Editor’s note: This blog features a summary of a recent national survey research project jointly led by partners at Colorado State University, the University of Michigan, Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, the Fire Learning Network, The Nature Conservancy, and the Watershed Research and Training Center. This research was focused on non-governmental entities outside of state and federal agencies who plan, support, and/or conduct prescribed fire. This blog shares findings from a recent report focused on the western U.S., which delves into the community-based capacity available for prescribed burn projects and examines the impacts of evolving prescribed fire insurance policies on practitioners. The authors conclude with practical recommendations aimed at expanding and bolstering prescribed burn programs led by non-governmental organizations.
Investments in wildfire suppression and hazardous fuels reduction
Recently, Congress has made historic investments in fuel management activities – including prescribed fire – through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). To effectively deploy these funds across ownership boundaries and at scale (i.e., a large enough spatial extent to achieve fuels and fire management objectives), state and federal land management agencies need a better understanding of the community-based capacity available to support and implement prescribed burn projects. Natural resource and land stewardship organizations are increasingly building their prescribed fire skills. However, since many of these organizations have not historically participated in federal wildfire response or suppression efforts, government agencies are less familiar with who these actors are and what they can accomplish. In addition, there is a need to understand how the widespread loss or unavailability of prescribed fire insurance policies has affected prescribed fire practitioners as difficulty accessing insurance is a significant barrier to using fire for non-governmental organizations.
To address these needs and inform the development of meaningful policy solutions, our team jointly designed a national-level, online survey targeting non-government entities that plan, support, and/or conduct prescribed fire. The survey was conducted in late 2022, with analysis in 2023. Each response represents one organization. See our full report for more details.
Who responded
We heard from 137 non-governmental organizations, of which 76 were engaged in prescribed burn operations in the western U.S. (see map). We note our findings are not a representative sample and targeted recruitment to other states is needed for a more comprehensive understanding of this population.
The majority of organizations who responded were nonprofits. Others included special and local fire districts, Prescribed Burn Associations, Universities and Colleges, municipalities, and Tribal entities. The majority reported their sole or primary funding source came from federal or state grants, subgrants, or agreements.
What we learned
1. All 76 surveyed organizations would welcome additional funding for expanding their workforce, partnership strategies, and prescribed fire implementation.
Collectively, these organizations estimated a $137 million funding need to maintain or expand their work, representing a significant federal investment opportunity through funding sources such as IIJA and IRA over the next 1-3 years.
2. The top reported available community-based capacity, strengths of organizations, and capacities needed to support and implement prescribed burn projects, each included skills related to “communication and outreach” (e.g., coordination with other agencies, providing educational programs, and conducting advocacy work).
Conducting prescribed fire requires deliberate preparation and alignment across several components, as well as various skills and expertise. To understand the capacities of the non-governmental prescribed fire workforce, we organized survey questions into seven comprehensive categories that are umbrella terms for various prescribed fire capacities (see image). For example, ‘Planning & Implementation’ included questions related to their capacity for writing burn plans, applications, and permitting, ‘Support’ included grant writing and fundraising, and ‘Workforce’ included managing a qualified and equipped workforce to implement fuel management activities. The following image summarizes organizations’ general ability to operationalize prescribed fire by displaying the capacities that are currently available and the capacities that organizations want to develop or continue to enhance.
2a. What skills do these organizations have and what are their strengths?
The highest reported existing capacities among non-governmental prescribed fire organizations were communication and outreach to public land managers, private landowners, and residents, as well as the available capacity to administer and manage funds, agreements, or contacts. Organizations also reported their top strengths in our survey, which were similar to their existing capacities (see image).
2b. What capacities do they need?
Respondents most commonly wanted to develop or continue to enhance capacities related to communication and outreach, including improving and investing in educational programming, outreach to disadvantaged communities, and outreach to Tribal Governments. The other top capacities that organizations needed included:
- Holding community meetings before and after burns
- Providing experiential (and in-person) training
- Providing technical assistance and research
- Hiring a state-certified burn manager
The differences between types of needed capacities in our results were fairly evenly distributed. This indicates that flexible funding mechanisms and agreements that allow funding to go towards the full suite of activities associated with prescribed fire are critical to ensuring funding sources can meet the broadest possible needs for organizations.
