Centennial Fire Learning Network

A coalition of private and public land managers in southwest Montana's Centennial Valley initiated a landscape-scale fire restoration program in 2006. The project is the first of its kind in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The coalition expects that the lessons learned in the Centennial Valley will facilitate and accelerate similar efforts throughout southwest Montana and eastern Idaho.

The 450,000-acre Centennial Valley is a hotspot of biological diversity and the last large, undeveloped, low-elevation valley in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As in most of the West, a century of fire exclusion has altered much of the project area, threatening the continued existence of a number of species as well as their habitats. The private landowners in the valley are organized through the Centennial Valley Association, a non-profit group that meets regularly and works toward a vision of the landscape that values traditional family-owned ranches and thriving natural resources. Public lands in the project area include large tracts administered by the US Bureau of Land Management, the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Montana state lands and Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

The vision of the Centennial FLN consists of improving the long-term viability of conservation targets that have been negatively affected by altered fire regimes. In this rural valley, we envision fire being safely restored to its natural role across diverse ecological systems through prescribed fires and wildland fire use. This objective is only possible by restoring the resilience of those systems and addressing a variety of other problems such as impaired riparian zones, altered hydrologic regimes, excessive wildlife browsing, impacts of roads, and habitat connectivity threats. Through the collaborative learning process of the FLN, we will be capable of dealing with not only fire but also other ecological issues to make progress toward this vision at a meaningful scale.