Prescribed Fire Education & Training

Part 4: Other Resources for Prescribed Fire Management and How to Leverage Them Many prescribed fire experts around the country are doing this kind of work, and our project would not have been poss ible without them. If you’re creating a similar program in your state or region, we highly recommend that you consult, work with, and leverage state and federal resources, existing Extension resources, organizations such as

prescribed fire councils (PFCs);

prescribed burn associations (PBAs); and

agreements, authorities, and memorandums of understanding.

We have taken full advantage of our national network of diverse, knowledgeable Extension colleagues. We urge you to do the same if you are considering landscape-scale, cross-boundary work in your area.

PFCs

PFCs are organized at the state and local chapter levels. They exist to connect private landowners, fire practitioners, agencies, non-governmental organizations, regulators, and other stakeholders to network and share information related to prescribed fire. Strategies that PFCs use to get more fire on the ground include the following:

public (and partner) education and understanding

training and expertise

information and resources sharing

cooperative burning

policies, regulations, and practices

communications

The OPFC was formed in 2013 under the leadership of Amanda Rau (now also with OSU Extension, Willamette Valley and North Cascades Fire Specialist). OPFC was created to promote and facilitate communication and information about prescribed fire and to provide a forum for interested parties to congregate and participate in discussions about prescribed fire (OPFC, 2021). The OPFC recently went through two working group exercises that helped contribute to OSU’s development of prescribed fire education and training: 1) charting the prescribed fire regulatory system in Oregon with a focus on burn planning, liability, and smoke management on private land and 2) mapping capacity for prescribed fire.

The purpose of the fire regulatory system flowchart is to map out critical bottlenecks for prescribed fire in Oregon to identify solutions. The chart only focuses on private lands, but the Council hopes to expand the

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