Table 6 Representative quotes from survey respondents illustrating the interacting factors affecting prescribed burning decisions
Factors | Quote |
|---|---|
Current constraints | |
• Agency decisions • Fire breaks • Resources • Weather • Wildland-urban interface | “Some years we haven’t accomplished burning goals due to weather, agency decisions, staffing, or any number of reasons so that we are little behind in burning. Fire breaks, WUI, and control issues bring the average fire return interval across my area down some even though many blocks are in good shape.” |
• Air quality/legal • Resources • Weather • Wildland-urban interface | “Staff turnover, burn restrictions, weather extremes, and proximity to urban interface have all factored into longer than preferred burn frequencies on many units.” |
• Fuel and unit conditions • Management practices • Resources • Risk | “Everything. Logistical and budget constraints, smoke management concerns, difficulty of getting flatwoods (and the flatwoods duff layer) into a short season rotation and getting folks to apply growing season fire.” |
• Fuel and unit conditions • Risk • Smoke management • Wildland-urban interface | “(There are) not enough burning days to get all needs met within a 2-year rotation. There are too many units with narrow burn windows due to smoke direction and heavy fuels in the WUI to be able to get to them all under restriction. We use triage based on multiple variable[s] to prioritize some units over others.” |
Future challenges and opportunities | |
• Ecosystem health • Fuel reduction • Public concern | “Living in a state where hundreds of thousands of new residents and visitors need to be educated about prescribed fire annually is extremely challenging. It is the fuel reduction mantra that people hear and not the ecosystem benefits that allows them to accept the role of fire in our landscape.” |
• Liability • Public concern • Risk | “If there is not some sort of liability reform and a greater understanding of the actual economic benefit to the insurance industry of prescribed burning, well, that is a big deal…. The math needs to be done to show they lose less by supporting prescribed fire, which saves wildfire losses, even though there will be individual prescribed fire losses.” |
• Management practices | “Instead of talking about burning, managers need to go out and do it. Expand beyond the traditional ‘season’ of burning and burn year-round.” |