Prescribed burns are carefully planned fires on public lands to help reduce the risk of wildfires in communities. They’re often conducted by government agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, but new groups of community members are now getting involved. Prescribed Burn Associations, also known as PBAs, are local groups of community members, land owners and other volunteers that conduct prescribed burns on private land. They also work closely with certified burn managers for planning, securing permits and more to prepare the site for fire.
Chris Adlam is a regional fire specialist for Oregon State University’s Extension Program. Aaron Krikava is an organizer for the Rogue Valley PBA. They both join us to share more on what PBAs are and the impact they have had in Oregon.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Prescribed burns are carefully planned fires intended to reduce fuel in an area as a way to reduce the risk of destructive wildfire. They’re often conducted by government agencies like the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service, but now volunteers are getting involved. Prescribed Burn Associations, also known as PBAs, are local groups of community members, landowners, and other volunteers that conduct prescribed burns on private land. Five years ago, the Rogue Valley PBA became the first one in Oregon. More have followed. Aaron Krikava is an organizer for the Rogue Valley PBA. Chris Adlam is a regional fire specialist for Oregon State University’s Extension Service. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Aaron Krikava:Thanks, Dave.
Miller: So Aaron, first, how did you get into this field?
Krikava: I have worked in ecological restoration and fuel reduction work for around 20 years now, and part of the thing we kept coming back to is that in fire adapted ecosystems like ours the missing fire was the component that we needed. We could reduce fuel but the fuel is just going to grow back.
So trying to reintroduce this low intensity, low severity fire regime was really the ideal we wanted to get to. Trying to get prescribed fire on private land in addition to the Forest Service and BLM land seemed critical to create this cohesive wildfire response.
Miller: And I don’t know, when you started out 15 years ago, 17 years ago, what kinds of responses would you get if you would say what you just said to private landowners?
Krikava: There’d certainly be some apprehension, but when we started the PBA, the response was overwhelming how excited people were to get involved with it. I think there’s a recognition that what we’ve been doing historically hasn’t been working and we kind of need something new to try and work with.
Miller: Chris, how long have there been Prescribed Burn Associations?
Chris Adlam: The first Prescribed Burn Association started in 1995 in Nebraska. At the time ranchers over there were getting together, recognizing that they were losing grasslands and pastures to encroachment from woody species. That really took off in the Great Plains, and eventually that movement of Prescribed Burn Associations spread to parts of the Southeastern United States and eventually to California in 2017.
From then on, we’ve gone from the first PBA on the West Coast, the Humboldt County PBA in 2017, to over 30 PBAs on the West Coast now ranging from Washington to California.
Miller: A pretty big increase in under a decade. So you’ve talked and encouraged folks from PBAs across the West. What are the most common reasons you’ve heard for why people start them?
Adlam: Like Aaron said, I think a lot of people realize that our relationship to fire is really out of balance. We’ve focused a lot of our strategy as a society on just putting out fires, but while that’s important, we also need to, on the other hand, be using fire in a controlled way for all of the benefits that it provides.
A lot of people recognize that, and they come to these PBAs because it’s actually a really positive movement of people who are coming together with their neighbors, working together to do this thing that is going to reduce risk on the one hand but also improve habitat for species that are dependent on fire.
And it’s just a way to connect with their neighbors and do this thing that feels positive at a time when the wildfire trends seem really scary and daunting. It’s really a positive environment and something that feels empowering.
Miller: Aaron, you know one of the things that came to mind as Chris was talking just now is a barn raising. I mean, where, famously, people would get together to help out their neighbors, their community members, in that case to build something. Here it’s sort of the opposite. It’s more like brush burning as opposed to barn raising. But what does the community aspect feel like?
Krikava: Like you said, I often use that example of barn raisings or hangs or other historic rural land management methods where communities worked together to accomplish these goals that were really hard to do on their own but working together were able to do it. That kind of community response is exactly what the PBA is all about. Neighbors helping neighbors,community members working together to try and prevent fire from impacting our land, because fire doesn’t stop at property lines. So I feel like these prescribed burns actually can benefit the broader community even more than what an individual barn raising used to do.
Miller: Right, but if a barn raising goes wrong, you’ve got a messed up barn. If a prescribed burn goes wrong, the results could be broader and more catastrophic. How much training do volunteers or members of a PBA get?
Krikava: One of the main parts of a PBA is that you don’t have to have any experience to come and participate initially, but we have organizers who have years of experience and specific qualifications that allow them to conduct these burns under the auspices of the state government and conduct these burns in a safe manner; and they can show and train these new members who have little experience so over time they can have more comfort levels and eventually perhaps work on getting their own qualifications to do these burns.
Miller: So you or other people are Certified Burn Managers?
Krikava: Exactly. That’s a designation that the state created after the Labor Day fires in 2020 with Senate Bill 762. And after becoming Certified Burn Manager with the state, you get liability protections and access to a million dollar claims fund where if a prescribed burn did go badly you would have this insurance coverage from the state. But I must also say, no prescribed burn on private land has ever escaped and gone to court in Oregon, so it’s an extremely rare event.
Miller: But am I right that public land managers cannot say the same thing?
Krikava: Public land managers cannot say the same thing. They’re often dealing with much larger burns, farther away from homes and also with less risk aversion, I would say.
Miller: What do you mean by that?
Krikava: Well, we’re often burning right around someone’s home, so we need to be 100% certain that that person’s home’s going to be safe, and so we’re going to be perhaps more cautious than a land manager that’s working miles and miles away from somebody’s home with forests surrounding the whole area so the likelihood of escape actually being catastrophic wouldn’t be as bad.
