Hazardous Fuels Reduction Management Program

Hazardous Fuels Reduction Management Program is sponsored by Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This program works with BIA regional offices and local agencies to provide funding that reduces hazardous fuels through prescribed fire, mechanical treatments, and the careful use of natural fire.

Fuels Management | Indian Affairs Division of Wildland Fire Management The Division of Wildland Fire Management provides leadership, executive direction, technical assistance and guidance to regional, Tribal and agency fuels management programs. Communities and ecosystems across Indian Country face serious threats from wildfire, insects and disease, invasive species and climate change.

Fuels management actions embrace Tribally-embedded tenets and principles of ecosystem heath, resilience and cultural values that support the maintenance and restoration of Tribal lands by reducing the potential of severe wildfire in forests, woodlands and rangeland ecosystems.

Fuels management programs and priorities supported by the Division of Wildland Fire Management include: Hazardous Fuels Reduction The Fuels Management Program works with the Bureau of Indian Affair’s (BIA) 12 regional offices, local BIA agencies and Tribes to reduce wildfire risk through management of natural and invasive fuels.

Hazardous fuels reduction treatments include prescribed fire, mechanical treatments (such as thinning, regeneration cuts, pruning, mastication, and chipping) and the careful use of natural fire.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, practices, and beliefs that promote environmental sustainability and the responsible stewardship of natural resources through relationships between humans and environmental systems, applied across biological, physical, and cultural systems.

BIA staff work alongside Tribes to blend traditional ecological knowledge with a scientific approach in their fuels management efforts. Reserved Treaty Rights Lands Program The Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) program facilitates collaborative projects between Tribal trust and non-Tribal land managers.

The RTRL program’s intent is to provide Tribes the opportunities to conduct Tribally-determined project work on ancestral lands regardless of ownership to enhance the health and resiliency of priority Tribal natural resources with high risks of wildland fire.

Fuels Management in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law The 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provides over $103 million in funding for wildfire risk reduction , including Indian Country. Ecosystem health, resilience and Tribal cultural values that are heavily embedded within Tribal resource management philosophies. Of the 59 million acres of Indian trust land, more than 8.

6 million acres of forest, woodland and rangelands are high or very high risk of Wildfire. Climate change is jeopardizing 9. 5 million acres of moderate fire risk lands at a quickening pace, transitioning moderate acres to high and very high risk.

Ecologically over 1 million acres of Indian lands need some level of fuels treatment annually.

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