Current federal wildland fire policy recognizes wildland fire as an important natural process and emphasizes the need to reintroduce fire into ecosystems. The policy also recognizes that hazardous fuel accumulations may need to be reduced on vast acreages of land before fire can safely be returned to wildland ecosystems. Wildland fire and fuel managers have a variety of options for reducing fuels including wildland fire use, management-ignited prescribed fires, thinning, and other mechanical methods. All of these options will need to be exploited to accomplish the task of reducing hazardous fuels and restoring healthy fire-dependent ecosystems. Wildland fire use, while focusing primarily on restoring fire as a natural process and maintaining ecosystems, has the potential to be very effective for managing fuels. It may be the most appropriate strategy in wilderness and in other remote unroaded areas. To effectively implement wildland fire use, wildland fire managers will need to rely on comprehensive fire management plans. The development of these plans should include analyses needed to support the wildland fire use decision and should consider the potential benefits from wildland fire, long-term consequences of management decisions, and impacts of decisions across large landscapes.