Miller: Chris, can you just give us a sense for the scale here, the scale of land that could benefit from prescribed burns in any given year in comparison to the acreage that is actually treated in any given year?
Adlam: Yeah, the removal of fire from the landscape, which came with the removal of Indigenous people who were previously lighting fires across large parts of the state, and then following that the fire suppression policies that came in has created a big departure for most of our landscapes.
Many of our landscapes are deprived of fire. We have a fire drought, so to speak, on much of our landscapes, and that’s contributing to a lot of problems with increasing fuel loads, increasing wildfires and also the decline of specific habitats that depended on fire once upon a time. So the scale is pretty massive and there’s a lot of work that needs to happen.
And oftentimes when we’re talking about prescribed fire, there’s also work that needs to happen first. Like people need to go in there and perhaps thin that forest before it is ready to receive fire in that way. So the scale is pretty big. We are looking at reintroducing fire to these communities, to these landscapes, and it is a process that we all acknowledge will probably take generations. You know, it’s a problem that we’ve created over 100-plus years and it’s probably going to take us about that long to get out of that, so realistically when you bring up the scale, it is a really daunting question.
But I think that the other thing to look at is that we’re not just bringing back fire to these landscapes, we’re also bringing back fire to these communities. And the impact of Prescribed Burn Associations is also that experience that people can have of fire in a controlled way, in a safe way, at a time when a lot of people are experiencing really negative impacts of wildfire during the summer. That type of healing, that type of conversation that people start having around, what could the role of fire be in our communities, knowing that it’s going to happen and we can’t really get rid of it, that’s a really enriching conversation that I think is a really beneficial impact of PBAs.
Miller: Aaron, that’s fascinating, and I love the way Chris put it: Not just bringing back fire to the landscape, but bringing it back to a community. What kinds of social changes do you see as you prepare for, conduct and then maybe talk about after a prescribed fire?
Krikava: The primary one I see is that people don’t really understand fire and its effects, so landowners and even neighbors will have this assumption that it’s going to be this destructive, awful event that’s going to kill all the trees and it’s going to be black and destroyed for years to come. But then they realize that literally within weeks, wildflowers and grasses are sprouting and the vigorous response from the vegetation is really incredible. And then we have the neighbor who was opposed now asking for us to come and do the burn on their property.
Miller: That’s literally happened? A neighbor said, “No, I want no part of this,” and then months later they say, “Actually, me too.”
Krikava: Absolutely. I mean, no one who’s ever come and participated or watched one of our burns has ever gone away not thinking it was the right thing to do.
Miller: Do private landowners who are interested in this come up to you and say, “Hey, I’d like you to help work on my land?” or do you knock on doors and say, “Hey, You could use some help.”
Krikava: They come to us. On our website there’s a form for hosts or possible hosts to fill out requesting us to come and burn with them. But it’s kind of in this neighbors helping neighbors model. We also try to focus on people who have already volunteered on some of our other burns first. So they get in the queue as they volunteer and participate.
Miller: You know, going back to what we were talking about with Chris, the scale of land that is behind on this, that is overbuilt up with fuels, how big is your queue just from landowners who’ve said, “I’d like you to do a prescribed burn on my land.”
Krikava: Dozens and dozens of people, and there’s more signing up every week essentially.
Miller: So more than than your PBA could even handle in the course of a year.
Krikava: Absolutely, but part of the goal with the Rogue Valley PBA at least is educating new practitioners so that they can kind of branch off and start their own PBAs. The Rogue Valley PBA covers Jackson and Josephine County, and it’d be better if each county had their own PBA or maybe each community had their own PBA that was supported by a larger group. So again, just trying to whittle it down so that each community can help protect their own.
Miller: Has that happened? Have any volunteers who came with little to no experience worked with you and then gone on to form their own new PBAs?
Krikava: Well, as you said, this is only about our fifth or sixth year in operation, so there are volunteers who are right at that cusp, where they’re starting to work on their Certified Burn Manager Certification, and then will be able to lead burns on their own. So, it’s almost there, but not quite.
Miller: You mentioned earlier that as a certified burn manager, there’s a certain amount of liability protection. How does liability work?
Krikava: Well, if you’re responsible for lighting the match, you probably will be held responsible, but I think there’s an important distinction between liability and risk. If something goes wrong, you will be held liable, but the risk is really, really low. We put in so much time and planning and effort, we have so many permits from different organizations to say that we can do this safely.
We study the weather. We make sure all of our equipment is in place. And most people honestly come away from the first burn and say it was actually sort of boring, because it’s just done in such a controlled manner, slowly and steadily, that it never feels out of control.
Miller: And anybody who has been involved in a wildfire probably celebrates that boring is what it’s like, as opposed to terrifying.
Krikava: Absolutely. We had some folks who were involved in the Alameda Fire who got evacuated, who came to our first burn, and it was fascinating talking to them about how much healing they had from the trauma around wildfire that they experienced, seeing it operate in a controlled manner and be a beneficial element rather than a destructive element.
Miller: Aaron, are there any policy changes you’d like to see that would make it easier for PBAs to operate in Oregon?
Krikava: There are some smoke management restrictions in place in Oregon that could probably use some easing, and the EPA has released a paper indicating that they would also like prescribed fire smoke to be somewhat deregulated in the smoke management process. So hopefully we can get to that point soon.
Miller: Aaron Krikava and Chris Adlam, thanks very much.
Krikava: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: Aaron Krikava is one of the organizers with the Rogue Valley Prescribed Burn Association. Chris Adlam is a regional fire specialist with OSU Extension.
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