and when they are often halted for safety reasons. As only two examples, some of the large recent wildfires (Dixie in N. CA and Bootleg on the Fremont NF) burned across landscapes that could not hardly have been more heavily managed in the past and present (including much private industrial forest land holdings). This is readily apparent if one looks at Google Earth historical imagery how much management of all types had occurred within these fire footprints over the last 30 years or so. I am not saying this to say appropriate fuels reduction activities and especially broadcast burning is useless and should not be done. But it should be better targeted and not be used as an end around for timber volume targets, which sometimes leads to heavier thinning and removal of more larger trees than necessary for adequate fuels reduction and broadcast burning preparation (and to legitimate objections and legal challenges).
Many fires that are called “full suppression” strategy are not much different than many “managed” fires in the sense that that there is not much or any actual direct fire suppression occurring during higher wind days or on parts of fires that are not readily accessible or for limited personnel, or for safety reasons, etc.
Per the comment below, many miles of indirect or contingency line also were constructed during the Cameron Peak Fire up to a dozen miles from the fire edge. The fire never reached most of those lines, but they did turn into small deck sales.
Yes I did mean USWFS, if it had been me I wouldn’t have picked a name so easily confused with USFWS.
The full suppression policy appears to be optional. Here in Bitterroot National Forest, Montana, the let-it-burn policy appears to still be in effect if following it results in more logs on trucks and more taxpayer money funneled to private contractors. The North Fork fire in late July and August was a small fire–40 to 105 acres in the first few days; 118 acres when it went out on its own 3 weeks later—burning in the rocks near timberline almost 6 miles from the nearest private land. There were some helicopter water drops in the first few days, until they abandoned direct suppression efforts and instead built many miles of “indirect line” from 3 to 5 miles from the fire. Up to 130 people a day (mostly contractors?) were assigned to this fire, but it was “too dangerous” to actually fight directly on the ground (or apparently from the air). After 3 weeks it went out on its own. In the meantime, huge log decks were generated, no doubt to help meet timber targets. A look at those logs reveals lots of old growth ponderosa and Doug fir cut, some from a Research Natural Area, because this was an emergency! I heard the cost was around $5 million, although I cannot verify its accuracy. While I agree with the decision to leave this fire alone, I strongly oppose lawless logging disguised as fire suppression. This is not the first time BNF has used this tactic. Is it being used in other national forests?
Jake, I think the point your raise is important.. among all the interviews and worries about what might happen, it doesn’t appear that things on the ground have changed, at least in some cases. Like last year, when many acres of WFU were reported as accomplished.. what’s going on there between the words and on the ground? That would be an interesting news story.
Another part of that is a deeper question that we have no answer to…
when indirect line is far away.. say miles, is that because of a particularly defensible place based on wildfire knowledge, because closer would be dangerous to firefighters or…???
In this case, there were miles of existing fire lines from 2016 covering most of the area. They had been primarily constructed along roads, and could have been easily rehabbed by brushing them out of the past 10 years of growth. But there wasn’t much commercial timber left on those fuel breaks, so the new ones were constructed….from scratch.
With regards to an assertion in the article that land manager’s decisions stopped fire managers from doing their job. I was both a fire manager and a land manager during my long federal career. As a land manager, I never stopped a fire manager from doing their job and as a fire manager I was never stopped from doing what I needed to do within resource constraints. We always discussed priorities based on things like values at risk, and that is the job of a land manager. Several years ago I wrote a paper on managed fire (Wildland Fire use) that was published by SAF, and perhaps even the Smokey Wire. I had some real ecological and social/political success implementing this tool when it was appropriately applied.
Thank you all for your comments and perspectives.
“Alternative fire management strategies—collectively known as Strategies Other Than Full Suppression (OTFS)—allow fire managers to manage the fire in a way that minimizes firefighter exposure …”
I like that alternative.
I’m not sure that it’s as simple as that.. I didn’t see that in the story, who said it?
I can’t tell. You quoted it in your 8/25 comment.
It is reasonable to allow wildfires to burn on landscapes when safe to do so. But the USFS really went overboard with the policy of deliberately expanding small lightning strike wildfires with aerial and hand ignitions, sometimes by a hundred times or more — for “resource benefit.”
Those wildfire expansions were not wildfires at all, but instead on-the-spot intentional burns, which were sometimes carried out under dangerous conditions. And of course, with no NEPA analysis.
I am very grateful that policy seems to be somewhat curtailed.
I agree, Sarah, I think part of the concern is that we are used to analysis and thinking and alternatives and pubic comment, but it can feel like someone handwaving and saying “this needs to burn” or “this will be beneficial” without any of that.