Burned Area Rehabilitation

The Burned Area Rehabilitation Program supports efforts to repair or improve burned landscapes unlikely to recover without human assistance.

A recently burned area showing burned trees and blackened soil.

A recently burned area. Photo by USGS. 

Quick Facts

$10 million: money spent by this program in Fiscal Year 2024

Examples of recent burned area rehabilitation work: 

  • Repaired more than than 208 miles of trails in national parks after wildfires in California, North Carolina, and Washington.
  • Seeded over 800 acres of sagebrush steppe rangeland with native plant species in BLM's Oregon Lakeview District after the Willow Creek Fire burned through roughly 800 acres in sagebrush habitat commonly used by pronghorn antelope, mule deer, and elk in Klamath County. 
  • Planted 30,000 native Hawaiian plants after the Central Maui wildfire burned 9,000 acres on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
  • Collected 10 million pounds of 31 different native plant and shrub species seeds from 92 collection locations in Nevada. Seeds are planted in production fields to supply crucial native species seeds and plants for post-fire replanting and seeding. 
  • Restored native plants after a wildfire burned in the Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site on Hawaiʻi Island

Why is Rehabilitation Important?

Fire plays a natural and necessary role in many landscapes. Periodic low-intensity fires speed up forest decomposition and deliver nutrients to remaining plants. They build resilience to future fires by reducing vegetation and creating a mosaic of burned, partially burned, and unburned areas, which makes it less likely that future fires will torch an entire landscape. Some trees, like lodgepole pine, require the heat of flames to open their cones and disperse new seeds.

Not all landscapes react to fire in the same way. Sometimes wildfire burns so hot it incinerates everything over a large area, including the plant roots and other organic matter that stabilize the topsoil. This type of disturbance leaves an area vulnerable to erosion by floods or mudslides that can delay plant recovery for decades (or longer), reduce water quality, and possibly damage homes. Invasive plants pose another threat; if they outcompete native plants, they can transform a landscape and negatively affect people’s livelihoods, recreation, and wildlife.

In the first five years after a wildfire, our rehabilitation efforts work to prevent these problems and jump-start the landscape recovery process by:

  • Spreading native plant seeds or planting native seedlings. 
  • Applying herbicides to kill invasive plants, removing them by hand, or introducing bacteria to control them.
  • Using heavy equipment to disrupt the growth of targeted plant species or contour landscapes to control runoff.

This program also funds the repair or replacement of minor infrastructure damaged by a wildfire, such as small trail bridges, handrails, campgrounds, boat ramps, stock tanks, or informational kiosks.

Evaluation

The Department of the Interior assesses the effectiveness of rehabilitation treatments, frequently in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest Service, and other scientific institutions. This U.S. Geological Survey study serves as an example of these types of assessments. 

 

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