Awareness and Social Interactions Influence Natural Resource Professionals’ Recommendations for Prescribed Fire Use

Restoring fire in fire-adapted ecosystems is necessary to curtail woody plant expansion, enhance biodiversity, and reduce wildfire risks, yet prescribed fire is promoted less by federal agencies than other grassland conservation practices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is the primary federal agency responsible for the delivery of rangeland conservation incentives to private landowners in the Great Plains. The degree to which NRCS employees choose to offer technical guidance on prescribed fire and whether they encourage landowners to consider financial support is not well-understood and varies among states. Our study explored the extent to which prescribed fire awareness and social interaction factors influence NRCS employees' knowledge and comfort level regarding prescribed fire and the frequency with which they recommend this conservation practice. The results show that while prescribed fire awareness influences knowledge, it was not significantly associated with frequency of prescribed fire recommendations. Rather, social interaction factors were significantly related to recommendation frequency; these included priority of prescribed fire education in their jobs, positive interactions with landowners regarding prescribed fire, and how often they were asked to deal with brush management. An important implication is that while better knowledge about prescribed fire is necessary, it is not sufficient for more frequent prescribed fire recommendation by natural resource professionals. Instead of focusing primarily on technical proficiency, federal agencies tasked with expanding the application of prescribed fire as an ecosystem restoration and wildfire mitigation tool should focus more on building stronger social networks through, for example, providing greater support of existing and new prescribed burning associations. Our findings also have implications for a national unified policy that supports the application of prescribed fire on privately-owned rangelands because negative fire culture at the federal level has an erosive effect on agencies’ willingness to assist landowners with prescribed fire applications.