Fueling Conservation, New Agreement Around Wildfire Management and Restoration
Partner engagement is needed to implement new fuels and fire management agreement between the Bureau of Land Management and Intermountain West Joint Venture.
Building on seven years of success founded on innovative intra-agency agreements, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Intermountain West Joint Venture (IWJV) are kicking off the next level of their partnership. This upcoming work will have an increased focus on wildfire risk reduction and fuels management throughout sagebrush country. This funding will continue to support and grow the work the BLM and IWJV have been implementing throughout sagebrush habitat for sage-grouse and other wildlife while also addressing wildfire and invasive annual grass threats that are impacting many rural communities.
The BLM and the IWJV entered into a formal intra-agency agreement in 2016 to implement cross-boundary conservation on sagebrush rangelands. This collaboration is known as Partnering to Conserve Sagebrush Rangelands. A second intra-agency agreement was signed in 2019 to build on the work of the first agreement. These agreements encourage the BLM, IWJV, and diverse partners (federal agencies, state fish and wildlife agencies, private landowners, Tribes, and the energy industry) to work together to support habitat conservation efforts.
In early 2023, the IWJV and BLM finalized a third agreement to expand upon their existing work together as well as focus on the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy goals:
Can we support your work with field capacity, technical transfer of science, or communications with this fuels agreement?
Please reach out to Mandi Hirsch (mandi.hirsch@iwjv.org) with questions and inquiries.
A. Resilient Landscapes - Landscapes, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries are resilient to fire, insect, disease, invasive species and climate change disturbances, in accordance with management objectives.
B. Fire Adapted Communities - Human populations and infrastructure area as prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire.
C. Safe, Effective, Risk-based Wildfire Response - All jurisdictions participate in making and implementing safe, effective, efficient risk-based wildfire management decisions.
This work will continue to advance one of the long-time focuses of the IWJV’s and BLM’s collaborations: Restoring lands to resiliency in the face of climate change and to combat the spread of invasive annual grasses and catastrophic wildfires. Investment of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds for fire planning and fuels management in this partnership will help to increase the BLM’s ability to reduce wildfire risk and enhance restoration within the sagebrush and pinyon-juniper biomes.
To achieve this the IWJV and BLM are committed to the following:
Growing Field-level Support – This will expand the Sage Capacity Team with new non-federal positions that focus on wildfire resiliency, wildfire risk reduction, community assistance, and invasive annual grass expertise.
Increasing Communications – This will support increased communications and outreach efforts related to BLM and partner accomplishments and success stories of fuels and fire management in rangeland ecosystems.
Technical Transfer of Science – This will enhance science delivery and technical transfer to better focus fuels management implementation, assess conservation outcomes of fuels management projects, and continually improve program delivery.
All of this is made possible by building partnerships, which is the bread and butter of IWJV’s operations. We will be engaging partners through integrating financial, technical, and other resources for long-term biological and social outcomes. We will also be seeking opportunities to work with and support Tribes and underserved communities.
