Fire management in the North Fork of the Flathead River, Montana: an example of a fully integrated interagency fire management program
Bunnell DL and Zimmerman TT. 1998. Fire management in the North Fork of the Flathead River, Montana: an example of a fully integrated interagency fire management program. Pages 274-279. In Pruden TL and Brennan LA: Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference Proceedings, No. 20. Tall Timbers Research Station, Tallahassee, FL. Fire in ecosystem management: shifting the paradigm from suppression to prescription
As natural resource managers place greater emphasis on an ecosystem-based planning and management strategy, the application of prescribed fire is receiving increasing importance. However, protection needs and social, political, and economic concerns necessitate the maintenance and expansion of highly efficient wildfire suppression capabilities. Restoration of fire as an essential ecological process in conjunction with the maintenance and development of a highly effective suppression organization is desirable and supported by the recently completed Federal Wildland Fire Policy and Program Review. It is necessary to effectively balance both important programmatic aspects of fire management, full integration of available management options where all functions are planned for, implemented, and evaluated. In 1994, fire management activities along the North Fork of the Flathead River in northwestern Montana clearly illustrate how a fully integrated interagency fire management program can accomplish a range of objectives through the application of available fire management options. This paper describes how the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and Montana Department of State Lands cooperatively and concurrently implemented prescribed fire strategies for: (1) management of ignited and prescribed natural fire; (2) initial attack suppression programs consistent with general land management plans; (3) implementation of individual fire assessment processes of Escaped Fire Situation Analysis (EFSA) and fire situation analysis (FSA) procedures to direct the judicious assignment of critical resources and economically efficient actions of aggressive control; and (4) containment and confinement of wildfires during a peak season of local, regional, and national wildfire activity.
- Type
- Conference Proceeding Paper
- Authors
- Bunnell, David; Zimmerman, T.
- Units
- CRCO , GLAC
- Keywords
- fire management, fire suppression, flathead river, north fork, prescribed fires, wildfire, wildland fire