US EPA

7292011 

Technical Report 

Wildfire statistics 

Hoover, K; Hanson, LA 

2021 

Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service 

Washington, DC 

CRS In Focus, IF10244 

English 

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
Exit
 

Wildfires are unplanned and unwanted fires, including lightning-caused fires, unauthorized human-caused fires, and escaped prescribed fire projects. States are responsible for responding to wildfires that begin on nonfederal (state, local, and private) lands, except for lands protected by federal agencies under cooperative agreements. The federal government is responsible for responding to wildfires that begin on federal lands. The Forest Service (FS)--within the U.S. Department of Agriculture--carries out wildfire management and response across the 193 million acres of the National Forest System (NFS). The Department of the Interior (DOI) manages wildfire response for more than 400 million acres of national parks, wildlife refuges and preserves, other public lands, and Indian reservations. Wildfire statistics help to illustrate past U.S. wildfire activity. Nationwide data compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) indicate that the number of annual wildfires is variable but has decreased slightly over the last 30 years and that the number of acres impacted annually, while also variable, generally has increased. Since 2000, an annual average of 70,685 wildfires burned an annual average of 7.1million acres. This figure is more than double the average annual acreage burned in the 1990s (3.3 million acres), although a greater number of fires occurred annually in the 1990s (78,600 on average).