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Wildland fire communicators are charged with helping a variety of audiences understand the role of wildland fire. With a society that has been taught that all fire is bad and that suppression is our only option, the communicator's task is not an easy one.
The communicator's message must range from basic resource management to very
detailed fire ecology concepts. Message complexity must match the objective(s)
of the intended message, the audience, and the setting, both physical and institutional.
The message begins with both unplanned wildland fire and prescribed fire as background. Wildland fire, whether natural occurrence or human-ignited, is either attacked (containment or suppression) or permitted to burn under a predetermined management plan. Prescribed fire, fighting fire with fire, is the deliberate ignition of wildland fire to achieve established resource management objectives. Prescribed fire and the use of natural occurring fire as tools of management (i.e., stewardship) are the more complex messages. Helping your audience understand the concept of prescription (planned) fire is central to sound management.
These prescriptions are objective oriented–fuel load reduction, regeneration of select plant species that are fire dependent, or the enhancement of certain wildlife habitat. Most often though, returning fire to a fire dependent natural community accomplishes multiple objectives. Collectively the outcomes are manifested as overall natural community health and maintenance of natural fuel loading–both key themes or storylines for your messages.
Prescribed fire is a well-established practice on public and private lands throughout the world. Resource managers are diligent, and must be portrayed as such, in the planning of prescribed fire. Each plan is targeted for specific outcomes with the utmost care taken to protect human life and property, manage impacts of smoke, protect historical and archeological resources, and protect the ecological integrity of the physical and biological resources.
By carefully calculating meteorological factors, fuels, slope of land, and other relevant conditions, resource managers can control and direct their fires. Their charge is to ignite, hold, monitor, and extinguish their prescribed fires. The extensive bodies of knowledge of wildland fire science and wildland fire ecology provide excellent theoretical grounding and standards of practice for those charged with this stewardship burning. The science behind the flames also serves to underpin the communicator's message. Because the American public highly values and supports science, the crafting of wildland fire in the context of science increases the chances of message acceptance and impact.
Fire tragedies and extensive fires as seen in Florida, Mexico, and elsewhere in 1998 brought the issues to the forefront of national and international news. Likewise, prescribed fires such as Cerro Grande in 2000 that could not be controlled made headlines. All too often the news reports are restricted to tight time slots and sound bites. However, there are windows of opportunity for opening in-depth dialogues with our clientele and audiences about the need to reduce hazardous fuel accumulations and restore certain fire-dependent ecological processes. Audiences need to understand that an immediate need exists in many places around the world to reduce fuel load to prevent extreme fires and to both restore and maintain the health of fire-dependent ecosystems. The reduction or treatments include manual, mechanical, biological, and chemical methods in addition to fire.
While most prescribed burns are relatively small, the plan for periodic burning must be made and presented to the public as strategic landscape-scale plans to restore health and vigor to vast regions. Often this is the primary reason for prescribed fire. To do this requires addressing (1) the excess of naturally occurring fuels and fuel accumulation as a result of land use/land settlement patterns, (2) historical fire suppression, and (3) fire-dependent ecological processes. Messages must convey that wildland fire is very much an anthropogenic problem and that both human interventions and human acceptance of naturally occurring fire are often the best solution, but they are not panaceas.
However, wildland fire management effectiveness is dependent on institutional support and cooperation as well as public understanding and support. Sound fire management science and an extensive understanding of fire ecology exists. Thus the communicator's role includes inter- and intra-agency communication and leadership. If support and coalescence of support from within are not evident, public opinion, and in turn political support, may wane.
Public support is not only required for the concept of wildland fire management but also for institutional support. While this is not a dominant message, audiences need to understand that stewardship of the land, including wildland fire management, requires resources. In situations where organizations are downsized and real dollars are reduced, as well as caps placed on numbers of seasonal employees, these organizations are stressed to meet the competing demands for immediate suppression, long-term needs for fuel load reductions, and other fire-related stewardship activities.
Overshadowing all of the needs and arguments is the risk factor–the risk that a prescribed fire will escape as it did in Cerro Grande in 2000. While land management agencies find the issues of an unplanned fire moving from public lands to private lands controversial enough, an escaped prescribed fire is a public relations challenge as well as a real potential threat to life and property.
Those who are communicating wildland fire messages and are engaged in sustainable community planning are in great part using risk communications. Central to public understanding is conveying risk management options. While prescribed fire is one of the higher risk land management activities, negative impacts have been minimal on a national scale. At the heart of risk management and communications are effective planning, highly trained professionals, and effective policies to reduce risk. These are the tenets found within wildland fire management guidelines.
Unfortunately the impacts and public perception of escaped prescribed fire either from poor planning or from uncontrolled events are the same. Thus internal communications and training must prepare managers for the risk associated with prescribed fire.
In the face of these risks, the American public appears to be showing a shift in attitude towards the use of more natural fire as a tool of stewardship. While we have only begun to impact ecosystem health by returning natural fire to fire-dependent ecosystems, so have we only begun to impact public opinion. A concerted effort is needed on both fronts.
Author: Gary W. Mullins