Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy
Northeast Region
Helicopter flies over a forest fire.
Pagami Creek Fire, Superior NF, Minnesota, September 2011. (Photo: Kari Greer)

Resilient Landscapes - Fire-Adapted Communities - Safe and Effective Wildfire Response  
The Northeast Regional Strategy Committee (NE RSC) provides executive leadership, coordination, and guidance to carry out the Northeast Regional Action Plan while providing a forum for members to guide strategic direction for fire and land management activities. The NE RSC continues to collaboratively recognize, support, and help with National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy goals and implementation efforts.

Brad Simpkins, New Hampshire State Forester
In This Issue
Northeast Region Cohesive Strategy Key Contacts

Chair

Chief Fire Warden

Mass. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation

 

Maureen Brooks

Vice-Chair

U.S. Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF

 

Larry Mastic

Coordinator, Northeast Region

Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy

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June 2017

10 Years Later: Wisdom Grown from Ashes of the Warren Grove Fire  
Amanda Oglesby, Asbury Park Press

May 15, 2017

A tree burns in a forest fire.
The May 2007 Warren Grove fire scorched more than 17,000 acres of Pinelands and destroyed 5 homes. (Staff video still by Thomas P. Costello)

BARNEGAT, NJ  ---     Ten years have passed since an epic wildfire engulfed homes in the adult community where Marlene Lazaro resides, upended lives in southern Ocean County for days, and left behind enduring lessons.

What the 77-year-old Barnegat woman experienced during the five days the Warren Grove fire ravaged the region still causes worry when Lazaro leaves her Brighton home.

"I cried when I saw how close the fire had come to the back of the house," she recalled of the moment she returned home after a three-day evacuation. "It was like 50 feet from the back of my house it stopped."

Her neighbors a block away were not so lucky. Their homes were gone.

The fire was so massive and disruptive that today locals still refer to it by name   ---      the Warren Grove fire, named after the Air National Guard's Warren Grove bombing range, where the blaze began.

Megan's Corner
 

LANDFIRE logo. Notes from Megan Sebasky, Northeast LANDFIRE Coordinator

June 2017

I am still focused on gathering data and feedback for the LANDFIRE Remap as it provides a unique opportunity to contribute to changes in the underlying data, and the clock is ticking! I have received many leads on vegetation plot and disturbance polygon data throughout the Northeast states - thank you! Several of the datasets we have submitted and will submit are listed at the end of this post. Please continue to send ideas, and I will be tracking how datasets are implemented in the Remap. Think outside the forest box ---    what about wetlands or other vegetation types that need improvement?

Community Wildfire Protection Plan Leader's Guide Just Released
[Editor's Note: The International Association of Fire Chiefs' Wildland Fire Policy Committee recently produced this guide to give leaders in the fire service advice on how to help their communities produce a Community Wildfire Protection Plan.]
Publication cover A Fire Service Leader's Guide to Preparing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
This is a guide to help develop and implement a Community Wildfire Preparedness Plan (CWPP) in communities and across the country. It has a local community-level approach to include code, development review, ordinances, and local authority, and is used by leaders in the Fire Service, including subject matter experts and local, state, and federal officials. With this guide, leaders in the Fire Service will be able take the steps to create a CWPP that addresses community risk of wildfire with respect to other resource values.
Wildfire Mitigation Guide Available Free Online
TRIGBY@BLM.GOV

June 2, 2017

Cover of a publication called Wildland Urban Interface Wildfire Mitigation Desk Reference Guide. The 2017 version of the Wildland Urban Interface Wildfire Mitigation Desk Reference Guide is now available online. This free guide provides basic background information on helpful programs and terminology for community members or fire departments who are seeking to enhance their community's wildfire mitigation efforts. It is produced by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, providing national leadership in wildland fire among federal, state, tribal, and local partners.

Learn about Community Wildfire Protection Plans, adapting your community to "live with fire," and why individual and community efforts make a difference. For more information, contact your local wildland fire agency or fire department. View or download this publication.

Friendly Fire: Controlled Burns Help Rejuvenate Native Plants and Restore Habitat for Wildlife
[Toledo] Blade Outdoors Editor Matt Markey and
Jeff Basting

May 28, 2017

A prescribed fire burns in a field.
Burns that clear large areas of invasive plants or accumulated brush involve an extensive amount of planning and manpower, along with the cooperation of the wind. (Photo: Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

Fire can be one of the most destructive forces we encounter, as evidenced by the conflagrations that destroy large tracts of forest, scrub, and oftentimes homes in the American west. But fire is also one of nature's most efficient tools, cleansing the landscape to allow a dramatic rebirth to take place.

Forest managers in both Ohio and Michigan use controlled or prescribed burns as an essential partner in their efforts to restore habitat, remove invasive plants, and clear out choking brush that has accumulated on the ground.

