Lenya Quinn-Davidson

Impediments to prescribed fire across agency, landscape and manager: an example from northern California

Though the need for prescribed fire is widely recognised, its use remains subject to a range of operational and social constraints. Research has focussed on identifying these constraints, yet past efforts have focussed disproportionately on single agencies and geographic regions. We examined constraints on prescribed fire by surveying a wide variety of organisations (including six state and federal agencies and several tribes, non-governmental organisations and timber companies) in northern California, a fire-prone region of the western United States. Across the region, prescribed burning annually covered only 38% of the area needed to fulfil land-management objectives, and 66% of managers indicated dissatisfaction with levels of prescribed fire activity. The highest-ranked impediments were narrow burn window, regulations, lack of adequate personnel and environmental laws. Impediment ratings differed among entities, with legal and social impediments of greater concern in the private sector than in the public, and economic impediments of greater concern in the state and private sectors than in the federal. Comparisons with the south-eastern United States, where similar research has taken place, point to important regional constraints on prescribed fire activity. These findings suggest further need for research spanning geographic and ownership boundaries, as prescribed fire impediments can vary by context.

Science synthesis to support socioecological resilience in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range.

A team of scientists integrated recent research to inform forest managers, stakeholders, and interested parties concerned with promoting socioecological resilience in the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascade Range, and Modoc Plateau. Among the focal topics were forest and fire ecology; soils; aquatic ecosystems; forest carnivores including Pacific fisher, marten, and California spotted owl; air quality; and the social, economic, and cultural components of socioecological systems. The synthesis adopted a holistic perspective by focusing on issues that cross scientific disciplines and considering the integrated nature of terrestrial and aquatic systems and the interconnections between restoration of ecological processes and the social and economic concerns of communities. A central theme is the importance of restoring key ecological processes to mitigate impacts of widespread stressors to socioecological resilience, including changes in climate, fire deficit and fuel accumulations, air pollution, and pathogens and invasive species. Key findings from the synthesis were that (1) efforts to promote resilience of socioecological systems increasingly consider the interaction of social values and ecological processes in pursuit of long-term mutual benefits and social learning for local communities and larger social networks; (2) strategic placement of treatments to reduce hazardous fuel accumulations and to restore fire as an ecosystem process within large landscapes can lower the risk of uncharacteristically large, severe, and dangerous fires, and their associated impacts to sensitive wildlife species; and (3) science suggests a need for active treatment in some riparian and core wildlife habitat to restore fire and its ecological benefits. Forest landscape management will need to be adaptive as the impacts of stressors and treatments on a range of socioecological values are determined by further research and monitoring.

Jobs and Community in Humboldt County, California

During the last three decades, ecological restoration has grown from a locally rooted, community-based movement into a widespread practice, diverse in meaning, application, and scale. During this period, restoration has become institutionalized as an important activity within a multitude of national, state, and local government agencies and programs. Restoration now represents a legitimate form of scientific inquiry and scholarship, supported by university research and teaching programs, professional associations, and journals. Perhaps most important, private and public sector funding for landscape-scale and other restoration efforts has steadily increased. Yet the phenomenal growth of the restoration movement, along with the increasing legitimacy accorded particular forms of restoration, has raised the stakes of debates about restoration’s purpose and rationale. Growing demand and esteem for restoration have illuminated its dynamic meaning—it ranges from a site for the productive engagement of communities and environments to a science-based practice that allows for the efficient and large-scale restitution of damaged ecosystems.