Wildland fires are a natural component of the ecosystems where hundreds of thousands of Oregonians have chosen to live. Long-term exclusion of fires and land use change in these ecosystems have greatly increased the chances of large, hard to control fires that kill most trees. Further attempts to exclude fires from these forests are costly and often largely unsuccessful.
For these reasons, forest and fire management agencies and communities are intensely focused on the near-term priority of mechanically reducing fuels as a critical first step in longer-term efforts to manage fire-prone forests in safer, more sustainable ways.