Fire: A Global Conservation Issue. In many places, fires are behaving differently now than they have throughout history, primarily as a result of human actions. Altered fire regimes can undo decades of progress in conservation. Here you will find guidance, tools and data to incorporate fire considerations into conservation planning, implementation and measures.

This page will help you access global, country-, regional- and ecoregion-level information and resources related to fire and conservation.

For conservationists, fire represents both a threat and a conservation strategy. Fire-sensitive ecosystems have not evolved with fire as a significant, recurring process. As a result, fires can damage or destroy plants and animals that are not adapted to fire. On the other hand, many places with high biodiversity value did evolve with fire and require this ecological process for normal ecosystem functioning. Where this is the case, land managers sometimes need to use prescribed fire to restore and maintain fire-dependent ecosystems.

Fire-dependent ecoregions cover about 53% of the earth’s global terrestrial area; fire-sensitive ecosystems cover 22% and fire-independent ecoregions cover 15% (the remaining 10% has not been assessed). Fire-dependent, fire-sensitive and fire-independent ecosystems can all be threatened by too much or the wrong kind of fire.

Information about fire regime attributes and their integrity rankings, the degree of fire-related threats, current fire regime conditions relative to ecological baselines (e.g., available from LANDFIRE data), and metrics for measuring conservation results (e.g., Fire Regime Condition Class)should be an integral part of ecoregional and conservation action planning.

Fire regime attributes include fire frequency, fire severity, fire season, fire size and others. Fire-related threats not only include direct fire exclusion, but also fire use for land clearing and agriculture, arson, rural and urban development and climate change. Taking action to achieve conservation goals should include, where applicable, implementation of Integrated Fire Management, fire and land management policy reform, building fire capacity, and scientifically assessing the ecological roles of fire and conditions of fire regimes in fire-dependent, fire-sensitive and fire-independent ecosystems.

Global Fire Information

• Global Fire Data and reports from the Global Fire Partnership

Regional and Country Fire Information

• Regional Fire Assessments

• U.S.: Reports, data and tools from LANDFIRE

Fire Management Resources

• Reports, websites and networks supporting fire management

What's New

Visit the News page on tncfire.org

Contact Us

TNC's Global Fire Initiative

Conservation by Design Gateway