Wildland Fire Education and Outreach Case Studies
Public Awareness and Knowledge of Wildland Fire Through County Level Programming: A Florida Partnership Initiative

The Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Florida (School of Forest Resources and Conservation and Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation), the Florida Division of Forestry, and the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy are partnering to raise public awareness of wildland fire. The project implemented in 1999 involves experts in wildland fire, forest management, wildlife ecology, communications, education, and evaluation in the development of a Fire Education Toolkit and a series of three Fire Education Inservice Training Programs. The Toolkit allows teams of extension agents and Division of Forestry representatives to develop public programs in their counties by offering a variety of fact sheets, brochures, videos, slide sets, roadside interpretation signs, neighborhood letters, and news releases. The county-level programs address topics such as:

• fire-dependent ecosystems in Florida;
• benefits to human population provided by fire-dependent ecosystems;
• the role of fire in the ecosystem and the effects of fire during and after burns;
• the use of prescribed burning to manage lands, and social problems associated with prescribed burning;
• the ecosystem effects and social risks caused by more people living in fire-prone natural areas; and
• actions residents can take to sustain these ecosystems and live safely in them.

The information is being delivered through public programs and local news media, and supplemented with interpretive signs at demonstration areas. By creating and training participants in an information dissemination network, this project makes a sustainable contribution to educating central and northern Floridians about wildland fire for years to come.

This partnership joins together program delivery and wildfire expertise. The Cooperative Extension Service consists of 67 county offices and state specialists dedicated to delivering scientific-based information to the citizenry. It is particularly effective in rural areas, where agriculture and forestry interests have been well served for a century. The Division of Forestry (DOF) in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is the lead agency responsible for wildland fire management in Florida. The mission of the Division of Forestry is to protect and manage Florida's forest resources through a stewardship ethic to assure these resources will be available for future generations.

The Nature Conservancy, a lead partner, owns the largest private system of nature sanctuaries in the world. Each year, the Conservancy conducts about 300 prescribed burns across the United States. In Florida, the Conservancy owns and manages 37 preserves, totaling nearly 40,000 acres. The Nature Conservancy's Florida Chapter has used prescribed fire for more than a decade to restore and maintain natural areas in Florida.

This project has two main target audiences: (1) teams of County Extension Agents and Division of Forestry field representatives who are trained to deliver programs, and (2) adult residents of north and central Florida living in and near forested areas who will learn about fire from the county teams. This combination of audiences will establish an organized network of local contacts capable of delivering public education about fire for this grant cycle and in the future.

The overall goal of the project is to increase the awareness and knowledge of adult residents of Florida about the aforementioned fire topics, particularly residents who live in or near the wildland/urban interface. Because the project has two components (educating and equipping county teams and then educating the public), there are two types of objectives: project objectives and behavioral objectives.

Project Objectives

1. Measure current awareness and knowledge of target audience members about the specified fire topics through a needs assessment survey (including secondary data sources in the literature) to support the development of more effective educational materials and programs.
2. Create model educational media materials and obtain additional materials to form a Fire Education Toolkit.
3. Educate county teams in three training workshops to explain how to use the Toolkits to expand participants' knowledge of fire in Florida, and how to develop their own county programs.
4. Establish a prescribed fire demonstration area in Volusia County to enhance the training workshop and pilot-test educational materials and methods for effective use of demonstration burns.
5. Support county teams as they adapt the materials and conduct effective programs for the residents of their fire-prone regions.

Behavioral Objectives

1. Ninety percent of the County Extension participants will increase their awareness and knowledge of specified wildland fire topics (we assume some Extension agents and the Division of Forestry staff are already aware and knowledgeable), and 100 percent of participants will indicate an intention to use the Fire Education Toolkit.
2. Seventy percent of the participating public will increase their awareness and knowledge regarding the specified fire topics and indicate an increased intention to perform actions to sustain fire-dependent ecosystems and to live safely within them.

Product Descriptions Needs Assessment

Recognizing that the 1998 wildland fires may provide some residents with more knowledge or more fear, random phone interviews were conducted with 350 residents of counties with high 1998 wildland fire acreage and 350 residents of counties that did not experience the 1998 fires. This information was used to develop effective materials. A 1999 Extension Inservice Workshop on prescribed burning collected input for the Fire Education Toolkit materials and training program. A report of these assessments was completed in April 1999.

