Fire Management Plan, Redwood National and State Parks

RNSP

Excerpt from Introduction Fire management includes all activities undertaken to prevent, control, suppress, and utilize fire for the protection of human safety, personal property, and irreplaceable natural and cultural resources. This Fire Management Plan (FMP) provides the operational guidance the National Park Service (NPS) will use to manage wildland fire in RNSP safely while protecting park resources and human life and property. One purpose of managing fire in the parks is to reduce the threat to human life and property both within and outside park boundaries and to protect natural and cultural resources from wildfire. Prescribed fire and mechanical fuel reduction are tools to reduce fuels that have the potential to threaten developments, resources, or public safety. One of the primary purposes of a fire management plan is to develop an overall approach to fire management that focuses on the safety of firefighters and the public. To reduce threats from wildfire to property and resources, hazardous fuel buildups need to be reduced around park buildings and in areas where fire could either enter the parks or move beyond park boundaries, suppression tools such as water sources need to be identified and developed, and tactics need to be planned for safe and efficient actions in case of wildfire. A major purpose of fire management in the national park is to preserve and restore natural and cultural resources that evolved in the presence of fire. Fire is needed as a tool for restoring or managing cultural landscapes that were created by intentional ignitions and to maintain native plants in grasslands that are threatened by invasive nonnative plants and encroachment by woody species. Fires were set in northwestern California in and around the parks by American Indians for a variety of reasons, including increasing acorn production, providing basketry materials, and encouraging new growth of grasses and browse favored by deer and elk that were hunted for food. The Euro-Americans who came into the area after 1850 also set fires to create pastures for livestock and to encourage growth of browse for elk. When fire suppression became a national policy and priority in the 1930s, ecological conditions were fundamentally changed and cultural landscapes that had developed through centuries of natural and human-caused ignitions were altered.

Fire Management Plan, Redwood National and State Parks

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