Fire Management

Fire engines are only one of the tools firefighters can use in managing fire

The fire management program’s primary goal is protecting life and property from destructive wildfires. The program also reintroduces fire on the park's landscape to help maintain ecosystem processes and forest health. The program currently employs three management strategies to reach its goals.

Fire Management Strategies

Fire Suppression

Most fires at Crater Lake are managed for full-suppression objectives. All fire management actions are implemented with firefighter and public safety as the highest priority.

Approximately 122,000 acres of Crater Lake National Park are managed as Wilderness. Lightning fires may be managed for less than full suppression in these particular areas, under specific conditions. Factors such as location, seasonality, fire behavior, current and predicted weather, air quality, and available fire resources are used to determine the ability to manage these fires.

Manual Fuel Reduction

The removal of concentrations of vegetation and dead woody material adjacent to areas susceptible to undesirable fire behavior, such as around structures and along road corridors. Trees may be limbed, thick clumps of small trees may be thinned, and downed logs and large branches may be cut into smaller pieces with hand tools or chainsaws. The cut material is then piled. Once sufficient rain and snow have fallen, the piles are burned by fire management personnel. Past, present and future manual fuels reduction projects can be viewed along the Highway 62 and North Entrance Road corridors within the park.

Prescribed Fire

Prescribed fires are ignited by management to achieve specific resource or fuels management objectives. In some forest types, such as ponderosa pine, it is necessary to return and retreat these areas with low-intensity prescribed fire in order to maintain forest health and diversity.

Prescribed fire can be an effective tool to reduce fuels from the path of a future wildfire, which in turn will reduce fire behavior and reduce threats to values at risk.

Prescribed fires must be described in a prescribed fire burn plan. The plan will contain a prescription defining goals, objectives, and treatment methods employed to achieve the objectives. The park employs methods to monitor areas before and after treatment to ensure that fire management operations are meeting resource management objectives