Let neighbors know

• Prescribed fire is carefully planned and applied to forests or grasslands to support specific land management goals. For example, prescribed fire is used to reduce catastrophic wildfire and protect forest biodiversity.
• Prescribed fire is used on specific areas of land, during the right weather conditions, with established boundary lines.




• In Florida, all prescribed fires must be authorized in advance by the Florida Forest Service.
  See a map of all active open burn authorizations.

• Community protection: Florida leads the nation in the use of prescribed fire. By clearing out overgrowth, prescribed fire reduces the risk for catastrophic wildfires and the subsequent devastation to communities.
• Firefighter protection: Because prescribed fires clear out overgrowth, they help ensure that any wildfires that occur in areas that have been recently prescribed burned are less severe and easier for firefighters to control.
• Protection of wildlife that depend on fire: Because of adaptations developed in close association with fire over thousands of years, some animal species depend on periodic fire. Many of these species have become threatened or endangered because of the exclusion of fire.
• Protection of native habitats: Prescribed fire provides openings in the vegetation that many species need, improves nutrient availability as well as fresh plant growth. The practice also controls insects such as ticks and diseases like brownspot fungal infection, which can kill young longleaf pine trees.

The bottom line: Prescribed fire allows us to choose the conditions and areas we burn. This isn’t the case with wildfires, which usually occur in weather conditions that make them hard to control and produce a lot of smoke. Fire has shaped our forests and grasslands for thousands of years, often starting because of lightning or fire used by indigenous people. Prescribed fire allows us to work with this natural process to experience its many benefits.

• All prescribed fires are planned and must be authorized by the Florida Forest Service.
• Prescribed fires may be planned months in advance, but the final decision to burn typically occurs the day before or day-of a prescribed burn. The 24 hours prior to a prescribed burn is when the Florida Forest Service can confirm if weather conditions and other site factors are suitable for authorizing the burn.
• Every prescribed fire is reviewed with Florida’s Smoke Screening Tool. It uses computer models and forecasted weather data to view potential impacts from a predicted smoke plume. If it projects a significant impact to smoke-sensitive areas, such as hospitals, nursing homes, roadways, and airports, the burn plan must be changed.
• Planning a prescribed fire also includes the designation of personnel and firefighting equipment, a map of fire breaks and burn area boundaries, wind speed and direction for surface and transport winds, the mixing height, relative humidity, temperature, fine fuel moisture, and desired fire behavior.

• Get real-time outdoor air quality notifications. If air quality reaches a level of concern for you, limit time outside and close your windows.
• Keep indoor air as clean as possible. Turn on your air conditioner. Most have filters that remove particles in the air. To learn more about filter options, contact your local HVAC professional.
• Follow your doctor’s advice. If you have asthma or another lung disease, follow your doctor’s advice about taking medicine or other steps to avoid symptoms.

• Florida wildlife has relied on and adapted to fire for millennia. The majority know exactly how to stay safe during burns. They fly away, climb trees, burrow, go into stump holes, or retreat to wetlands.
• On occasion, individual animals may perish. However, the resulting habitat improvements from prescribed fire remain highly valuable because they help ensure the survival of wildlife species overall.
• The bigger threat to many species of Florida wildlife is fire exclusion – active efforts to put out and stop all fire. In areas where prescribed burns are not conducted, overgrowth is left unchecked and smothers native plant species that serve as food and habitat for wildlife. Overgrowth also eliminates open ground conditions that many species rely on for their habitats. Two examples are bobwhite quail, which lose the ability to walk through and forage in overgrown forest floors, and Bachman’s sparrows, which need recently burned areas to nest.