Wildfires are ravaging our communities, forests, economies, and livelihoods. 

Catastrophic wildfires threaten lives, water supplies, infrastructure, and rural landscapes and economies. 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. These fires often originate on or cross private lands, yet the resulting destruction—insurance payouts, taxpayer-funded suppression, health costs, and infrastructure damage—is shared widely by the public. 

Family-owned forests play a critical role in reducing wildfire risk and severity, protecting American lives, livelihoods, and landscapes. 

We cannot win the fight against wildfire through treating public lands alone. Family forests, the lands that often border populated communities, are the first line of defense against the devastation that wildfires bring to towns, cities, and critical infrastructure. Science-based restoration of family-owned forests plays a critical role in reducing wildfire risk and severity – protecting American lives, livelihoods, and landscapes.

But family forest owners alone can’t solve this on their own. Treating forests for wildfire resilience and mitigation is extremely expensive; in California alone, treatment can cost up to $5,000 per acre. Family landowners cannot cover the expenses needed to make a meaningful impact against wildfires. Traditional forms of funding are insufficient to address the wildfire crisis at this catastrophic scale. 

We need to unlock public and private investment in family lands to protect our forests and communities. 

Wildfire treatments, while important for family landowners to keep their forests intact, are expensive, difficult, and do not provide any additional revenue streams for rural Americans. This makes incentivizing landowners to pay for and implement treatments a major barrier to wildfire mitigation strategies for all woodlands. 

AFF equips family forest owners with the tools and support they need to reduce catastrophic wildfires and improve the health and resilience of their lands to better protect their forests and our communities.  

Since 2018, AFF has worked with hundreds of family landowners to provide wildfire treatments on 30,000 acres of forests across the Western region of the United States. Through intentional and strategic coordination with state, local, and federal partners, AFF is creating innovative solutions to create a stack of catalytic public funding, private sector investment, and unlocking capital from traditional and emerging markets to overcome the financial barrier for family forest owners to effectively tackle the wildfire crisis.

Interested in learning more about our wildfire work?

Contact Jillian Dyszynski, Director of Market Development, at JDyszynski@forestfoundation.org.