The Bureau of Land Management Friday released the final Environmental Impact Statement to construct fire breaks (or fuel breaks) in six states in the Great Basin.
It provides for the construction and maintenance of up to 11,000 miles of what BLM officials describe as “strategically-placed fuel breaks” to control wildfires within a 223 million-acre area that includes portions of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah.
The plan outlines an array of manual, chemical and mechanical treatments -- including prescribed fire, seeding, and targeted grazing -- to construct and maintain the fuel breaks. The treatments would be implemented along roads and rights-of-way on BLM-administered lands.