Well, spring is officially here, and that puts us at the peak of New Jersey's wildfire season.

New Jersey Forest Fire Service today began controlled burns throughout the state.

It's all part of a strategy to prevent wildfires by eliminating their sources of fuel.

That's especially critical for the communities in and around joint base Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst, which are at higher risk because of the combustible landscape.

To reduce the threat, the Department of Defense is working with the state to build and maintain what they call fuel breaks.

Ruben Santana has the story.

When people think of wildfires, particularly in the Beltway, they think of Wyoming and California and Colorado.

Texas.

Well, you know, New Jersey has over a thousand wildfires, sometimes 1500 a year.

Wildfire season in New Jersey has historically been from mid-March through mid-May, but it has gotten longer during the past decade, with major wildfires occurring in February and extending into the summer, which is why the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Forest Fire Services, is partnering with the Department of Defense to conduct more prescribed burns like this.

It's all in an effort to reduce wildfires that made 2023 the busiest fire season in more than a decade.

The last significant wildfire to directly impact the Roosevelt City community occurred in May of 2020 and affected 99 acres of forest not far from where we stand today.

This demonstration that took place in Roosevelt City in Manchester Township is just one of three wildfire resiliency projects in the Pinelands, funded through the U.S. Department of Defense's readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Challenge Program, also known as Burpee.

These projects have created or maintain more than 30 miles of field breaks in the vicinity of two military bases, including Joint Base Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst.

Fuel breaks are strips of land where the vegetation is reduced or modified to prevent fires from spreading.

Our work with the local, county, state and federal partners is essential to ensuring the success of projects like this that afford the protection to the local communities, to the people that live and work here.

Thanks to the fuel brake, prescribed burning can now be conducted safely around the Roosevelt City communities.

New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette says fuel breaks are the key to ensuring the safety of life and property.

What we've seen because of these periods of more dry conditions interspersed by, you know, pretty fierce and intense rainfall that our burn season gets a bit interrupted.

Right.

So we try to get started a little earlier, keep it going for as long as as we can.

But in the last few years, we haven't been able to reach our tens of thousands of acres of treatment area, in part because of these really rapidly changing conditions.

Prescribed burning is also used as a way to maintain the effectiveness of fuel bridge, which LaTourette says is now critical.

As he's concerned this wildfire season could turn into a wildfire year.

Because the reality is that New Jersey is ground zero for some of the worst impacts of climate change.

Those impacts include a lengthening wildfire season.

Sometimes I think we should start thinking of it as wildfire year.

We had nearly 1200 wildfires last year, as you heard me before, 1400 of 14 of the major burning 18,000 acres.

Right.

That is considerable risk to people, to property, to public health and safety and to the environment that we share.

Officials say projects like this are just one part of preparation.

It's also important for property owners to reduce fire threats around their homes.

Our biggest message to people, you know, in New Jersey and nationwide is that defensible space is the key to success.

The key to saving your home, to be prepared and to take advantage of all of the resources that are offered out there to keep your home and your property safe from wildfire.

Because the time to plan forward is not when you see the smoke.

For NJ Spotlight News I'm Ravens Santana.