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Document

Type: Report
Author(s): Rhiley Allbee; Eytan Krasilovsky
Publication Date: 2019

Over a century of fire exclusion and suppression has led to negative impacts for fire-adapted ecosystems across New Mexico through the increasing prevalence of uncharacteristically large and severe fires that threaten lives, property, forests, wildlife, and clean water. Wildfires can be reduced in severity and made easier to manage by reducing the density and connectivity of trees within forests and reducing the prevalence of dense forests across landscapes. The pace and scale of forest management needs to increase in order to reduce the threats of large, high severity wildfires, most notably within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and on private lands. Both the need to reduce the threat of wildfires by changing fire behavior, and the need to return fire as an ecological process, are addressed through prescribed burning. Within the WUI, where homes are interspersed throughout naturally vegetated areas, prescribed burning is more difficult and complex. Liability and insurance are two elements that make prescribed burning on private lands difficult, especially within the WUI. This report is an update to Controlled Burning on Private Land in New Mexico, a report from 2017 by the Forest Stewards Guild in partnership with Promise PCES LLC. That report used the term “controlled burning” instead of “prescribed fire” or “prescribed burning.” While these terms are interchangeable, this report uses the more standardized professional terms “prescribed fire” or “prescribed burning.” That report reviewed some of the key organizational and legal issues that created barriers to prescribed burning on private lands in New Mexico and identified opportunities and practices to facilitate the increase of prescribed burning. This report reviews progress made since the 2017 report, and highlights programs, approaches, and opportunities that are currently helping to expand the use of prescribed burning on private lands in New Mexico.

Online Links
Link to this document (1.1 MB; pdf)
Citation: Allbee, Rhiley; Krasilovsky, Eytan. 2019. Prescribed fire on private land in New Mexico. Forest Stewards Guild. 16 p.

Cataloging Information

Regions:
Keywords:
  • controlled burning
  • landowners
  • New Mexico
  • private lands
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 60859