AMERICAN FORESTS emphasizes that communities can and should play an active role in addressing the threat of wildfire in their regions.

Maintenance Agenda (ERMA) presents the organization's core values and principles for forest stewardship and management. An important part of the Agenda is community-based forestry, the practice of communities planning, implementing, and monitoring actions that contribute to healthy forest ecosystems and to healthy local economies. AMERICAN FORESTS and its community-based forestry partners believe communities can take direct actions to restore and maintain forests, while at the same time allowing residents to make a living off the land.

Here are a few forest-management tools that local communities can use to restore nearby woodlands and reduce the risk of their towns or cities being devastated by catastrophic wildfire.

Thinning: By removing small-diameter trees and woody debris from forests, communities can reduce the risk of wildfire. This can be done by individuals on private land and by contractors working on state and federal forests. Thinning hazardous fuels in the urban/wildland interface, areas where forests and human development meet, is especially important. Thinning hazardous fuels will help restore the forest ecology, reduce the risk of wildfire, and create jobs for local workers.
Prescribed burning - When conducted properly, prescribed burning can be an effective management tool for reducing hazardous fuel loads and the threat of wildfire. In many areas, thinning must be completed before prescribed burns can be conducted safely.
Restoration and rehabilitation - Planting trees in areas scorched by destructive wildfire reduces soil erosion on hills and protects waterways from sedimentation. Trees also provide habitat for an array of wildlife. Again, this practice helps restore forest ecosystems and generate jobs for the local workforce.
American Forests has proposed goals to guide the federal approach. These include protecting communities and key ecological resources from the threat of wildland fire in the short term, while restoring ecosystems to conditions in which wildfire plays a regenerative rather than destructive role. Open collaboration with a broad range of interest groups and organizations, commitment to monitoring and to learning and corrective action, and promoting a locally based restoration economy are other important principles that should guide federal action.

It is important to remember that the build-up of hazardous fuels in our nation's forests occurred over a long period of time. It will take time, most likely, decades to restore these forest ecosystems.