Fire Communication & Education
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Deschutes County, population 175,000, has become a national leader in pursuing such a comprehensive approach. It too experiences regular wildfires. Nevertheless, no house has burned here since 2003, even as fires caused enormous property damage elsewhere in the West — from exurban metropolitan areas to similarly sized counties like Chelan and Oakanogan in Washington, where fires in 2015 burned over 100 structures.
Bob Roper, a retired fire chief of Ventura County, Calif., endorses the approach in general, saying, “Everything that they’re doing can be replicated somewhere else,” even though the strategy may still be unable to completely protect against the damage that increasingly ferocious winds pose in fire season.
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Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center’s Two More Chains Summer Issue featured Ted Adams, Assistant Supervisor on the Hells Canyon Wildland Fire Module, Payette National Forest. The article focused on whether or not fire science research is being applied to decision-making on the fire line. The following quote from Ted was highlighted in the article’s opening: “We have all of this research that’s available to us and yet you could argue that a majority of individuals on the fire line are not reading peer-reviewed research and applying it to their decision-making, into their mental models.” After reading the article, Coleen Haskell contacted us. She asked if she could continue the conversation that we started with Ted.
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Fire Adapted Communities Network published 100 blogs in 2017, each one offering a combination of insight, resources, stories and sometimes even humor. Our authors flooded your inboxes with so much wisdom that your biggest challenge may very well have been making time to read it all. In case you’ve missed a blog, or a few (dozen), here are 17 community wildfire resilience takeaways from the last year.
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This webinar was recorded on January 10, 2018 and featured Rachel Reimer, Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.
This project utilized a feminist appreciative approach to Action Research to facilitate a conversation about gender and leadership within the British Columbia Wildfire Service (BCWS). The research question was, “How might understanding gender and leadership support excellence in the BCWS?” This study found that amongst diverse perspectives on gender and leadership, ultimately gender discrimination is occurring within wildland fire culture in the BCWS. Participants suggested action steps based on supporting organizational and leadership learning through non-judgemental, safe spaces for dialogue. This provided an opportunity for the BCWS to transform the challenges associated with gender discrimination in the wildland fire profession through organizational learning.
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This was a study of ranchers in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico using Q Methodology to understand their views and motivations about ranching, conservation, and the government. Our results show three complex viewpoints, which we term radical center ranchers (20% of variance), innovative conservationists (19% of variance), and traditional ranchers (12% of variance). A commitment to conservation and corresponding lack of anti-conservation sentiment is held across these viewpoints. Mistrust of government coexists with conservation values for two groups. This information is useful for finding common ground between ranchers and government officials, conservationists, and extension agents on range management and conservation goals.
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Since the 1990s, numerous Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs) have emerged in Oregon and Idaho, and a recent 2015 law authorizes RFPAs in Nevada as well. RFPAs organize and authorize rancher participation in fire suppression alongside federal agency firefighters (typically, the Bureau of Land Management or BLM). These all-volunteer crews of ranchers have training and legal authority to respond to fires on private and state lands in landscapes where there had been no existing fire protection, and can become authorized to respond on federal lands as well.
There has been growing policy interest in better understanding the RFPA model. This study analyzed RFPA establishment, functioning, successes, and challenges through four case studies of individual RFPAs and their respective state programs in Oregon and Idaho during 2015-2016.
Bruce Roundy, Brigham Young University, discusses indicators of resilience and resistance of sagebrush steppe communities associated with soil temperature and water availability as learned from SageSTEP.
In this webinar, Gloria Edwards, Southern Rockies Fire Science Network Program Coordinator, and Génie MontBlanc, Great Basin Fire Science Delivery Project Coordinator, discuss their regional efforts to enhance fire science information sharing.
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This is a one minute introductory video about the Great Basin Fire Science Exchange. Please note that this video was made under our former name, Great Basin Fire Science Delivery, but all contact information remains the same.
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This video produced by the NW Fire Science Consortium, shows how collaborative efforts are not only working to help find consensus on addressing large landscape-level restoration, but also in management of the post-fire environment. How do you address the cross-boundary, diverse interests on over 100,000 burned acres?