Family Forests: the Missing Link to Solving the Wildfire Crisis
Whether it’s the 2025 Los Angeles fires that devastated huge portions of the nation’s second largest city, the 2022 Marshall fire that jumped across a major highway artery along Colorado’s populated Front Range, or any number of other disasters, today’s wildfires are showing themselves to be more widespread and unpredictable than any time in recent recorded history. And in many cases, these fires are starting and burning not on public lands in the backcountry, but instead on private, family-owned lands near highly populated areas.
These catastrophic wildfires are ravaging communities, incinerating forests, threatening water supplies and other critical infrastructure, and damaging local economies. The data paints an unmistakable picture: wildfires burned nearly 9 million acres of land in the United States in 2024. Nearly half of those acres burned were privately held, oftentimes by family forest landowners. And since 2018, the U.S. has endured 50,000–65,000 wildfires per year, burning 5–10 million acres annually—well above the recent historic averages. These wildfires cause between $394 billion and $893 billion dollars in damages annually, which is equivalent to between 2–4% of U.S. GDP.
The current strategy to reduce the impact of these wildfires is to invest heavily in suppression tactics once they have already started and to focus on mitigating wildfire risks caused by overgrown forests on public lands, like those owned by the U.S. Forest Service or a state government. In fiscal year 2024, the U.S. Forest Service performed science-based wildfire risk reduction treatments on 4.4 million acres of national forest land—an all-time record over the 120-year history of the agency. However, fires follow fuel, not ownership boundaries on a map. We can treat all the public lands we want, but without engaging private forest landowners—those who own the forested lands closest to communities and infrastructure—we will never be able to meaningfully move the needle to reduce wildfire risk and lessen the damage that wildfires cause.
Because family and privately held forestlands are geographically closest to the very structures and values we want to protect, these landowners are in a unique position to play a key role in this fight. Family forest owners steward the majority of U.S. forests near where people live. They border populated communities like towns and cities, making them the first line of defense for millions of people and critical urban infrastructure. This makes family forest owners invaluable partners in the fight against catastrophic wildfire. Many of these landowners have already stepped up to restore their lands and protect their neighbors, and this population is poised to contribute in even greater ways, if given the right tools and support.
However, at present, most family forest owners lack the resources and capacity to manage fuels and mitigate wildfire danger on their own, creating urgent risk in areas near rural and urban communities and infrastructure. The type of science-based restoration that will truly return a forest to a more wildfire-resilient condition is difficult and expensive. More so than public lands in the backcountry, treatment projects on private lands need to work around homes, outbuildings, utility lines, roads, and any number of other obstacles that are time-consuming and challenging for forestry professionals to navigate. This is especially true in places like California, where 14.3 million acres are classified as high or very high wildfire hazard potential. Of these, 5.7 million acres are privately owned. Treatments in these privately owned high hazard areas can cost up to $5,000 per acre, and a typical project can cost up to $100,000 - a monumental up-front cost that many family forest owners cannot afford.
To make matters even more challenging, proactive treatments rarely generate any additional income for the rural Americans working to protect their forests. The small-diameter trees removed to reduce fire risk typically have little or no commercial value—and when they must be hauled hundreds of miles to the nearest mill, any potential revenue quickly disappears. This means that these private landowners, who are essential to tackling the wildfire crisis, are usually left to pay for and implement these treatments on their own. The cost of these projects is daunting for any private landowner. Simply put, the upfront cost of wildfire resilience and forest restoration treatments on private lands is a major barrier to implementing this work on a scale that can create meaningful changes in disaster-prone landscapes.
And while there is a key existingset of state and federal programs to fund this work, we know from experience that one-off grants—both public and private—are not enough to reliably equip family landowners with the resources and tools they need to maximize their positive impact on lives, livelihoods, and landscapes. While an important piece of the overall funding puzzle, the number of resources available through these existing government programs come nowhere close to matching the true need across America’s privately held forestlands. If we’re going to meet the moment, we need a strategic approach that combines science-based tools with smart policy solutions, complemented by multiple funding streams, to make proactive treatment for wildfire accessible and affordable to private landowners.
Everyone has a role to play here—because everyone is affected by wildfire. Federal and state partners can provide grant programs and other cost-share support that mitigate the financial burden of wildfire treatment for private landowners. Utilities providers can provide upfront investment for fuels treatment to protect their infrastructure and the communities that rely upon their services. And policymakers can pass legislation that establishes credit enhancement mechanisms to unlock new market access for family landowners - including innovative new markets for water, carbon, and other values that are additional to traditional forest product markets.
The nation’s leading scientists and forestry professionals are telling us that, now more than ever, private landowners play a critical role in our ability to mitigate the catastrophic damage that wildfires can have on communities, economies, and our lands. We now know what types of partnerships and investments it will take to restore these lands. Proactive wildfire treatments on family lands, completed in tandem with those on public lands, have the potential to create large-scale landscapes resilient to catastrophic wildfire, with dramatically improved conditions for wildlife, water resources, and other key values for communities. It’s up to us to work together to create the enabling conditions for family landowners to take this work to the next level—work that will protect our forests, our communities, and the rural way of life that so many Americans hold dear.