Performance Measures

A fuel break maintained by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service creates a dramatic boundary between a burned area and a neighborhood in San Diego, CA. Fuel treatments like this reduce risk to communities that border Department-managed lands, a key performance measure in our current strategic plan. (Photo courtesy USFWS Pacific Southwest)

The Department of the Interior sets agency goals in strategic plans that cover five year periods.  These plans provide a framework for the activities and programs performed by the ten bureaus and dozens of offices that make up this Cabinet-level agency. Under our current strategic plan for fiscal years 2018 - 2022, six mission areas reflect the Department’s overall priorities, while goals and strategies describe how we’ll achieve those priorities. The strategic plan addresses the work of the Office of Wildland Fire and the overall Wildland Fire Management Program as follows:

Mission Area 5
Protecting Our People and the Border

Goal 3
Manage wildland fire to reduce risk and improve ecosystem and community resilience.

Strategy 1
Integrate fire ecology, risk management, and collaboration to mitigate wildfire impacts.

Key Performance Indicators (Goal for 2022)

1. Percent of DOI-managed landscape acres that are in desired condition as a result of fire management (36%)
2. Percent of DOI-managed treatments that reduce risk to communities that have a wildland fire mitigation plan (94%)
3. Percent of wildfires on DOI-managed landscapes where the initial strategies fully succeeded during the initial response phase (97%)

The Office of Wildland Fire evaluates and reports on these measures annually. We also lead a working group tasked with developing new measures. This group includes representatives from the four bureaus that manage wildland fire (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), and the Office of Policy Analysis.