These proceedings summarize the results of a symposium designed to address current issues of agencies with wildland fire protection responsibility at the federal and state levels in the United States as well as agencies in the international community. The topics discussed at the symposium included fire economics, theoretical and methodological approaches to strategic fire planning, wildland fires and sustainable forest management, incorporation of market and nonmarket economic evaluation techniques into fire management planning, public policies and wildland fires, tradeoffs between fuel treatment and suppression activities, and global and regional vision of the wildland fire problem. Representatives from international organizations with fire protection responsibilities in 14 countries presented and discussed their experiences on the same issues. Fifty-five invited and contributed papers and 20 posters were presented at the symposium that described the issues and presented state-of-the-art techniques to address technical issues on fire economics, planning, and policy currently faced by land and fire managers.