After wildfires burned through an impact area at Joint Base Lewis-McChord during the 2023 fire season, the base’s Integrated Training Area Management team enlisted the help of the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade’s “Bigfoot” Company to help restore the area from the skies.
JBLM is affected in some way by wildfires nearly every year, and 2023 was no different. In June, a wildfire that started in the base’s Artillery Impact Area jumped across the East Range Road and into openings in the forest edge that had not burned for years.
The openings were part of an extensive prairie ecosystem that historically had been maintained with periodic controlled burns, a method that intentionally allows fire to spread across the landscape and remove shrubs and trees that would otherwise establish themselves and convert the prairie to forest.