Restoring Beneficial Fire
Our forests are naturally fire-adapted, largely for frequent low and moderate fires. But the current unnatural, high-intensity fires are amongst the gravest threats to our forest landscapes. Almost a century of fire suppression, combined with significant changes in forest structure –which is now dominated by unnaturally dense, young, and homogenous stands—has inadvertently led to more fire risk rather than lowering it. Combined with the stress of climate change, our forests need real investments in restoring more naturally fire-adapted forest conditions, and the policies to support that. Pacific Forest Trust is at the forefront in restoring safer, more natural fire regimes in our forest landscapes, enhancing community safety as well as forest health, climate resilience and ecological function.
We restore beneficial fire through practice, policy, and persistence!
PFT is leading the shift toward more fire management rather than suppression only. Through our innovative policy work which makes fuels reductions and prescribed fire easier and more affordable and our direct demonstrations and practice putting “good fire” back on the landscapes we manage, PFT provides working demonstrations of how to expand “good” fire while reducing fire risks.
Restoring forests to burn safely at low and moderate intensities provides multiple benefits. It decreases the likelihood of the catastrophic megafires that devastate communities. It also improves biodiversity by supporting conditions that our native plant and animal species need to thrive. Additionally, periodic fires recycle nutrients into the soil, provide fine charcoal which holds water in soils and promote the regeneration of native grasses, shrubs and trees as well as maintaining lower, more fire-safe tree densities—all the more important when drought and heat conditions persist.
By reintroducing beneficial fire through careful forest management and prescribed burning while engaging communities in the process, Pacific Forest Trust creates healthier, more resilient forests that can withstand wildfires while providing valuable ecological services like wildlife habitat, clean water, and carbon storage. Our work helps prevent severe wildfire destruction while allowing fire to play its important natural role.
“We hope that other private landowners will take Pacific Forest Trust’s lead and start to deploy fire not just as a tool not just for community protection and habitat restoration, but also as a tool for forest management — Jack Singer, Stewardship Director, RPF #3247 Pacific Forest Trust.
How We Promote the Restoration of Beneficial Fire
Through Coaltions and Advocacy
Pacific Forest Trust recognizes that restoring beneficial fire regimes and building fire-resilient landscapes requires both bold policy innovation and broad-based collaboration. To that end, we unite stakeholders from across the political and interest spectrum and work closely with policymakers to advance pioneering policies that make fuels reduction and prescribed fire more accessible, affordable, and effective.
Our advocacy emphasizes education and engagement of diverse stakeholders—tribal representatives, county governments, public health advocates, environmental justice organizations, and more—to ensure that fire management reflects a wide range of perspectives and needs. Through a strategic partnership with the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation (RLFF), supported by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, we have expanded the coalition of voices calling for comprehensive fire resilience at the landscape scale.
These efforts have helped catalyze major advances in state spending for fire resilience and the enactment of key policy measures. These include expanding training and licensing for “Burn Bosses,” securing insurance for prescribed burns, increasing funding for workforce development, and integrating fire management into broader environmental and climate strategies. By streamlining procedures and facilitating coordination among state, federal, tribal, and local agencies, our initiatives make large-scale, prescribed burns more feasible and impactful.
Together, through coalition-building and targeted advocacy, we are safeguarding communities, restoring ecological integrity, and building a more resilient future in the face of escalating wildfire risks.
Through Practice and Demonstration
PFT “walks the talk” of putting good fire back on the ground, recognizing the critical importance of reintroducing prescribed fire as a management tool to restore ecological vitality, fire resilience, and restore the natural diversity and forest complexity that fire historically maintained. It also just makes good sense: reintroducing low-intensity fire to forests reduces the risk of high-intensity fire by almost 75%. We carry out prescribed burns and restore a fire adapted forest structure to mimic the low-intensity fire impacts that previously cleared out excess fuel loads and promoted healthy forests.
On PFT-managed forestlands, across very different forest types from Ponderosa Pine to Redwood to Mixed Conifer forests, we are demonstrating how to use and scale beneficial fire for all its benefits. In all these forest types, we use controlled burns to promote forest health, increase the safety of surrounding communities, and bolster critical habitat values degraded by past management practices, drought, climate change, and fire suppression.
Giving Fire Back to the Forests, our educational video series, documents the preparation, execution, and early results of our large-scale prescribed burn on the McCloud Soda Springs Working Forest in Siskiyou County, California—the largest controlled burn on private commercial forestland in the state in decades. Filmed on-site, the series highlights how beneficial fire, grounded in science, reduces wildfire risk, restores forest health, and builds public understanding of climate-resilient fire management.