Knowing that Jane had been thinking deeply and working on this topic for some time, I asked her to give her views on the landscape of wildfire and decision-making, and the roles of managed fire and precribed fire.
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Lots of interesting discussion. I wonder if we can talk about MF or OTFS without talking about the larger land management system? I’ve given a fair amount of thought to the wildland fire response structure and what the future might look like. The 2022 Schultz paper the first post referenced, has important ideas — check out the tables that summarize the recommendations on pages 12-13.
Here are some elements I think deserve consideration – curious what other folks think.
1. Accept the fire paradox – excluding fire from wildlands creates higher risk of negative fire consequences
2. Integrate wildland fire management with land management and research to effectively implement active land management strategies.
3. De-couple roles of wildland fire and land management from built environment fire management.
4. Disincentivize “emergency response” economic and media model
5. Invest in strategic decision making and elevate the level and use of analytical expertise for designing, planning active and integrated management.
(1) Accept the fire paradox –
The current wildfire response structure is built around the idea of fire response in homes and communities should be the same on wildlands. Wildfires should be put out as soon as possible and kept small to reduce risk to life and property values. In fact, this approach leads to increased fuel loading and exposure of people (public and responders) and property values to negative fire consequences. This is the most expensive and ineffective structure to maintain.
Accepting this paradox creates the opportunity to build a wildland response structure built around the idea that fire in wildlands is inevitable and plays an important role in land management. Attempting to mimic fire soley through mechanical treatments, including timber harvest to achieve the same results at the scale needed is not practical from a financial or workforce perspective.
(2) Integrate wildland fire management with land management and research–
Active land management goals, such as increased timber harvest can only be achieved and sustained if they are integrated with fire management goals AND fire management goals should be integrated into timber harvest/ fuel treatment NEPA decisions. Much of the operational wildland fire management knowledge is based on personal experience in fire response, anchored in the built environment fire suppression model. This experiential knowledge is valuable but is often valued over scientific research into processes that can build better understanding of the physical processes of fire itself and lead to better informed decision making for both forest products management and fire management. Utilize existing strategic fire planning tools, such as ISAP and PODs, to inform land management opportunities, like prescribed fire and other fuel treatments. Expand research into more understanding of physical fire processes within PODs to inform future decision strategies.
When the “fire department” is called every time fire occurs on the landscape, decision space is constrained and opportunities for managing risk are lost. When fire is anticipated and better understood as a component of land management, decision space expands and a more reasonable range of opportunities for strategically planned for results to be obtained. “Use fire when you can, suppress it when you must” is a more cost effective and better risk reduction model than “suppress at all costs”.
(3) De-couple roles of wildland fire and land management from built environment fire management —
Land and landscape fire managers should coordinate and collaborate land management with the communities connected to the landscapes surrounding them. However, fire management on those landscapes should not be driven by the concept that the landscape managers are responsible for protecting communities from fire. Communities are responsible for their land uses and hazard mitigation and should not be expected to relinquish that role to the neighboring land managers.
(4) Disincentivize “emergency response” economic and media model —
The emergency response model has sustained a fire industrial complex for decades. (Thompson et al 2013*) The drama of fire has maintained a firm hold on the media’s coverage of wildland fire. The incentives around emergency response are deeply entrenched in society. Yet, wildland fire is inevitable, it happens every year. There is uncertainty as to where and exactly when, but much of wildland fire behavior under certain conditions can be anticipated if not predicted.
A stable workforce of professional fire managers and fire “engineers” (Finney 2021**) could be developed and paid a yearlong salary, not dependent on overtime or hazard pay to make a living. Land managers should be skilled and knowledgeable in fire management. Specific line officer roles should have dedicated fire management responsibilities, such as deputy forest supervisors required to maintain Incident Management qualifications.
(5) Invest in strategic decision making and elevate the level and use of analytical expertise for designing, planning active and integrated management —
Land and fire managers have few opportunities to learn how to develop strategic decision-making skills and implement them in real time. Much of the training available through wildland fire is rigorous but heavily based in experiential sharing. This is valuable and should not be lost but expanded to include more objective study of decision making, risk, fire, ecological and social systems. Research should be included in this expanded study to inform new frontiers of study that yield results that useful to decision makers.
*A Risk-Based Approach to Wildland Fire Budgetary Planning
Published Forest Science Journal 2013
Matthew P. Thompson, David E. Calkin, Mark A. Finney, Krista M. Gebert, and
Michael S. Hand
**The wildland fire system and challenges for engineering
Published in Fire Safety Journal 2021
Mark A. Finney USDA Forest Service, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, 5775, Highway 10 West, Missoula, MT, USA
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Jane retired from the Forest Service as Northern Region Deputy Regional Forester (DRF) in July 2020. Her career began in the late 1980’s in Douglas, Wyoming and included work in rangeland management, lands and minerals, and service as a line officer for more than 20 years. While serving as DRF, she spent extensive time as an acting Associate Deputy Chief for State and Private, supporting the National Cohesive Strategy and innovations in strategic fire planning, decision making and risk. Since retiring, she’s continued working on projects related to strategic fire planning; leadership development/decision making; risk and communication.
6. Stop pretending that the world begins and ends at the Forest boundaries.
I am fascinated by the evolution of fire management/suppression techniques. Jane’s point under #2 (“Much of the operational wildland fire management knowledge is based on personal experience in fire response…”) is a telling sign to me. Would the agency be in a different place if it had invested in strategic planning techniques that leveraged the long-time acquired personal experience? Maybe the agency has already done this? Maybe wildfire management is more complex than we think? (Didn’t JWT say this about ecosystem management?)
The ‘fire paradox’ is a bit more complicated than that. For one, simply allowing fires to burn in a changed landscape and climate is not likely to lead to desired fire effects in many cases. This is implicit in the logic and narrative describing observed increases in fire extent and severity as following from fire exclusion and suppression. E.g., unchecked fires in old forests formerly termed “asbestos forests” are now often burning at high severity due to increased fuel aridity, longer fire exposure windows, and fuel build-ups. The result is a steady reduction of forest age and live carbon stocks.
And two, I’ve yet to see the fire forecaster that can accurately predict which lightning strike in June or July will or will not be the one to blow-up in August or September.
“However, fire management on those landscapes should not be driven by the concept that the landscape managers are responsible for protecting communities from fire. Communities are responsible for their land uses and hazard mitigation and should not be expected to relinquish that role to the neighboring land managers.”
This seems like a pretty provocative and disruptive statement, since about everything I read seems to assume that protecting communities is a federal responsibility, and that communities want to assign that role to the feds. Am I wrong that we are about 180º from this suggestion?
I think the FS- community interaction might be a little more complicated than that. Each community’s blame: responsibility ratio is different, depending on a lot of factors including community wealth, history of interactions with the feds, current partisan affiliations (of the community and the exec branch) and so on. Much of this can be loosely characterized as the community’s trust in the FS.
Darnell’s ideas are sound, but should probably be most vigorously applied – at least initially – in and near communities where the trust level is already relatively high. Don’t lead with Josephine County.
Communities often seem to treasure the shade and privacy of their properties more than fire safety. Even with wildfire safety laws, many homeowners choose to ignore them. At the same time, some want their communities surrounded with public land clearings, thinking that a clearcut will stop all wildfires.