Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The mission of the Division of Wildland Fire Management is to execute our fiduciary trust responsibility by protecting lives, property, and resources while restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems through cost-effective and creative fire-management programs, collaboration, and promoting Indian self-determination.
In , there were over 2, wildfires that originated on Bureau of Indian Affairs BIA protected lands or nearby private land, resulting in approximately , acres burned. In support of the mission, the Division of Wildland Fire Management DWFM provides wildland fire protection and ecosystem improvement to federal trust lands held in trust for federally-recognized Tribes and individual Indians. Uniquely, the BIA promotes self-determination and self-governance with federally-recognized Tribes through Public Law , which allows those Tribes to operate federal programs, such as wildland fire management programs, as their own to meet Tribal and BIA missions.
The BIA cooperates with other federal, state, county, local government, and Tribal governments to ensure the success of wildland fire management for BIA federal trust lands, providing interagency wildland fire assistance, and assisting with federally-declared disasters through emergency support functions.
Services for Tribal Nations include, but are not limited to, protection of federal trust resources, life, property, and infrastructure. Also, services provide ecosystem improvements, wildland firefighter and safety training, firefighter equipment, fuels management and prescribed fire, fire prevention and ecosystem support such as post-wildfire recovery. In some instances, wildland fire response and protection are not administered by the BIA.
In these areas, the Department of the Interior fulfills its trust responsibilities to Indian Country by formal wildland fire protection agreements with state and federal agencies. Alaska Native allotments, townsites, and villages total over 1. Regardless of how the program is managed, Tribal members work and are involved with the direct protection and management of their natural and cultural resources. The DWFM administers and supports the BIA wildland fire management trust responsibility for federal trust land, held in trust for federally recognized tribes and individual Indians.
