Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest Plans Prescribed Burns Over 3,000 Acres

Thom Bridge photographed a 120-acre prescribed burn on Rodney Ridge in the Helena south hills on Sept. 24, 2025, as crews conducted prescribed firing near Travis Creek, and now the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest is monitoring weather for new prescribed fire operations March 2-7 in Lewis and Clark and Broadwater counties that target over 1,000 acres near Helena, with objectives extending through spring 2026.

The U.S. Forest Service framed the operations as fuels work to protect communities and infrastructure; a Helena-Lewis and Clark NF press release dated Sept. 22, 2025 stated, “We use prescribed fires to help reduce overgrown vegetation to help protect local communities, infrastructure and natural resources from wildfires.” Forest Supervisor Emily Platt has argued the work restores historical fire patterns, saying, “Wildfires are really good at removing small trees and surface fuels and creating some openings and pockets. And all of those things help mitigate future fires, they dampen the behavior of future fires.”

Near-term activity in the Helena area has varied in scale across reports. The Independent Record reported the forest was “eyeing the weather this week in hopes of prescribed burning more than 3,000 acres in the Helena area” during late September 2025, while the current March 2-7 monitoring window is explicitly described in agency notices as targeting “over 1,000 acres” and continuing through spring 2026. Photo captions and local reporting document the Rodney Ridge 120-acre burn and prescribed firing near Travis Creek on Sept. 24, 2025.

The local burns sit alongside a much larger Forestwide Prescribed Fire Project for which the Forest Service completed an environmental assessment and introduced a draft decision. Montana Public Radio and KTVH describe the project as proposing prescribed burns on roughly 40,000 acres annually through 2045 across a 2.3 million-acre project area (KTVH also described the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest as covering almost 3 million acres overall). KTVH noted the plan would affect about 17 percent of the project area and identified initial sites in the Elkhorn Mountains and the middle fork of the Judith River. Platt cautioned the agency will avoid “high-severity” prescribed burns and said, “When you're able to do this fuels work, your forest is more likely to withstand a wildfire and live through it.”

Not all stakeholders support the scale of the proposal. Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance and The Wilderness Society told the Forest Service they have “significant concerns about the massive scale of the Forest-wide Prescribed Fire Project” and urged a full Environmental Impact Statement, saying, “A project of this scale and complexity would likely be better served by a full Environmental Impact Statement to fully evaluate the potential direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of the proposed program.”

Public-safety guidance from the Forest Service emphasizes that residents may experience smoke, should “watch for warning signs along roads near all prescribed fire areas before and during burns,” and should “slow down and turn on your headlights when you encounter smoke on the road.” The agency says it will evaluate weather in the hours before a burn and may cancel operations if conditions warrant, and that it will notify county emergency management officials when burning begins. For road-closure and smoke updates, Lewis and Clark County residents should monitor the Helena-Lewis and Clark NF website, the forest’s social media channels, InciWeb, and Lewis and Clark County Emergency Management.