Wildfires can occur because of lightning or human causes. While human causes are the source of over 87% of total fires, lightning accounts for over 54% of total acres burned. The U.S. West has seen an increase in fire size and frequency, driven by drought, high levels of federal or non-working forest ownership, and more remote acreage. In the U.S. South, weather, ownership, and access typically enable a more effective wildfire response. As climate change risks further increases in wildfire, mitigation measures and coordination across ownerships become increasingly important. Wildfire behavior can be influenced by weather, amount of readily combustible fuels, lack of moisture, and topography, and when the conditions are right, can increase fire severity and damage to the environment. The strongest mitigation tool for wildfire risk is to reduce the amount of fuel that is readily available in the understory, midstory, and overstory through thinning, prescribed fire, maintained fuel breaks, and strategically placed landscape-level fuels treatments. These timberland management treatments have also been proven to improve forest health and biodiversity benefits. In addition, a forest with age-class diversity changes the fuels and provides natural landscape breaks through younger stands.

Unmanaged lands typically have overstocked forests that provide significant ladder fuels, increasing the threat of crown fires. Ladder fuels provide continuous vertical fuels for the fire to climb from the forest floor to the canopy and become a crown fire. Insect and disease damage is also more prevalent in overcrowded forests, increasing readily combustible fuels. Crown fires are extremely challenging to stop using direct firefighting efforts and control is often accomplished through breaking fuel availability in the predicated path of the fire. This can mean the difference between a fire burning tens of thousands of acres in unmanaged timberlands, compared to hundreds of acres in managed or working timberland. Efforts are underway to improve the forest health in unmanaged lands. Good Neighbor Authority enables federal land managers to enter into agreements with state governments to implement projects focused around restoring or improving overall forest health through treatments that target reducing hazardous fuels. Idaho Shared Stewardship establishes a policy for shared management by federal land managers with states, tribes, and other landowners to manage fire rick through a set of shared priorities. In addition, it calls for coordination among federal, state, tribal and local assets for wildfire prevention, suppression, and post-wildfire restoration, and for action to be taken to remove hazardous fuels and increase active management. Working forest owners are also engaging in policy solutions to review and update federal wildfire suppression with an eye toward improving interagency coordination and alignment around wildfire suppression, including decisions about initial attack, fire management, and the use of specific firefighting strategies.

In Idaho, we have implemented heightened measures to prevent fires, minimize damage from fires and to protect our timberlands from loss. In 2021, approximately 1,000 acres of our timberlands in Idaho and 500 acres in the U.S. South were impacted by wildfire. Overall, the state of Idaho had 1,332 fires in 2021 which impacted 439,660 acres of public and private land. In our four southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, there were a total of 2,847 fires that burned a combined 70,398 acres.