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Alaska is a vast state, with the majority of its land managed by federal and state agencies. Much of this land is wild, inaccessible, and remote. Beyond the largest cities of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau are many small communities. Some of these communities have fewer than 100 people and are only accessible by small plane or boat. The residents of these small communities are primarily Native Alaskans, many of whom speak their Native language first, English second (if at all). The economies of most of these villages are based on a rural lifestyle and traditional subsistence uses of the land and wildlife. Often there is no grocery store other than a mini-mart type facility, and villagers rely to a substantial extent on what is available to hunt, fish, or gather from the surrounding wildlands for sustenance. Life has been like this for generations.
Lightning-caused fires are an important natural component of boreal forest and tundra ecosystems, which comprise most of the land base in interior and northern Alaska. In southcentral Alaska, where lightning occurrence and lightning-caused fires are much less prevalent, human-caused fires are common, in large part because of the population concentrated there along the road system and the high degree of recreational use. Ecologically, lightning-caused fires help to cycle nutrients, warm soil, sustain a mosaic of varied vegetation age classes and types, and most important from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) standpoint, provide a diversity of habitat for wildlife. In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) quadrupled the size of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The sixteen National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska now total over 82 million acres, which is about 90 percent of the acreage of the entire National Wildlife Refuge System. One of the purposes for which refuges in Alaska were created or expanded as a result of ANILCA was to provide for subsistence opportunities for rural residents. Because of the links between fire effects on plants and animals and subsistence opportunities for rural residents, it is important to nurture public support for and understanding of fire management policies.
In part because of the substantial land management changes which resulted from ANILCA and the varied views of the role of fire by the various land managers, the Alaska Interagency Fire Management Plans were developed during the 1980s. These plans provided a mechanism for managing wildland fire on a landscape scale by delineating a range of suppression responses that could systematically be applied across ownership boundaries which balanced costs with resources to be protected and accommodated land management objectives.
The 1988 fire season in Alaska was the most severe in several decades. In fact, the 46 fires that burned on Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge that year impacted 1.15 million acres – almost as much acreage as was impacted by the Yellowstone fires. Fires typically burn hundreds of thousands of acres in Alaska each year. Although publicity of the fires in the Yellowstone area greatly overshadowed publicity of the fires that occurred in Alaska in 1988, there was localized negative publicity about the 1988 fire season in Alaska. It was evident that there were a lot of misconceptions, misinformation, misunderstandings, and a wide spectrum of opinions lurking in the public sector about how fires were managed in Alaska and the ecological effects of fire. A group of U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees met to brainstorm how to more effectively provide information to the public on the role of fire on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska and to identify specific target groups for that information. This group consisted of Refuge Fire Management Officers and Education Specialists. It was decided that it would be most effective to target educators and students in villages within or adjacent to the National Wildlife Refuges as the primary audiences. The students could pass what they had learned on to their parents, and the students could carry their knowledge and understanding forward as they developed into adults to make informed decisions in their villages when fire management issues arose. The group also recognized that it would be useful to provide media professionals reporting with appropriate background information. The theme of the educational activities and the focus of the background information would be the natural role of fire in boreal forest and tundra ecosystems in Alaska and how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managed and utilized fire in that context.
After the group brainstormed a framework of activities and content ideas, a contract was proposed and awarded for preparation of a K–12 "Role of Fire in Alaska" curriculum with an accompanying poster. In addition, several products were also developed to aid and encourage teachers to utilize the curriculum. Teachers in rural Alaska can have difficulty obtaining resource materials for teaching. Teachers are also very busy and like to have materials and lesson plans that can be used "off the shelf." The group decided one of the products to be developed would be a "kit" in a plastic storage container which would include all the materials and supplies required to do many of the activities from the curriculum. A slide presentation and tabletop display were also developed. Development of these materials took two to three years. Prior to completion of the curriculum, piloting was done to make sure the product was on target. A few years after the curriculum was completed, a "Fire in the Forest" video taking students on an investigative field trip to a burned area was developed for use in villages or towns where it was not convenient to visit a burned area firsthand.
