The NVFSC is statewide while the CFSCI is one of over 100 organizations in California focusing on reducing the wildfire threat.

A study issued in November by the inspector general's office of the United States Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service, said the nature of the wildfire threat was changing as private homes and communities pushed ever closer to the boundaries of once-remote public lands.

Buescher State Park was closed for two weeks due to the wildfire threat, but later reopened.

The state Forest Fire Service manages to clear about 15,000 acres of underbrush a year, using prescribed burns between Oct. 15 and March 15, when the weather is favorable and the wildfire threat low.

This is followed by wildfire threat when rain dries up.

Future of California floristics and systematics: wildfire threats to the California flora.

Monsoons play a vital role in managing wildfire threat by providing moisture at higher elevations and feeding desert streams.

Partly in response to these fires and others on national forest land elsewhere in the West, President Bush introduced the Healthy Forest Initiative in 2002 to reduce the wildfire threat to towns surrounded by publicly owned forests.

It will create timber jobs by requiring the Forest Service to manage a certain number of acres each year for timber harvest - especially areas infected by pine-beetles that pose a serious wildfire threat to Montana communities and their drinking water sources.