PRESCRIBED FIRE IMPLEMENTATION & INSURANCE SURVEY

Administered Fall 2022

The survey is now closed. If you would still like to submit a response, please contact Michelle Greiner at michelle.greiner@colostate.edu, or Heidi Huber-Stearns at hstearns@umich.edu.

Survey Findings and Products:

• Policy brief

• Directory of Local U.S. Prescribed Fire Practitioners

• Report of western U.S. survey results

RVCC and its partners at Colorado State University, University of Michigan, the Fire Learning Network, and the Watershed Research and Training Center administered this national survey to gather information about prescribed fire implementation capacity, insurance access and barriers.

WHY IS THIS SURVEY IMPORTANT?

This survey was designed in response to several timely factors and concerns:

• An influx of new federal and state funding for wildfire hazard mitigation, without clear strategies for how partners’ capacity will be tapped;
  

• A lack of comprehensive information about the community and capacity of partners with whom federal and state partners may work on prescribed fire; and
  

• A dramatic loss of prescribed fire insurance policy options without a comprehensive understanding of how this impacts partners, at what scales, and in which capacities.

SURVEY GOALS

The partners intend to use this data for research and advocacy related goals, which include:

1. Defining the population of partners that implement or support prescribed fire operations in the U.S., and their current capacities;

2. Understanding the resource needs of these partners to maintain or build their capacity;

3. Understanding how the lack of prescribed fire insurance policies has impacted practitioners, including the scope and spatial scale of the impact across different organizational categories;

4. Informing future advocacy work, including efforts to enhance targeted federal investments in local prescribed fire partners.

WHO we asked to take THIS SURVEY

We recruited respondents who fit the following criteria:

If you have questions about this survey, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page, or contact Heidi Huber-Stearns at Hstearns(at)umich.edu and Michelle Greiner at Michelle.Greiner(at)colostate.edu.

Many thanks to Our survey implementation team

Becca Shively, formerly Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition
Courtney Schultz & Michelle Greiner, Colorado State University
Heidi Huber-Stearns, University of Michigan
Emily Hohman, Fire Learning Network
Nick Goulette, Watershed Research & Training Center

Note: This survey was conducted in accordance with protocol approved by CSU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Our goal was to provide timely data to inform near-term policy and spending decisions, and, in light of this we were not able to undergo Tribal IRB processes in advance of this survey. 


Support for this project was provided by:
Resources Legacy Fund
Western Forest and Fire Initiative at University of Michigan
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation