Fire Management Planning

Large white, thick plumes of smoke rise above green spruce trees amidst a blue sky. — The Foraker Fire burns in western Denali National Park and Preserve.
NPS Photo

Denali’s General Management Plan states that “the fire management program goal is to protect human life, property and significant resources while allowing fire to fulfill its role in the ecosystem” (DENA N-520.001). In one sentence, it requests that fire managers stop fire and also allow fire. Fire management planning is the process in which fire managers, guided by national and agency policy, coordinate with park managers and community partners to outline procedures for fire management actions.

Throughout the national parks system, fire management actions are guided by fire management plans. A fire management plan is a document that authorizes work. It allows fire managers to implement fuels reduction treatments, conduct wildland fire and fuels treatment monitoring, and outlines wildland fire response. It ensures that environmental and cultural compliance is followed in consideration of all fire management actions and is reviewed annually by park managers.

The scope of what a plan contains is directed by agency policy with input from interagency wildland fire partners. Local fire management planning is intended to align local fire management actions with the goals of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, updated in 2023:

Resilient Landscapes – Landscapes, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries are resilient to fire, insect, disease, invasive species and climate change disturbances, in accordance with management objectives.

Fire Adapted Communities – Human populations and infrastructure are as prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire.

Safe, Effective, Risk-based Wildfire Response – All jurisdictions participate in making and implementing safe, effective, efficient risk-based wildfire management decisions.

A group of women stand in a semi-circle facing a woman who is sitting in knee-high grass holding an object. Two of the women are holding clipboards — An NPS fire ecologist meets with a group of teachers in the field to share their knowledge of fire ecology and management in Alaska.
NPS Photo / Jennifer Barnes

Toward Fire Adapted Communities

A Fire Adapted Community  is a “human community consisting of informed and prepared citizens collaboratively planning and taking action to safely coexist with wildland fire.” Residents of a fire adapted community are knowledgeable and engaged with mitigating wildland fire risk. Their care and management of local infrastructure, buildings, landscaping, and the surrounding ecosystem lessen the need for extensive protection actions in the event of a wildfire. A fire adapted community is able to safely accept fire as part of the surrounding landscape, and thus allow fire to play its natural role in the ecosystem.

Denali National Park has collaborated with the Denali Borough on their efforts to create Community Wildfire Protection Plans, an important piece of transitioning toward a fire adapted community. These plans are developed by local communities with assistance from state and federal agencies to outline activities and treatments that will protect infrastructure and assess community preparedness. Activities in the Denali Borough have included community workshops and education, fuels reduction projects, and risk assessments and mitigation plans.

A successful fire adapted community approach has the potential to save lives, homes and communities, and millions of dollars in suppression costs annually, while allowing beneficial ecological processes of fire to take place.