3. Active fire seasons that disrupt prescribed fire work were the most commonly reported barrier.
Lack of access to appropriate kinds of prescribed fire insurance was the second greatest barrier identified by respondents, most of whom noted that their experience accessing insurance was difficult.
- Most had experienced a change in insurance coverage related to their prescribed burn program in the past five years.
- Over half said they would expand their use of prescribed fire if they could afford liability insurance to cover operations and the resulting smoke. As one organization explained:
“The cost and lack of access [make it] incredibly hard for our organization to get liability insurance, so we have to either rely on partners/cooperators to hold the insurance or for the landowner to hold the insurance liability themselves. Most landowners are hesitant to do this, which is another barrier to implementing prescribed burns for us.”
How can we scale up and support prescribed burn programs of non-governmental organizations?
Despite the urgency to increase the frequency and scope of prescribed fire, planning and implementation remain challenging due to social, political, and biophysical factors. In light of key challenges hindering the expansion of their programs, the majority of respondents underscored the importance of establishing a prescribed fire workforce (independent from fire suppression), establishing consistent and long-term funding, providing accessible and affordable insurance options, updating and expanding burn window policies, and improving stakeholder understanding of prescribed fire.
We provide key recommendations to scale up and support prescribed burn programs of non-governmental organizations. These recommendations are informed by suggestions from our respondents as well as the congressionally established Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Report, which contains several recommendations that are supported by the findings of our survey.
1. Establish dedicated and long-term funding streams to provide security for partners to offer training and support capacity building.
This includes consistent funding sources, accessible grants, cost-share agreement structures, and prioritizing funding that increases community involvement in prescribed fire beyond implementation. This would also help address the need for developing or enhancing administration capacities within organizations, as only about a third reported these capacities.
2. Improve the availability and quality of prescribed fire/smoke liability insurance.
This should include, for example, multi-year policies and reduced insurance premiums and deductibles. The claims fund model is growing in popularity, as different states take on this approach, such as Oregon’s certified burn manager program and California’s Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot.
3. Enhance and invest in prescribed fire workforce development and training.
This includes supporting pathways for non-federal partners to advance their fireline qualifications through enhanced training opportunities, cooperative burning partnerships, and implementation opportunities independent of the fire suppression workforce.
4. Invest in a national prescribed fire catastrophe or claims fund.
The fund would support third parties negatively impacted by prescribed burn activities and create a supportive financial liability environment for practitioners.
5. Identify and support opportunities to reduce implementation barriers related to air quality and weather.
This may include investing in community and land manager-prescribed fire outreach programs, supporting coordination among land managers and air quality regulators at the local and state levels, and re-assessing other non-weather related constraints to burn windows.
Several ongoing and recent efforts help support some of the needs identified here for nongovernmental organizations looking to increase prescribed burning implementation and support.
The recently formed Alliance for Wildfire Resilience (AWR) builds on the Wildfire Commission report recommendations, the holistic approach of the Commission, and the “interest in collective action from the broader wildfire community to continue to advance policy change to address the rising challenges of wildfire” (Schmidt and Bertone-Riggs, 2024). Interested readers could consider keeping up with AWR to track prescribed fire policy changes on the national stage.
We also show in the figure below some of the other recent developments related to prescribed fire.
Our survey provides a better understanding of the community-based capacity available to support and implement prescribed burn projects, and how the lack of prescribed fire insurance policies has impacted prescribed fire practitioners. However, this is only an initial effort to document the scope of the non-governmental prescribed fire workforce and their capacities, which are otherwise largely unknown, and also constantly evolving. We welcome any work that seeks to build off the survey we conducted and related discussions to keep advancing our understanding of and opportunities for the diverse needs of our fire and forestry workforce(s). Contact Heidi Huber-Stearns (hhuber [at] uoregon.edu) for more information or to follow up.
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PROJECT WEBSITE: www.ruralvoicescoalition.org/rxfiresurvey
Summary results from the national survey can be found in our policy brief and our online directory of local U.S. prescribed fire practitioners. A report of western U.S. survey results can be found here and on the project website.
Individuals at Colorado State University, the University of Michigan, Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, the Fire Learning Network, The Nature Conservancy, and the Watershed Research and Training Center led this joint research effort.
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