It is one thing to develop educational materials, but quite another to generate enough interest and incentives for rural teachers to use them. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Education Specialists and trained refuge employees facilitated workshops and credit courses for teachers in communities interested in the curriculum. These workshops were provided for rural schools at no cost to teachers other than for the college credit. Each teacher participating was given a full set of curriculum materials and often a "kit" was loaned to the school. Offering a credit was attractive to teachers who had to recertify with new credits every 5 years.
As the use of the curriculum in Alaska was implemented, strengths and weaknesses became apparent. One of the strengths was that the curriculum was Alaska-specific. Alaskan teachers at that time had little else to choose from for Alaska- specific curricula. They loved the fact that the curriculum contained accurate tundra and boreal forest ecological material. The curriculum was used most effectively by upper elementary and older students. To understand fire ecology and fire management, students needed to have a basic boreal forest or tundra ecology foundation. The curriculum was weak in providing this foundation. As a result, we began to do joint credit courses with the Project Learning Tree coordinator in Alaska. The Project Learning Tree national curriculum does a masterful job with forest ecology in this regard. In addition, several years after our curriculum was produced, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game produced an excellent curriculum called "Alaska's Forests and Wildlife." We now encourage educators to take advantage of these two curricula to supplement the "Role of Fire" curriculum.
Initially, the "Role of Fire" curriculum was available free to any teacher who attended the workshop or credit course, similar to requirements for Project WILD and Project Learning Tree. We discovered several problems with this arrangement. Too much of our time was being spent receiving phone calls and filling orders, time which could be used more productively instructing teachers. Rural locations in Alaska can be expensive to get to and time-consuming places to hold for workshops. Weather can cause delays getting to workshop locations as well as delays in leaving workshop locations. In addition, teachers in rural Alaska turn over very quickly. At some locations, training would be provided, only to have 100 percent turnover the next year and a total loss of trained teachers to utilize the curriculum.
As far as distribution was concerned, we decided to contract with a business who would be willing to sell our curriculum. We wanted the curricula to reach teachers, whether we gave a teacher workshop or not. The contractor is required to advertise and fill retail and wholesale orders, especially in rural Alaska. The contractor is given the curricula, sells it at a standard book markup, and then must bear the financial burden of reprinting it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will revise the curriculum for reprinting. An important addition will be identification of how state science standards are met for each activity. Recent developments such as revised federal policies, new terminology, and wildland-urban interface issues will also be incorporated.
During the Yukon Flats fires in 1988, it became clear that print and TV reporters did not usually have the appropriate background information to put the event in an ecological context. The "Role of Fire" curriculum was developed with a section at the back containing fire ecology background information. The background section was written with both teachers and the media in mind. A cover was designed for a small binder to package the background material for the media. Piggybacking the production of this binder with the curriculum was very economical. These guides were distributed to the major television, radio, and newspaper reporters in Alaska as well as to Refuge Managers.
The USFWS wanted to reach the parents of school children with fire ecology information directly as well as through the children. Rather than relying solely on the students to talk to their parents about what they had studied at school, the Fire Inquirer was developed. In rural Alaska a newspaper called Bush Mailer is delivered to every post office box owner once each week. This newspaper is the only paper residents of some rural villages receive. It was decided the Fire Inquirer would be an insert to this newspaper.
This eight-page insert was filled with fun fire ecology and fire management related activities for kids, and also with sufficient graphics and content to make it interesting for adults to notice and read. This insert was timed to arrive in the spring, just prior to the beginning of fire season.
In 1996, a human-caused fire occurred 20 miles (about 32 kilometers) north of Anchorage in which over 300 homes were destroyed. It painfully underscored the wildland-urban interface fire problem that was developing in Alaska. As the result of publicity from that event, Alaskans in rural and urban areas are now even more primed for education about fire management and fire ecology. In concert with other state and federal agencies through the Alaska Wildland Fire Coordinating Group, the USFWS will continue efforts to increase public awareness and understanding of the role of fire in Alaska and current fire management challenges facing federal, state, local agencies, and private landowners.
Cathy Rezabeck
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1011 E. Tudor Rd.
Anchorage, AK 99503