After a tame fire season in 2022, Kootenai National Forest officials were able to burn more than 6,000 acres in prescribed burns this fall.
It's a drastic contrast to what has occurred in recent years when less than favorable conditions existed for mitigation efforts, officials said.
Cory Farmer has worked as a forest fuels planner since 2000, and it's a role he currently holds with the KNF. He began working on timber and fuels crews, and in a recent interview discussed the burn process and commented on the successful undertaking these past few months.
According to Farmer, pile burning is an active way the Forest Service mitigates fire danger. Excavator piles or other handmade piles of fuel that actively collected at a previous time are then burned under the right conditions.