The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages fire safely and cost-effectively to improve the condition of lands while reducing the risk of damaging wildfires to surrounding communities. This balanced approach to fire management benefits people and wildlife.

What We Do

Our Services

Fire burns prairie grasses as one of the crew carries a fuel torch to light. Smoke shrouds the horizon.
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A prescribed fire burns at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Eighty percent of Service lands, from marsh to forest to prairie, evolved with fire and depend on periodic fire to remain productive wildlife habitat. Fire is a vital conservation tool.

The Service’s fire management program has three main areas of focus: 

  •  fuels management
  •  wildfire management
  •  wildfire prevention

By the Numbers

  • 398,000 acres burn in wildfires annually
  • 350,000 acres treated with prescribed fire annually
  • 80% of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands include fire-adapted ecosystems
  • 312 U.S Fish and Wildlife Service fire management professionals

Our Priorities

Flames burn among the grasses and young pine saplings during a prescribed firing operation at Grand Bay NWR
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Prescribed fire is a vital tool for habitat management at Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge in coastal Mississippi and Alabama. 

The priorities for the Service’s fuels management program are:

  • planning prescribed burns strategically to lessen the threat of wildfire and minimize risks to communities
  • applying healthy fire to Service lands to improve habitat for threatened and endangered species and support efforts to recover or avoid listing other vulnerable wildlife species
  • investing in fuels treatment projects to reduce costs of wildfire suppression and rehabilitation
  • maintaining previously completed fuels-reduction projects
  • leveraging funding sources and partnerships
  • enhancing and promoting safety and security on Service-managed lands