The United States Forest Service (USFS), a branch of the Department of Agriculture, is responsible for the maintenance of 193 million acres of forest and grassland. In August of 1944, the USFS introduced a campaign featuring a poster of a black bear wearing a ranger’s hat. Smokey the Bear’s strong message of “Only YOU can prevent forest fires” (now changed to wildfires) has become one of the most recognizable slogans in the US. While Smokey has become a national icon, the USFS has other ways of preventing wildfires.

One of the agency’s best means of preventing wildfires is a technique that has been around for hundreds of years, prescribed burns. The practice is when firefighters intentionally set fires to control forest overgrowth. These fires do more than just prevent wildfires that get out of control. They are essential in maintaining the overall health and balance of a forest explained Doug Currie, U.S. Forest Service assistant fire management officer. “Fire is a natural occurrence. It has been used here forever,” Doug said while undertaking a prescribed burn at Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest. “Absolutely have to have it. You can burn these things to the top of the tree,” he said. “It may look ruined but it’s not. It’ll be back happier than ever. And there are some locations in the South where it is almost instantaneous. You run fire through a unit and in a matter of days, it is just brand new glorious growth. Everybody’s happy.”

There are several ways to initiate a prescribed burn. The first would be firefighters walking or driving through an area with torches. After seeing the amount of time wasted, and the risk posed to officers, fire management teams began deploying “dragon eggs” from a helicopter. A dragon egg is a small plastic ball that is filled with potassium permanganate, a crystalline chemical. Before being released from a specially designed machine, the ball is injected with liquid glycol that causes the ball to ignite upon impact with the ground. Dropping dragon eggs from a helicopter greatly sped up the process of a prescribed burn. However, the methods were not always precise and the process is very expensive. Over the last 3 years, the USFS has begun using drones as a way to deploy dragon eggs cost and time efficiently with a higher degree of precision.

As drones can be flown closer to the ground, they can place a dragon egg in an ideal position to create the best prescribed burn. They require only a two person team to pilot and cost a fraction of the price of a helicopter. But, the USFS uses drones for more than just deploying dragon eggs in a prescribed burn. For Doug, who writes up the highly detailed prescribed burn mission, drones also help plan the exact areas to burn. “We look at it from the 5,000-foot level because everything here is very homogenous. It’s very similar. Tree species, aspect, slope, composition, everything is pretty similar, so it allows us to make a generalized assumption of the conditions overall,” he said.

The data is then uploaded to an AI system to help Doug determine the exact areas in need of fire management. “A lot of this is for wildlife and for forest health,” Doug said. “But the number one reason for prescribed fire is to protect our local communities. It’s ‘good’ fire,” a fire that Smokey the Bear would approve.