The urgency of understanding fire conflicts— tensions or disputes over fire use, suppression, and management— has become increasingly critical in the context of protected area (PA) transitions. As global commitments drive efforts to expand PA coverage to 30% of Earth's land, rapid shifts in PA networks are reshaping landscapes, governance structures, and resource access, often generating socio-environmental tensions. Fire, a widespread and predominantly anthropogenic process, is often central to these conflicts, intersecting with conservation policies, land-use practices, and institutional changes. The implications are particularly pronounced in fire-sensitive and highly flammable ecosystems such as tropical dry forests (TDFs), which remain insufficiently studied despite facing escalating pressures. In these ecosystems, fire serves multiple functions, including land transformation, further intensifying disputes. However, despite the rising prevalence of fire conflicts in conservation landscapes, knowledge of their underlying mechanisms remains limited, often relying on isolated case studies rather than comprehensive global or cross-regional analyses, posing challenges for conflict prevention and mitigation. The FIREFLICT addresses this research gap by investigating the relationship between legal protection contexts (statuses and transitions among them) and fire conflicts at both global and regional scales, with a particular focus on TDFs. Our research is structured around three pioneer interconnected objectives: (1) to analyze the influence of PA contexts on fire activity, characterizing the variety of fire conflict situations; (2) to uncover the underlying mechanisms that determine why and how fire conflicts occur, developing a middle-range theory of fire conflict; and (3) to identify solutions for anticipating and mitigating fire conflicts in PA contexts. Through an approach that bridges pyrogeography, political ecology, and conservation science, FIREFLICT employs multiple methodologies, including remote sensing and modeling to detect global fire activity patterns and post-fire dynamics in PA contexts, systematic reviews to synthesize existing knowledge, and extensive field studies in three critical TDF regions—Madagascar, Bolivia's Chiquitania, and Southeast Asia. This comprehensive framework enables cross-regional and cross-stage comparisons to develop a generalizable understanding of fire conflicts. By collaborating with local experts and conservation practitioners, we will generate actionable knowledge to inform sustainable and conflict-sensitive strategies, ultimately enhancing fire governance strategies in protected areas.