Fighting fire with fire: Study gauges public perception of prescribed burns

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Setting planned, controlled fires — or prescribed burns — on landscapes can reduce wildfire risks and support habitat restoration, but to be successful these policies also require public support. A new study may fill in gaps in understanding public perception toward prescribed burns in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, where these fires are increasingly used, according to scientists.

“We are moving to a more uncertain future where fire risk is larger — and one of the tools that managers have in their toolbox is prescribed fire,” said Erica Smithwick, distinguished professor of geography and associate director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment at Penn State. “It’s important to work at the interface between managers and communities in order to sustainably steward our landscapes moving forward, especially under uncertainty.”

To help managers better understand community perceptions of controlled burns, a team led by Penn State scientists surveyed forest managers and recreationists in New Jersey, a state that has practiced prescribed burns for more than 100 years, and in Pennsylvania, which adopted the practice in 2009.

While the study revealed strong community support for prescribed burning, views of specific concerns and benefits differed between managers and recreationists and between recreationists in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the scientists reported in the Journal of Environmental Management.

“Collectively, these results highlighted needs in public outreach to strengthen education, build broader community awareness, engage critical stakeholder groups such as forest recreationists and realign public outreach messages based on community-level concerns and perceived benefits,” said Hong Wu, an associate professor of landscape architecture at Penn State and lead author on the study.

Prescribed fires can help maintain biodiversity in habitats like the forests found in the Mid-Atlantic and kill invasive species and pests like ticks, the scientists said. For example, managers in Pennsylvania use prescribed burns to maintain habitats favored by game animals like deer.

These burns also clear underbrush that otherwise could accumulate and fuel more intense wildfires that can kill trees and destroy homes. While many of the country’s largest fires occur in the Western U.S., wildfire risk remains a serious concern in the more densely populated Mid-Atlantic.

“Pennsylvania is fifth in the country in Wildland Urban Interface, which measures the intermingling of people in these fire-prone landscapes,” said Smithwick, who is also director of the Center for Landscape Dynamics and an associate of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. “While fires might happen less frequently here than in the west, if it does happen, it could have a great impact because a lot of people are living in these landscapes.”

Climate change may increase those risks. Weather extremes in the Eastern U.S., for example, may lead to wetter and drier periods, allowing more underbrush to grow during the wet times and that extra fuel to dry and potentially burn during dry times, the scientists said.

In the survey, reducing fire risk was a higher priority for residents in New Jersey, where the Pine Barren forests experience wildfires that can threaten populated areas, the scientists said. In Pennsylvania, residents viewed habitat management as a higher priority.

“There are different reasons why people would be motivated to be accepting or concerned about fire, and parsing that was the purpose of this study,” Smithwick said. “We found that indeed there are differences and that they vary across state lines, largely due to differences in policies and people’s awareness of fire and beliefs toward it.”

The researchers met with land managers at a workshop sponsored by the Center for Landscape Dynamics, and the study was driven by their concerns about public perception of introducing fire onto landscapes in Pennsylvania, the scientists said.

“The managers we talk to want to be good neighbors, good stewards of the land,” Smithwick said. “There’s a strong interest in communicating why they are doing the work they are doing. They want people to understand the complexity and the opportunities for managing these landscapes more efficiently and sustainably.”

Also contributing from Penn State were Margot Kaye, professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management; Peter Newman, professor and head of the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management; Alan Taylor, professor in the Department of Geography; Rui Wang, doctoral student in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Katherine Zipp, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics.

Cody Dems, southwest project coordinator at the Forest Stewards Guild, Zachary Miller, visitor use management program coordinator at the National Park Service and former associate research professor at Penn State and Yau-Huo Shr, assistant professor at National Taiwan University also participated.

The Joint Fire Science Program and a seed grant from the Penn State Institutes of Energy and Environment provided funding.