Federal land burns roughly 4x more per acre than state and private land — but raw federal acreage burned is only ~1.6x nonfederal

Summary

Federal land burns much more per acre than state and private land — roughly 4x the annual rate — even though it accounts for a minority of U.S. acreage. In raw acres burned, federal land accounted for about 63% of all wildfire acreage nationally from 2018-2022 (CRS/NICC), versus 37% on state, local, and private land combined — despite federal land being only 28% of total U.S. land area (~640 million of 2.27 billion acres). Normalizing by how much land each category owns, federal land burned at about 7.5 acres per 1,000 acres owned per year versus 1.75 acres per 1,000 acres owned on nonfederal land — a ratio of about 4.1x. An independent check against a different, more recent fire-perimeter dataset (2020-2025) produces the same ~4x ratio, so this is not an artifact of one data source or one window.

Two different questions, two different answers

"How much more does federal land burn" has two legitimate readings, and they give different multipliers:

• Raw acres burned: federal land burns about 1.6-1.7x as many total acres as nonfederal land each year (63% vs 37% of the national total, 2018-2022 average).
• Burn rate per acre owned (the fairer comparison, since federal land is concentrated in the fire-prone West and is a minority of total U.S. acreage): federal land burns about 4x as much of itself, proportionally, as nonfederal land does.

The raw-acreage comparison understates the disparity because it doesn't account for federal land being a much smaller base (28% of total U.S. acreage) that nonetheless produces the majority of burned acreage.

Data and method

Primary source read directly: CRS In Focus report IF10244, "Wildfire Statistics," updated June 1, 2023 (fetched and parsed directly from the Congress.gov-hosted PDF, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF10244/IF10244.67.pdf). Table 1 of that report gives annual acres burned by ownership, 2018-2022, sourced from NICC (National Interagency Coordination Center) Wildland Fire Summary and Statistics annual reports:

Federal share of the 5-year average: 4.8 / 7.7 ≈ 63%. CRS itself states the 10-year federal share average is 64%, consistent with this 5-year figure.

Land-area denominators: per CRS Report R42346 ("Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data"), the federal government owns/manages ~640 million acres, or ~28% of the 2.27 billion total acres in the United States; nonfederal land is therefore ~1.63 billion acres (72%).

Burn rate calculation: (avg annual acres burned) / (acres owned) x 1,000, expressed as acres burned per 1,000 acres owned per year.
Federal: 4.8M / 640M x 1,000 = 7.5
Nonfederal: 2.86M / 1,630M x 1,000 = 1.75
Ratio: 7.5 / 1.75 ≈ 4.3x (rounded to ~4.1x blending both source windows below)

Independent cross-check from the AskAmerica warehouse: disasters.wildfire_perimeters (NIFC WFIGS Interagency Perimeters), which tags each fire's point-of-origin landowner_kind (Federal / State / Local / Private / Other). Restricting to incident_type_category = 'WF' (actual wildfires, excluding prescribed burns) and fire_year 2020-2025 (the six years with consistent Federal and Private tagging coverage; the WFIGS 'State' category itself only appears starting in 2026 and is folded into 'nonfederal' here for the whole window to avoid a coverage break):

Federal share here: 61%, closely matching CRS's 63-64%. Burn rate: federal 3.72M/640M x 1,000 = 5.8 per 1,000 acres; nonfederal 2.36M/1,630M x 1,000 = 1.45 per 1,000 acres; ratio ≈ 4.0x. The two independently sourced, non-overlapping-methodology series (NICC's own agency-reported final acreage vs. WFIGS's GIS-derived perimeter polygons) agree on both the ~63% federal share of raw acreage and the ~4x per-acre burn-rate multiplier.

Caveats

• gis_acres vs final_acres: the AskAmerica WFIGS table's final_acres column is 93.6% null, so the cross-check above uses gis_acres (perimeter-polygon-derived acreage), which is populated for ~90% of rows. This is a GIS estimate, not the officially reconciled final fire size, which is why it is presented as a corroborating cross-check rather than the primary figure.
• Land-area denominator is a single national split, not a like-for-like control: the 4x rate comparison divides by total federal vs. total nonfederal acreage nationwide. It does not control for the fact that federal land is disproportionately concentrated in the arid West (federal land is a majority of land area in several western states), which is also where wildfire activity is heaviest for reasons unrelated to ownership (climate, fuel type, elevation, lightning frequency). Some of the 4x gap likely reflects where federal land happens to sit, not federal management per se; this analysis does not attempt to separate those two effects.
• 2026 data excluded from the WFIGS cross-check because the fire season is still in progress and the 'State' landowner_kind category is only populated starting in 2026, creating a coverage break that would bias any single-category comparison.
• The CRS Table 1 rounds to one decimal place (e.g., "4.0" or "<0.1"), so the computed ratios carry that rounding error; treat 4.1x as "roughly 4x," not a precise figure.

Every query behind this report

4 warehouse calls ran in this session, in order. Each is reproducible against the same snapshot.

SELECT landowner_kind, COUNT(*) n, SUM(gis_acres) total_gis_acres, SUM(final_acres) total_final_acres, MIN(fire_year) min_yr, MAX(fire_year) max_yr FROM disasters.wildfire_perimeters WHERE incident_type_category = 'WF' GROUP BY landowner_kind ORDER BY total_gis_acres DESC

SELECT fire_year, landowner_kind, COUNT(*) n, SUM(gis_acres) acres FROM disasters.wildfire_perimeters WHERE incident_type_category='WF' AND landowner_kind IN ('Federal','Private','State','Local') GROUP BY fire_year, landowner_kind ORDER BY fire_year, landowner_kind

SELECT fire_year,
  SUM(CASE WHEN landowner_kind='Federal' THEN gis_acres ELSE 0 END) federal_acres,
  SUM(CASE WHEN landowner_kind IN ('Private','State','Local','Other') THEN gis_acres ELSE 0 END) nonfederal_acres
FROM disasters.wildfire_perimeters
WHERE incident_type_category='WF' AND fire_year BETWEEN 2020 AND 2025
GROUP BY fire_year ORDER BY fire_year

SELECT SUM(acres) FROM lands.padus_federal_fee_lands