Timucuan National Ecological Preserve, Florida.
This unique National Park Service area outside Jacksonville, Florida supports diverse habitat including fire-adapted pine forest and associated flora. Due to fire exclusion, these systems are declining and being replaced with fire intolerant non-native species. High visitor use and the adjacent residential areas of Jacksonville present management constraints to the use of fire in some areas. Wildland Fire Associates worked with Preserve resource management staff to develop a proposed action that includes suppression, hazard fuel reduction and prescribed fire projects conducted under cooperative agreement with the State of Florida. The public and agency cooperators in the area reviewed the Environmental Assessment, a Finding of No Significant Impact was issued, and the Fire Management Plan is now under implementation.