Department of Environmental Protection

New Jersey Forest Fire Service

NJ Forest Fire Service Logo

Our Organization

The Forest Fire Service is administered by the Division of Parks and Forestry, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The Forest Fire Service is staffed with 85 full-time employees and a large part-time force to provide wildland fire protection and management, as well as perform a variety of related functions. The Service is under the direction of the state firewarden and a permanent staff with headquarters in Trenton.

The Forest Fire Service is responsible for protecting life and property from wildfire within 3.15 million acres of both private and public land statewide. The state is divided administratively into three divisions, which correspond to portions of north, south and central New Jersey.

Each division is administered by a division forest firewarden and the land is partitioned into sections of approximately 100,000 acres. A full-time forest firewarden is assigned to each section. There are twenty nine sections statewide. A section forest firewarden is responsible for all phases of fire prevention, pre-suppression and fire suppression within their assigned area.

Sections are further divided into districts for 15 to 20,000 acres. A district forest firewarden is appointed as the local person responsible for recruiting and training fire crews and issuing burning permits. There are 269 district forest firewardens statewide and more than 2,000 trained crewmen employed on an hourly basis as needed.