Elsevier

Rangelands

Volume 43, Issue 3, June 2021, Pages 93-99
Rangelands

Participant motivations for the Wyoming Prescribed Fire Council (PFC): Emergence from a regional void

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rala.2020.12.006Get rights and content

On the Ground

  • Prescribed Fire Councils (PFCs) are different than Prescribed Burn Associations.

  • A regional void of PFCs exists in the northern Rockies and northern Great Plains.

  • We interviewed 14 founding members of the Wyoming PFC to understand their motivations.

  • Three themes were identified: 1) collaboration, 2) constraints, and 3) public perceptions.

  • There is a need for cross-boundary engagement and strategies for dealing with narrow burn windows.

Introduction

Although wildfire is feared for its ability to destroy both life and property such as buildings and vehicles, strategically applied prescribed fires:

come through and reduce all of those hazardous fuels [and] not only benefits the health of the forest, but also the hazards that it poses for carrying large scale fires. For agriculture purposes, they burn every year and the nitrogen goes back in the soil, improves soil health, and … provide a buffer for home defense (Participant in Prescribed Fire Council Interviews)

Addressing the social barriers that hinder prescribed fire application by agencies is essential to achieve management goals. Understanding the mechanisms that improve public tolerance of fire may also help engender support for fire management instead of immediate suppression and potentially facilitate more burning.1, 2, 3 Research has shown that to address social concerns and increase tolerance for fire, external factors such as liability, access to equipment, knowledge, and experience must be addressed.3, 4

Private landowners have organized locally to share equipment and knowledge, but such organization and communication across public agencies at larger scales has been lacking.5, 6, 7 Moreover, maintaining the ecological benefits of prescribed fire requires collaboration across sociopolitical boundaries. Such initiatives have the potential to improve trust among stakeholders and create cross-jurisdictional application of prescribed fire that were hindered by legal responsibilities.8 Furthermore, management agencies aiming to conduct prescribed fires need public support and reduced policy constraints (i.e., NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act]) to streamline burn projects.8, 9

In recent years, there has been a collaborative movement between landowners, the public, nonprofit organizations, and local, state, and federal agencies to form groups to address these concerns. This collaborative movement has also been identified as an essential component to increase acceptance and application of prescribed fire.4, 7 For example, Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) and Prescribed Fire Councils (PFCs) have emerged throughout the United States, with the most focused development in the Great Plains region.6 These groups, and particularly PBAs, have facilitated prescribed burning, which is evident in the Edwards Plateau PBA of Texas that formed in 1997. By 2012, this group had conducted over 300 prescribed burns on >60,703 ha (>150,000 acres) by supplying equipment and technical support to private landowners.7 The formation, utility, and efficacy of PBAs is well established; however, PFCs have not been well documented, as no published literature about their establishment or function exists to date.5, 6

The Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils (CPFC) formed in 2007 to address many of the concerns and challenges associated with prescribed fire management but with fundamentally different functions than local PBAs. The CPFC’s core mission is to promote educational leadership of safe and effective prescribed fire application at the state and national level. As a result of the CPFC, 36 PFCs exist in 31 states (Fig. 1). The state of Wyoming recently joined the coalition in December of 2018 through the formation of the WY-PFC to address the barriers faced by fire users and managers.10 This development is interesting from a cultural and regional perspective because the northern Rockies and northern Great Plains have no PFCs (Fig. 1). In other words, the emergence of the WY-PFC occurred from a regional void.

Given the recent development of the WY-PFC, and paucity of research on why PFCs form, this development provides a novel case study for human dimensions research. Thus, we endeavor to understand participant motivations and aspirations for forming the WY-PFC. More specifically, our study addressed, 1) what experiences, attitudes, and/or motivations contributed to the formation and participation of the WY-PFC; 2) perceived constraints to Wyoming prescribed fire implementation; and 3) what goals and concerns do participants have moving forward with the WY-PFC?

Section snippets

Study area and participants

Using Stake’s case study approach, we interviewed 14 of the 15 individuals (12 in-person and 2 by phone) who attended the initial meeting on 11 to 12 December 2018 in Lander, Wyoming.11 Stake’s approach is rooted in a constructivist epistemology where individual realities are dynamic and constructed through the engagement an individual has with people and their surrounding world, rather than being discovered.12, 13 The social constructivism lens is fitting for our study because founding members

Results and Discussion

There are multiple facets that contribute to the success and sustainability of PFCs. Our case study provides a qualitative description of the organization, motivation, constraints to prescribed fire application, goals, and concerns of the WY-PFC. The WY-PFC is a dynamic group of individuals across Wyoming that share a desire to revitalize prescribed fire as an acceptable management tool.

Implications

The recent emergence of the WY-PFC from a regional void provides an opportunity to understand participant motivations and barriers to such organizations. There are still many confounding factors for sustainable fire management in Wyoming, but collaborative initiatives like the WY-PFC can address many social constraints. Whereas other initiatives such as PBAs focus on implementing more prescribed fire, the WY-PFC aims to improve the fire narrative through education and “bring to light that

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the founding members of the WY-PFC who were willing to take time to be interviewed for this research. Furthermore, we would like to thank Dr. Eric Teman for providing guidance with the research design.

References (21)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Support provided by a subcontract from the Southern Rockies Fire Science Network (SRFSN) (#5345071) from a Department of Interior (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Joint Fire Science Program grant (JFSP Project #09-S-04-11), the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable, United States Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS; Agreement #68-3A75-18-058), and the University of Wyoming Extension.

1

Declaration of Interest: The second author is a member of this journal’s Steering Committee but had no role in the review of the manuscript.

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