Division

Forestry Services

Oklahoma Forestry Services is responsible for the conservation, management, and protection of our valuable forest resources. Our foresters provide technical assistance to individuals and communities throughout the state. We work together to conserve our present forests, increase their productivity, and ensure for their long term health so that all Oklahomans continue to enjoy these benefits. OFS is also the primary agency responsible for the suppression of wildland fire in all 77 counties. Our personnel provide initial attack on 6.4 million acres of timberland in the eastern counties and suppression assistance to fire departments across the remainder of the state in the form of wildland fire crews, aircraft, and tactical support when needed for wildfires.

The Role of Fires in Oklahoma Landscapes

Many of Oklahoma’s landscapes have evolved with fire as a natural and necessary contributor to their overall health and renewal. Many plant species require fire to germinate, to establish, or to reproduce, or all three. Native Americans used fire across Oklahoma to provide better access, improve hunting, and ridding the land of undesirable species so they could farm. Early European settlers to our state observed this and continued the practice of using fire as a beneficial agent.

But as more settlers arrived, an encroaching urban interface and losses to timber, farm and range land called attention a growing wildfire problem and led to fire being labeled as destructive. Since that time great effort has been made to exclude fire from the landscape. But removing fire from the landscape has had consequences. Many of our lands are no longer healthy and the growth which has continued in the absence of fire resulted in an accumulation of fuels increasing the overall risk of wildfires.

As knowledge accumulated, the use of “prescribed” fire grew and natural resource professionals now include fire as an appropriate tool to manage forests, woodlands and range. Properly used, fire remains an excellent tool for restoring and managing many Oklahoma landscapes.

Learn more about fire’s role in Oklahoma ecosystems and the proper use of prescribed fire. Watch our video A Land in Balance.

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Wildland fires are a force of nature that can be nearly as impossible to prevent, and as difficult to control, as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Wildfire can be a friend and a foe. In the right place at the right time, wildland fire can create many environmental benefits, such as reducing grass, brush, and trees that can fuel large and severe wildfires and improving wildlife habitat. In the wrong place at the wrong time, wildfires can wreak havoc, threatening lives, homes, communities, and natural and cultural resources.

Report a Wildfire

In the OFS designated initial attack area (see map) call: