United States Department of the Interior
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
NATIONAL INTERAGENCY FIRE CENTER
3833 SOUTH DEVELOPMENT AVENUE
BOISE, IDAHO 83705-5354

March 27, 2009

Memorandum
To: All Regional Directors, All Regions
Attention: Forestry/Fire Management
From: Acting Director, Branch of Wildland Fire Management\/ ~ ‘A aa
Subject: peated Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management
Policy

Last year the Wildland Fire Leadership Council agreed to key changes in the way we implement
federal wildland fire policy. To facilitate those changes, the Fire Executive Council (FEC) has
approved the attached Guidance for Implementation of the Federal Wildland Fire Management
Policy to ensure consistent implementation of Review and Update of the 1995 Federal Wildland
Fire Management Policy — 2001 (1995/2001 Federal Fire Policy). An advanced copy of this
memorandum and the guidance document has been sent to the Regional Fire Management
Officers via email.

The following elements remain unchanged in the 2009 revision and will continue to guide our
implementation of federal wildland fire policy:

© The 1995/2001Federal Fire Policy is affirmed to be sound and the Guiding Principles
and Policy Statements provide clear direction for the Federal wildland fire management
program.

« Any management response to a wildland fire on federal land will continue to be based on
objectives established in the applicable Land/ Resource and/or Fire Management Plan
and the response defined in existing plans may be followed until they are reviewed,
amended or updated to reflect revised guidance.

e There is no change in the objective for initial attack actions on human-caused wildfire —
we will continue to suppress these fires to minimize negative consequences with respect
to firefighter and public safety.


In the revised guidance document you will encounter the following changes:
¢ Terminology has changed - Wildland fire is a term describing any non-structure fire that
occurs in the wildland. Wildland fires are categorized into two distinct types:
o Wildfires — Unplanned ignitions and planned ignitions that are declared wildfires.
The wildfire term is to be applied to all unplanned ignitions, including events
formally termed wildland fire use.
o Prescribed fires — Planned ignitions

e A wildland fire may be concurrently managed for one or more objectives and those
objectives can change as the fire spreads across the landscape, encountering new fuels,
weather, social conditions, and governmental jurisdictions.

In addition, the revised guidance reaffirms the need to work collaboratively with state, local and
tribal fire managers as well as public and nongovernmental organizations in the management of
wildland fire. It also emphasizes the need to conduct fire management planning which is
intergovernmental in scope and at landscape scale, and help prepare for the eventuality of
wildland fire crossing jurisdictional boundaries.

The federal wildland fire agencies are working together to develop unified direction and
guidance for agency/bureau manuals, directives, handbooks, guidebooks, plans, agreements and
other pertinent documents to complete final implementation of this guidance. We are revising
and developing accountability standards, performance measures, and monitoring systems to
assess if resource and protection objectives are met during the management of wildland fires. We
recognize this will not happen overnight and realistically look for this to be a 3-5 year process.
We will be working with you and your staff to make this transition successful.

For further information, please contact Dennis Dupuis at 208.387.5041, Dalan Romero at
208.387.5372 or Mary Taber at 208.387.5042.

Attachment