Fire Management Plan and Environmental Assessment
Glacier National Park. 2003. Fire Management Plan and Environmental Assessment
The National Park Service (NPS) proposes to develop a new Fire Management Plan for Glacier National Park, Montana. The plan would guide the wildland fire program by providing management direction that would support the accomplishment of resource management and protection objectives. Fuel loadings and tree densities have increased in some areas beyond their range of natural variability. Some park developed areas are now at risk. Stepped-up management intervention is required to reduce fuels that under severe burning conditions could threaten life and property, and to restore the role of fire as a natural disturbance across the Glacier National Park landscape. The current 1991 plan (with a policy update in 1998) contains objectives that allow for wildland fires in certain areas to be managed for resource benefits, limited prescribed fires to meet resource objectives, and limited manual hazard fuels treatments involving cutting and thinning to establish defensible space around values to be protected. Unwanted wildland fires are suppressed. The revised Fire Management Plan would provide strategies that include suppression of unwanted wildland fires, expanding opportunities under a multi-year treatment schedule for increasing the use of prescribed fire to meet resource objectives and improve fuel reduction (mechanical fuel reduction and prescribed burning) treatments that would enhance defensibility around structures. This plan would become the park's component of a joint fire management plan with the Flathead National Forest to maximize cooperation and result in better planning and response to fire activity in the area. Where National Forest Service and National Park Service lands share a common boundary, similar fire management objectives will be met through joint operations and shared positions where possible. The environmental assessment only addresses the NPS portion of the plan.