Managed Wildfire: A Strategy Facilitated by Civil Society Partnerships and Interagency Cooperation

• DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2022.2092803
• Publication Date: 2022-07-25T12:18:07Z
• Authors: Emily Jane Davis; H. Huber-Stearns; M. Caggiano; D. McAvoy; A. S. Cheng; A. Deak; A. Evans
• Keywords: Civil Society

Federal land managers in the United States are permitted to manage wildfires with strategies other than full suppression under appropriate conditions achieve natural resource objectives. However, policy and scientific support for "managed wildfire" appear insufficient its broad use. We conducted case studies northern New Mexico southwestern Utah examine how stakeholders navigated shifting barriers opportunities use managed wildfire from 2018 2021. The of was fostered through an active network civil society partnerships one case, strong interagency cooperation existing policies plans other. In both, COVID-19 pandemic, drought, agency direction curtailed recent Local context shapes response strategies, yet centralized decision-making also can enable or constrain them. Future research could refine understanding social factors incident decision-making, evaluation risks tradeoffs response. ImplicationsManagers seeking restore fire's ecological roles their own landscapes these findings cultivate supportive local environments Both offer examples may be facilitated cooperation. Networks partners encourage change at multiple levels concerted efforts over time, particularly by building a larger localized collaborative projects body regionally relevant evidence. Strong on both mitigation foster environment mutual understanding, even given differing missions mandates wildfire. Management implicationsFederal must consider objectives that compete across scales, social-ecological contexts, timeframes. These include minimizing negative impacts human values, responding immediate fire exposure, managing sustainably longer timeframes; meeting accomplishment targets, such as acres hazardous fuels reduction, restoration, objectives.Federal but face challenges ambiguous terminology, conflicting policies, increasing numbers homes wildlands, unanticipated events, pandemic. Conditions, opportunities, vary substantially locality dependent actors, subject higher-level changes direction.Beyond improved risk analytics decision tools, enabling internal institutional facilitate Social science provide evidence frameworks including concrete lessons learned, expanded after-action reviews, process monitoring, briefings leadership, application boundary-spanning organizations.