Wildfire Risk to Communities is aligned with the goals of two important federal policies and initiatives: the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and Shared Stewardship.

National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is a strategic push to work collaboratively among all stakeholders and across all landscapes, using best science, to make meaningful progress toward three goals:

1. Resilient Landscapes
2. Fire Adapted Communities
3. Safe and Effective Wildfire Response

The vision of the Cohesive Strategy is to safely and effectively extinguish fire when needed; use fire where allowable; manage our natural resources; and as a nation, to live with wildland fire.

Wildfire Risk to Communities aligns with the goals of the Cohesive Strategy by providing communities with wildfire risk data based on the best available science and with resources to help reduce risk. For example, activities to address the home ignition zone and community health can help communities become better fire adapted; wildfire prevention and response measures can strengthen safe, effective wildfire response; and fuel treatments can help make landscapes resilient.

Shared Stewardship

Today’s forest land managers face a range of urgent challenges, among them catastrophic wildfires, more public demand, degraded watersheds, and epidemics of forest insects and disease.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service has a new Shared Stewardship Strategy to address these challenges by working collaboratively to identify priorities for landscape-scale treatments.

Through Shared Stewardship, the Forest Service will work with a variety of partners to do the right work in the right place and at the right scale. By coordinating at the state level to prioritize, the Forest Service will be able to increase the scope and scale of critical forest treatments that support communities and improve forest conditions.