Forest Health and Wildfire Protection

Fire is essential to maintaining healthy forests. Prescribed burning, also called controlled burning, is the practice of deliberately setting and managing fires under strict conditions approved and monitored by firefighting professionals. A centuries-old tradition, today the resurging practice is used to protect and refresh forests by removing the dense vegetation build-up in a forest’s understory that fuels large wildfires. This practice also allows for indigenous plants and wildlife to thrive, restoring a more natural and diverse ecosystem.

Centuries of development, logging and fire suppression have massively impacted the health of our forests across the country. Moore Charitable partners to promote the use of prescribed burning to restore forests, maintain clean water and lower the risk of wildfire.

In New Mexico and Colorado, Moore Charitable works with non-profit organizations that help communities mitigate their wildfire risk through forest health and watershed best practices, including prescribed burning.  We also work to encourage gainful employment for local youth and young adults through conservation-based projects that include fire management.

In the Southeast, Moore Charitable partners to help restore longleaf pine forests, one of the world’s most diverse and imperiled ecosystems. The historic range of longleaf pine used to stretch over 90 million acres from Texas to Virginia, but because of development, logging and other factors, the range declined to just 3 million acres. Today, thanks to prescribed burning and other conservation efforts, longleaf pine forests have rebounded to 4.7 million acres in the southeast United States, and the acreage continues to grow.