The Vision

Extinguish fires when needed

Where wildfires are unwanted or threaten lives, communities and homes, actively utilize all available strategies and tools to suppress fires and its growth.

Use fire where allowable

Utilize prescribed fire and managed wildfire for landscape and ecosystem benefit in the right place, at the right time, under the right conditions.

Manage our natural resources

Use and expand non-fire, cross boundary fuels treatments to increase landscape and community resiliency.

Learn to live with wildland fire

We all have a role in our wildland fire system. We must redeem our individual, community and organizational responsibilities as part of this integrated system.

Annual Prairie Fire, Flint Hills, Kansas by Ryan Donnell.
Annual Prairie Fire, Flint Hills, Kansas by Ryan Donnell.
The Cohesive Strategy pushes us to challenge our current and historical approaches to our rapidly changing wildfire realities and reach beyond our individual silos and jurisdictions to collectively:

  • Define and understand risk
  • Collaboratively set landscape level and community-wide priorities
  • Share and co-manage risk across boundaries and jurisdictions
  • Accept some short-term risk for long-term benefit
  • Collectively invest in outcome-based approaches and activities, rather than outputs

As we stand on the precipice of a new wildland fire paradigm, we have the opportunity to define it,
not be defined by it. 

The Western Region

The Western Region is chartered to the Wildland Fire Leadership Council and charged with facilitating implementation of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. Utilizing a network approach, the Western Regional Strategy Committee facilitates learning and understanding of what the Cohesive Strategy is, and what it looks like at local, state, Tribal and federal levels.

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A Better Way to Think About Wildland Fires

This video explores what makes fire in the West unique, and demonstrates the importance and benefits of healthy fire to forest ecosystems.

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