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In 2009, new guidance for wildland fire management in the United States expanded the range of strategic options for managers working to reduce the threat of high-severity wildland fire, improve forest health and respond to a changing climate. Markedly, the new guidance provided greater flexibility to manage wildland fires to meet multiple resource objectives. We use Incident Status Summary reports to understand how wildland fire management strategies have differed across the western US in recent years and how management has changed since the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. When controlling for confounding variation, we found the 2009 Policy Guidance along with other concurrent advances in fire management motivated an estimated 27 to 73% increase in the number of fires managed with expanded strategic options, with only limited evidence of an increase in size or annual area burned. Fire weather captured a manager’s intent and allocation of fire management resources relative to burning conditions, where a manager’s desire and ability to suppress is either complemented by fire weather, at odds with fire weather, or put aside due to other priorities. We highlight opportunities to expand the use of strategic options in fire-adapted forests to improve fuel heterogeneity.

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The long-term outcome from accelerated forest restoration using resource objective wildfire in combination with fuel management on fire-excluded landscapes is not well studied. We used simulation modeling to examine long-term trade-offs and synergies of alternative land management strategies by combining two wildfire management alternatives with three levels of contemporary forest restoration treatments on a 778,000-ha landscape over 56 years. We found that managing wildfires for resource objectives diminished the likelihood of irregular fire events over time by making wildfire activity more predictable. Overall, adding resource objective wildfire reduced the proportion of high-severity fire in relation to total area burned, but increased total area burned and the area of high-severity fire. We also found resource objective wildfire changed the distribution of high-severity burn patches by increasing their total number and range, their likelihood of containing disjunct core areas, and their edge complexity. The results suggested that alongside the current pace of active forest management, expanding the fire footprint to achieve lowcost restoration carries the potential for increased high-severity fire and associated impacts to ecological values including old forest structure and wildlife habitat.Concurrently, adding resource objective wildfire expanded the footprint of conventional restoration treatments by fivefold, and restoration objectives were achieved in 25 years when managing resource objective wildfires alongside restoration treatments five times the current pace. This study demonstrates the first fire suppression model to replicate local decision making by fire managers during simulated fire events to manage risk by considering both fire proximity to values at risk, and daily weather conditions. The study paves the way for further investigations of the synergies between wildfires and conventional forest restoration to improve resiliency in fire-excluded pine forests.