Fire Education Toolkit

The Fire Education Toolkit includes newly developed educational materials and the best existing fire education materials. Materials were designed and selected by the cooperators to address the objectives and educational topics of the project. One hundred and fifty Toolkits are being produced and distributed to all County Extension and Division of Forestry offices in north and central Florida. The kit includes:

Toolkit Manual

The Toolkit manual provides guidance on the use of the materials and an annotated guide to the video library, a suggested slide presentation script, guidelines for adapting the model press releases, guidelines for creating and using demonstration areas, suggestions for the best materials to use with different audiences, guidelines for planning public programs, and forms for keeping records of program activities.

Video Library

A variety of useful videos exist on wildland fire in Florida. The library has "Where There's Fire" produced by Florida State Community's public television station (WFSU) and "Wildlife 101" in the Beyond Science series produced by University of South Florida's public television station.

Slide Set

A set of slides (approximately 60) were collected from existing files owned by the cooperators or photographed to show how prescribed burns are conducted and what landscape changes are important to create defensible space.

Educator's Guide

Designed for teachers by the Florida Division of Forestry, "Fire in Florida's Ecosystems," which includes an excellent introduction to wildland fire in Florida, is targeted to adult educators (i.e., county teams).

Brochures and Fact Sheets

A variety of pamphlets, brochures, and fact sheets about fire already exist, and more are likely to be produced in the near future. Many of the best were selected for inclusion in the Toolkit in quantities for distribution to residents. New fact sheets are likely to be needed on: defensible space, air quality regulations, the use of prescribed burns or other tools to manage fire-dependent natural areas and protect property, and Florida regulations for conducting a prescribed burn.

Press Kit

The Toolkit includes a computer disk of model press releases and newspaper articles that can be modified for the local situation. Press releases will announce public programs and encourage the media to attend nearby prescribed burns. A model "Dear neighbor" letter is included as an example of how county teams can alert landowners to an upcoming prescribed burn.

Roadside Interpretive Signs

Division of Forestry representatives will be alerted to identify recent or upcoming prescribed burns near well-traveled roads using roadside interpretive signs. These sites may make ideal demonstration areas. With landowner approval, signs will be erected on these properties to remind the public when and why they were intentionally burned.

Demonstration Areas

Volusia County Fire Service is creating a demonstration area and pilot-testing the educational materials and methods for contacting media. The Nature Conservancy staff coordinates this opportunity and works with Volusia County to use this information in the Training Workshops. This area will be used to model a process by which county teams will select their own demonstration areas, invite local press to prescribed burns, and erect interpretive signage to increase public awareness at these sites.

Evaluation Components

Evaluation was conducted throughout this project. A needs assessment provided key information for the materials development process and helped form a baseline for knowledge and awareness for our summative evaluation. Questionnaires are developed and will be distributed before and after each training workshop to assess changes in knowledge and behavioral intentions of participating county teams resulting from the training program. Citizens attending county programs complete surveys immediately before and three months after the workshop to identify changes in their knowledge, attitudes, and intentions regarding fire-dependent ecosystems, benefits of fire, prescribed burning, and appropriate citizen actions. Post-program phone surveys will continue to be used to assess the impact of the various distribution systems by recording sources of information (public programs, brochures, news media coverage, and demonstration area signs), and their rankings of interest and effectiveness.

County teams will record measurement of program success including: records of the number of public workshops and special programs conducted, mass media press releases and articles submitted and published, number of people contacted through workshops, number of materials distributed, number of prescribed fire messages piggybacked on other programs, and phone calls and personal contacts.

An assessment of these initiatives will help identify cost effective and efficient activities for the future.

The "Wildland Fire Education Toolkit Handbook" (Monroe et al., 1999) was published as Circular 1245, University of Florida, Florida Cooperative Extension Service. This work is complemented by a number of Extension fact sheets of fire in Florida (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu).

For More Information:

Martha C. Monroe
Assistant Professor/Extension Specialist
School of Forest Resources and Conservation
University of Florida
P.O. Box 110410
Gainesville, FL 43611-0410
Phone: (352) 846-0878
Fax: (352) 846-1277