Fire Restrictions Are Spreading Across the West. Here's How to Check Before Your Next Trip.

Fire restrictions are now in effect across much of the public-lands West, and units are adding them week by week. The National Interagency Fire Center raised the national preparedness level to PL3 on June 18, citing wildfire activity across several regions; by that date the country had already burned more than 2.6 million acres, above the ten-year average for the date. Almost 91 percent of the five Southwestern states, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, were in drought as of mid-June, after a winter that left Western snowpack at record lows.

The orders are stacking up. Joshua Tree National Park banned wood and charcoal fires on June 15. The BLM's Bishop Field Office put the Eastern Sierra under seasonal restrictions starting June 22. Central Oregon's national forests and the Prineville BLM district have been under Stage 1 since mid-May. The BLM's Elko District in northeast Nevada, its Salt Lake Field Office across northern Utah, and field offices in central Utah are all under Stage 1, as are the Rio Grande and San Juan national forests in Colorado. On the Kaibab's North Kaibab Ranger District above the Grand Canyon, it is already Stage 2.

For anyone planning a trip onto public land this summer, two questions matter before you go. Are restrictions in effect where you are headed, and what do they actually prohibit. The answers are not always where people look, and they change from one unit to the next.

Check the Order, Not the Fire Map

The most common mistake is checking the wrong tool. Sites like InciWeb and the NIFC maps show where fires are burning. They do not tell you what you are allowed to do. Campfire rules where you are camping come from a separate legal document, a Forest Order on Forest Service land or a Fire Prevention Order on BLM land. An active-fire map can show nothing near your route while a restriction is fully in force.

To find the order that covers your destination, start with the state interagency fire-restriction maps. Most Western states run one, pulling federal and state orders onto a single map you can click by area. Arizona's is at wildlandfire.az.gov; Utah, Idaho, and Nevada run their own. Each clickable area links to the actual order for that unit, with the stage and the specific prohibitions spelled out.

If you already know the managing unit, go straight to its page. National forests post current orders under an "Alerts" tab. BLM field offices post Fire Prevention Orders on their state fire pages. National parks list restrictions under "Alerts" or "Conditions." When the maps and pages lag, and they sometimes do, the authoritative answer is the local ranger district or field office. Call them. Restrictions are decided unit by unit, and the staff there know what is signed and when it takes effect.

How to Read the Stages

Most Western fire orders use a staged system. The labels are shared across agencies, but the details are not identical from one unit to the next, because each forest, field office, and park issues its own order under its own authority. Read the one that covers your destination rather than assuming a neighboring unit's rules carry over.

Stage 1 is the common entry point. It bans building or using a fire outside a developed recreation site. In practice that means no campfires at dispersed sites, though a fire in an agency-installed metal ring at a developed campground is usually still allowed. Smoking is limited to an enclosed vehicle, a building, or a spot at least three feet across that has been cleared to bare ground. A working spark arrester is required on any combustion engine.

Stage 2 adds to all of that. Campfires are banned everywhere, including the developed-campground rings that Stage 1 leaves open. Fireworks and exploding targets are out. Running a chainsaw or other internal-combustion equipment is held to off-peak hours, often a ban from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. Welding and open-flame torch work is prohibited. Motor-vehicle travel is held to designated roads, with a narrow exception for parking on bare ground within about ten feet of the roadway. For anyone running dispersed camps off forest roads, that last rule is the one that reshapes a trip.

Beyond Stage 2, some units issue a full area closure, sometimes numbered Stage 3. A closure means no entry at all, not simply no fires. The roads and trails inside the closed area are off-limits until it lifts.

One exemption holds across both stages on most units. A stove or lantern fueled by propane or another liquefied petroleum gas, with a valve you can shut off, stays legal even when wood and charcoal fires are banned.

What It Means for the Rig

The propane exemption is the most useful thing to build a trip around. A propane or white-gas stove with a shut-off valve will carry you through almost any restriction short of a full closure, so during fire season it belongs in the rig as the default way to cook. Wood-burning twig stoves and charcoal briquettes do not qualify; orders treat them as open fires.

Spark arresters are required year-round, including outside fire season. On Forest Service land, running any combustion engine without a working spark-arresting device has been a standing federal prohibition since a late-2024 rule change, enforceable without any special order (36 CFR 261.5). That covers the generator and the chainsaw as much as a dirt bike. The BLM requires arresters on off-road vehicles in designated areas, and California requires them year-round on any engine operated over brush, grass, or forest land. Confirm yours before you leave, while you can still replace a bad one.

Staying on designated routes matters more during fire season, and not only for the usual access reasons. A vehicle's exhaust and catalytic converter run hot enough to ignite dry grass, which is why orders restrict driving and parking off the road. Park on gravel, dirt, or a cleared pullout, never over cured vegetation, and carry the Motor Vehicle Use Map so you can hold to legal routes when the orders tighten.

Recreational target shooting is commonly banned outright under restrictions. The Bishop Field Office order names it directly, citing hot bullet fragments and exploding targets as ignition sources. Fireworks and exploding targets are illegal on federal land in every season, independent of any fire order. Smoking, where it is allowed at all, is limited to a vehicle or a cleared area.

The penalties carry weight. A violation on Forest Service land is a federal misdemeanor with fines up to 5,000 dollars for an individual and up to six months in jail; BLM orders commonly cite up to 1,000 dollars and twelve months. Start a fire while violating an order and you can also be billed for the cost of fighting it, which on public land runs into real money fast.

Before any trip this summer, pull the current order for every unit your route crosses, pack a propane stove as the default, confirm the spark arresters on the generator and the saw, and keep a charged extinguisher, a shovel, and water in the rig. Map the route first and note which agency manages each leg, so checking each order is part of the plan instead of a surprise when you arrive.

Map your route and stops on EpicPlans

Sources

Fire Restrictions Are Spreading Across the West. Here's How to Check Before Your Next Trip.

Check the Order, Not the Fire Map

How to Read the Stages

What It Means for the Rig

Filed alongside

Extreme Heat Is Killing People This Summer. Here's What to Know Before Your Next Trip.

Death Valley's Wildrose Road Reopens, Unpaved, Three Years After a Flood Destroyed It

One of America's Most Iconic Overland Routes Just Lost Its Federal Buffer

Every Wednesday.