Controlled Burn
Sam Houghton, The Mashpee Enterprise

May 12, 2017

People work on a prescribed fire in the New Hampshrie woods.
Fire officials lay the perimeter of the proposed burn area. (Sam Houghton/Enterprise)

Deep in the Mashpee Pine Barrens are two forests. One has been burned; the other has not.

In one, the eye can see much farther. Briars, fallen trees, and other clutter are absent. Faint burn marks wrap around and up the trunks of pine trees about six feet from the forest floor where new vegetation sprouts.

The other forest is thick with clutter. Briars and other invasive vegetation hang from trees. Visibility is poor.

"Look at how far you can see," said the Chief of Mashpee Fire Rescue, Thomas Rullo, pointing to a section of woods that the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe had purposely burned a few years back. Chief Rullo spoke to a small group of local media representatives inside his red SUV that bumped along a dirt road inside the Pine Barrens. "Fires won't progress here nearly as fast now," the chief said.

DNR Prescribed Burns Restore the Land
Chris Hardie, La Crosse Tribune

May 21, 2017

Aerial view of a prescribed fire and plumes of smoke.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources:An aerial view of the prescribed burn at Dike 17.

Let's take a trip back in time  ---      more than 300 years
ago  ---     to before the days of European settlement in Wisconsin. Native Americans lived here, but the state had virtually no agriculture. It was covered in virgin prairie and great forests. It was a true wilderness.

But about every one to three years fires swept through the state's great grasslands  ---      sometimes set by Native Americans and sometimes caused by lightning strikes. And going back eons, even the hardwood forests burned every 500 to 1,000 years.

Read the full prescribed burn article
.
PERFACT - More than a Creative Acronym; A Project Advancing Integrated Fire Management
Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network logo.


PERFACT stands for "Promoting Ecosystem Resilience and Fire Adapted Communities Together." While it's a long and perhaps obscure acronym, the partnership's components will be familiar to many in the fire world. The Fire Learning Network (FLN), the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network (FAC Net), the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network and Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (TREX) are all housed under a cooperative agreement between The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the USDA Forest Service and agencies of the Department of Interior. This partnership has had many different forms and names, the most current being a five-year agreement, PERFACT. The agreement supports advancing and networking dozens of community and landscape collaborations to overcome our national challenges related to living with wildland fire, as did its predecessors.

Eight people pose for a picture in the countryside.
Most of the PERFACT team recently met in Salt Lake City to strategize regarding how to integrate the agreement's various networks and projects. (Photo: Nick Goulette, Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network)

Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System Talking Points
Logo Lake States Fire Science Consortium 
The newly updated Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDS S) version 3.0 was released to the interagency fire community on April 13, 2017. This new version of IFTDSS is a Web-based platform that integrates multiple planning, monitoring, and reporting functions into a single system to facilitate more efficient, effective, and defensible fuels planning. The new IFTDSS represents the first step in a modern fruition of efforts initiated by the NWCG Fuels Management Committee, the Joint Fire Science Program and affirmed by an independent review by the Software Engineering Institute and user feedback supporting the original beta version. Read the talking points.


Joint Meeting NAFSE/Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact
Igniting Exchange Bridgine the Gap Between Science and Management meeting banner.

Get this on your calendar now!

Look for an event Web page soon. Start thinking now about whether you would like to give a talk. This is a great opportunity for managers to show scientists what kind of research would be useful to them and for scientists to explain the usefulness of their research.

Conferences, Meetings, and Training Opportunities

   

Conferences and Meetings

--Regional--

Save the Date!
Northeast Forest Fire Supervisors Annual Meeting
June 19-23, 2017
Hanover, MD

--National-- 
September 18-21, 2017
Charleston, WV

FireVision 20/20: A 20-Year Reflection and Look into the Future
7th International Fire Ecology & Management Congress

Held concurrently with the 2nd Applied Fire Science Workshop
Hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology in cooperation with the Southern Fire Exchange
November 28 - December 2, 2017
Orlando, FL

The Northeast Regional Strategy Committee (NE RSC) delivers articles and stories each month that demonstrate the collaborative efforts of agencies, organizations and communities supporting and promoting the three goals of the Cohesive Strategy: Restoring Resilient Landscapes, Creating Fire Adapted Communities and Responding to Wildfire. 

 

This news update is our primary communication tool with our partners and the public. Looking for more Northeast Region Cohesive Strategy information or past published news update issues? Visit this Web site.

 

Does your agency, organization, or community have a project or event you'd like to see featured in the NE RSC News Update? 

 

Tell us about it! Just contact  Larry Mastic .
Northeastern Area State & Private Forestry | 603-868-7685 | rfitzhenry@fs.fed.us | https://www.na.fs.fed.us
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