Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) and the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) cover approximately 3.7 million acres within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The majority of this land base is fairly remote, much of it either designated Wilderness or roadless, and composed of fire-adapted ecosystems. To add complexity to the fire environment, this fire dependent landscape is adjacent to high profile investments like communities and oil and gas fields as well as home to candidate wildlife species whose habitat may be negatively impacted by fire. To get a full picture of where the fire hazard is and how that hazard could be expected to interact with the resources and assets in GTNP and on the BTNF, two units turned to the fire response assessment.

Wildfire hazard was assessed across agency boundaries to capitalize on efficiencies in modeling. Both agencies conducted separate, but parallel, efforts to determine which highly valued resources or assets (HVRAs) to assess, determine their response, and rank their relative importance. The assessmentis intended to help guide decisions on where to place fuels treatment most effectively, where managers may expect resource benefits from managing unplanned ignitions and where managers may expect negative resource impacts.