In 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires introduced millions of people on the East Coast to the eerie, orange haze and poor air quality that have become an all too familiar reality in the West. Over the past two decades, wildfires have grown larger, burned longer, and caused more destruction, pushing many western states—and the country—to the brink.

Recognizing the need for a new approach, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) released the “Wildfire Crisis Strategy and Implementation Plan” in January 2022. With it, the USFS will prioritize fuels-reduction work across public-private property boundaries on 21 landscapes that have the highest risk of community exposure to wildfire.

To protect these communities, the agency will work with a wide range of tribes, local governments, private landowners, and conservation organizations to treat all lands, regardless of designation. As one of the USFS’s leading implementation partners, the National Forest Foundation conducted ten roundtables among these groups in 2022 to strengthen opportunities for collaboration and identify actions for group members to take.

Over the next decade, the NFF will work alongside the USFS to reduce wildfire risk across 11 landscapes, restoring these forests and their natural fire regimes.

The strategy’s focus on cross-boundary partnerships and landscape-level treatments offers a promising answer to the urgency and scale of the current moment. Just as important, it lays the groundwork for sustained investment in work that will keep communities safe and forests healthy for future generations.

Cover photo by U.S. Forest Service

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