Southern Border Initiative – Hazardous Fuels Reduction and Law Enforcement Success in South Florida Parks and Preserve

South Florida Fire and Aviation Management treated 224,794 acres using Southern Border Initiative funding.

NPS, M. Gue

Through interagency collaboration, South Florida National Parks and Preserve are protecting our ecosystems and borders. Everglades National Park has always been known as a vast and unique wilderness. More than 1.5 million acres, nearly one-third of the park, is water. 

Along the western and southern coasts of Everglades National Park, lie 2,429 miles of remote United States shoreline, three miles from the U.S. border, separated only by an open waterway. In Everglades National Park, the coastal prairie marsh, sawgrass prairies, and island keys are open access points for illegal activities. The sheer vastness to be covered with the available law enforcement resources, make complete patrolling difficult. These unpatrolled, remote areas provide opportunities for undetected illegal activity along one of the southernmost borders of the United States. Additionally, these native fire-adapted ecosystems generate natural hazardous fuels and increased vegetation cover for potential illegal activities occurring along the border.

South Florida Fire and Aviation Management (SFFA) is responsible for managing natural fire-adapted vegetation and hazardous fuel buildup within these ecosystems. Additionally, these fire-adapted native ecosystems have been invaded by non-native invasive plants. These landscapes require fire to maintain unique natural characteristics, manage fuel buildup, and limit invasive plant spread.

Between 2019 and 2021, SFFA used funds from the Southern Border Initiative (SBI) to implement 224,792 acres of prescribed fire treatments throughout the area along the coasts of Everglades and Biscayne national parks. SBI is a program designed to manage ecosystems and vegetation to increase ecosystem resilience and health and safety and visibility for detecting illegal activity and to facilitate national security operations along the United States border and throughout the national parks.

The Everglades and Biscayne Coastline Prescribed Fire Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project not only successfully treated thousands of acres by reducing hazardous fuels and vegetation overgrowth along the coastline of the United States, but through collaboration and use of tools such as SFFA park-owned, fixed-wing aircraft (N132PS), law enforcement was able to survey larger areas more efficiently, leading to the identification and prevention of illegal activities throughout the project area. 

The SBI funds combined with collaboration between fire management, national park law enforcement, and US Customs and Border Patrol provided for successful implementation of prescribed fire treatments to reduce the risk of future wildfires, control the spread of invasive plant species, improve the condition of natural fire-adapted ecosystems, and decrease vegetation cover for illegal activities.