Burning to Protect: PNW Prescribed Fire Season and What's Planned for 2026

On a calm spring morning in the Deschutes National Forest, columns of white smoke rise deliberately from a ridge above Bend. This isn't a wildfire — it's a prescribed burn, and it represents one of the most effective tools available for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire in the years ahead.

Prescribed fire — the intentional, carefully planned burning of vegetation under controlled conditions — is gaining momentum across the Pacific Northwest as land managers, tribes, and state agencies scale up their programs in response to growing wildfire risk.

Why Prescribed Fire Matters

Decades of fire suppression across western landscapes have resulted in dramatic fuel accumulation — dense stands of trees, deep duff layers, and ladder fuels that allow fire to climb from the forest floor into the canopy. When wildfire ignites in these conditions, the results can be catastrophic: high-intensity crown fires that kill mature trees, destroy soil structure, and produce the kind of ember showers that threaten WUI communities miles from the fire's edge.

Prescribed fire breaks that cycle. By burning under conditions when fire behavior is manageable — cooler temperatures, higher humidity, moderate winds — land managers can reduce fuel loads in a controlled environment, restoring fire to its natural ecological role while dramatically reducing the risk and intensity of future wildfires.

What's Planned for 2026

Land management agencies in the PNW have outlined ambitious prescribed burn targets for 2026:

U.S. Forest Service Region 6 (Oregon/Washington) has set targets for burning approximately 150,000 acres of national forest lands, focused heavily on the eastern Cascades, Blue Mountains, and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
Bureau of Land Management Oregon/Washington has targeted 80,000 acres of prescribed burning across sagebrush steppe and ponderosa pine landscapes in eastern Oregon.
Oregon Department of Forestry is coordinating with private landowners through the Oregon Prescribed Fire Council to expand burns on state and private lands.
Washington DNR has planned collaborative burns in the Colville National Forest area and the eastern slopes of the Cascades.
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and other tribal nations continue their own prescribed fire programs, often incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into burn planning.

The Spring Burn Window

Spring is the primary prescribed burn window for most of the PNW. Residual moisture from snowmelt, moderate temperatures, and predictable wind patterns create conditions where managers can ignite and control burns that would be impossible — or catastrophic — in summer. The challenge is that the spring window is narrow: too early and fuels are too wet to carry fire; too late and conditions become dangerous.

Climate change is squeezing the spring window. In recent years, the transition from wet spring to dry summer has become more abrupt, giving burn crews fewer days with suitable conditions. Managers are increasingly looking at fall burns — after the hot fire season but before winter precipitation — as an additional window.

Air Quality Considerations

Prescribed burns do produce smoke, and smoke is the primary source of public concern and a key constraint on burn program timing. Oregon and Washington both require air quality coordination before burns are ignited, and burns may be delayed or canceled when atmospheric conditions would trap smoke in populated valleys.

Agencies have invested in smoke modeling tools and public communication systems to notify communities of planned burns and expected smoke impacts. The tradeoff — temporary smoke from a prescribed burn vs. catastrophic smoke from an uncontrolled wildfire — is one that public health officials increasingly support in favor of the controlled option.

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