Non-industrial private forests (NIPFs) in the United States generate many unpriced benefits for both the landholder and society generally. These values can be enhanced or diminished by wildfire management in situ and on adjacent public land. This paper considers the problem of accommodating non-marketed NIPF values affected by wildfire in social benefit-cost analysis to evaluate the efficiency of fire suppression activities. There are substantial gaps in scientific understanding about how the spatial and temporal provision of non-market values are affected by wildfire, and considerable challenges in evaluating social welfare change arising from specific wildfire events. This presents serious impediments to adapting price-based decision-support tools to incorporate non-market values. Departure from the historic range and variability of ecological conditions is proposed as an alternative framework to support wildfire management decisions in and adjacent to NIPF when non-market values are important
