Fall 2024 Online Foresty Course

Forestry

Learn About Washington Forests

WSU Extension’s research-based publications and workshops offer practical guidance for enjoying, protecting, and cultivating our beautiful forests.Use the links below and on the right to access resources on Washington’s forests, including publications & resources, training opportunities, partners, research programs, and forest management.

The Northwest Interagency Coordinator Center (NWCC)

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (NWCC) is the Geographic Area Coordination Center for the Northwest Region which includes the States of Oregon and Washington. Located in Portland, OR, the NWCC serves as the focal point for interagency resource coordination, logistics support, aviation support and predictive services for all state and federal agencies involved in wildland fire management and suppression in the region. Cooperating agencies include the: Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, Oregon Dept of Forestry, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington Dept. of Natural Resources and the National Park Service.

National Interagency Fire Center (NFIC)

The nation’s federal wildland fire community is a large and complex organization across the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. These agencies manage wildland fire on nearly 700 million acres of federal public land, or one-fifth of the total land area in the United States.

NIFC is home to the national fire management programs of each federal fire agency, along with partners including the National Association of State Foresters, the U.S. Fire Administration, and the National Weather Service. A Department of Defense liaison was added as a permanent partner at NIFC in 2008. Working together, these partners provide leadership, policy oversight and coordination to manage the nation’s wildland fire programs.

In recent years, the role of the agencies at NIFC has grown to include all types of fire management, including hazardous fuels treatments, integrated fire and land-use planning, and more. Fire management under this larger umbrella is designed to achieve not only suppression goals, but to accomplish a broad spectrum of natural resource objectives, and do so in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

Washington State Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network

Actively engaging with wildfire is a way of life that Washington must re-learn, and refine. We experimented with trying to eliminate fire for the last 100 years, but the hard truth is Washington and wildfire are inseparable. Add in pressures from climate change and more people living in fire-prone areas, and the situation gets especially critical.

Washington State Fire Adapted Communities Network embraces this complicated reality and connects over fire. We talk and learn with purpose, because no one is coming to save us. It’s our job to include wildfire in a future that works for Washington.