# Presentation: 917779

## Lessons Learned from the 

- Wildland Fire Leadership Council Meeting
- June 2007

**Lessons Learned from the **
**Fire Learning Network Model:**
**Restoring Forest Health**
**Landscape by Landscape **

**Notes:**
All of us here have a strong commitment to restoration of forest health and implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy. 
In our various roles we are all concerned about the condition of forests, rising suppression costs, and how we can get ahead of the curve.
In this 20 minutes I will talk about a model for collaborative, landscape-scale restoration, spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with others – with over 500 partners, in fact. 
We offer the example of this nationwide network as inspiration for how, landscape by landscape, we can take the policies that this body has endorsed and make a difference with implementation at a significant scale. 

## TNC Fire Management

- First burn in 1961
- In-house Fire Program since 1986
- Fire-Qualified Field Staff
- 42 Fire Managers
- 100 Burn Bosses
- 400 trained staff & volunteers
- Fire management on about 600 sites
- 500 burns annually
- 100,000+ acres/year burned on TNC lands

**Notes:**
TNC, as many of you know, started as a conservation land trust – buying and managing lands for biodiversity.
Soon realized that many of the lands in our portfolio needed frequent fire to maintain their biodiversity, and so, 45 years ago, we held our first Rx on a TNC preserve in Florida.
Our capacity as a fire management organization has grown since then: and for the last several years our Rx accomplishments on our own land have equaled the NPS in terms of acres. 
So we bring to the issue of fire and forest restoration our own experience as land and fire managers.

## Reference Fire Regimes

**Notes:**
In fact, this map shows we would be so concerned with the role of fire in creating and maintaining biodiversity.  
This one slide of reference conditions from the LANDFIRE RA provides a visual summary of the ecological context. 

It tells us that two-thirds of the country was dominated by frequent fire -- the two shade of green. 
It also illustrates why the devil is in the details when it comes to applying national fire policy to the ground – look at the incredible regional patterns and differences that emerge.
Frequent low and mixed severity fire across the south and into the central Appalachians.
Northern New England lit up bright red – with fires spaced more than 200 years apart and stand replacing when they do happen. 
Frequent stand-replacing grass fires in the Central US. 
And the incredible mix of color in the western states – showing no real pattern at all – except a complicated mix of all fire regimes.

## Leveraging Public-Private Funding: U.S. Partnerships

** ****Capacity-building**
** ****Fire Training and Education**
** ****Policy**
** ****Fire Learning Networks **
** ****Risk management**
** ****On-the-ground conservation action**

**Leveraging Public-Private Funding: U.S. Partnerships**

***Fire, Landscapes and People: ***
***A Conservation Partnership***

***LANDFIRE***

** ****Science**
** ****Scientist-Manager Collaboration**
** ****Adaptive Management**
** ****Planning tools**

**Notes:**
More maps – this time of partnerships – because, since the National Fire Plan, that is how we all do our work. 
Here you see two major efforts that TNC is participating in with Forest Service and the DOI agencies.

Like all of you, are concerned with one question – How do you translate the national fire plan into on-the-ground action? 

The Fire Landscapes and People partnership was our direct response to that question. 
We thought about what it would take to accomplish the goal of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems and we came up with three general categories: training, education and, consistent with TNC’s history as a land trust, demonstration of fire restoration.  
Lynn Decker, who is here with me, is director of the demonstration piece of this partnership – which we call the Fire Learning Network.

## US Fire Learning Network

- 10 Regional Networks
- 80 Landscapes
- > 76 Million acres
- > 500 Partners

- Leveraged more than $12 million to support restoration activities
- Treated more than 450,000 acres to date

**Notes:**
The Fire Learning Network is really a collection of places that are all working to restore a fire-adapted landscape.
This is a map of the network. Dots of the same color are in one regional network – like the Pacific Northwest in orange or the Southeast in pink.
The landscapes range in size from -- 1,200 to 12 million acres
They have, on average, 9 partners, but one has as many as 22. The partners typically include state wildlife and forestry agencies, a mix of federal agencies, local government, NGO’s, businesses, fire safe councils and private landowners
On average the ratio of public-private land in FLN is 50-50 – but regionally, landscapes are 75% public land in West and 75% private land in central, southern and eastern US
As you look at this map, think about SWISS CHEESE. The dots are the landscapes, they are the holes in the cheese.

## Fire Learning Network Process

- learning before, learning during, learning after

**Notes:**
Each of the landscapes in the network has an opportunity to follow a facilitated workshop process – though landscapes are not bound to this workshop series and can go a different route if they want..
Most FLN landscape partners spend 1-2 years on collaborative, landscape-scale planning:

First -- identify quantifiable desired future landscape goals; a collaborative process of agreeing on a vision, looking at data about current and reference conditions to set future goals, and developing models to help understand how landscapes transition from then to now to the future, and how management actions can alter that course.
The concepts here tie very closely to LANDFIRE and now that the National data is available in the West we expect to see FLN landscapes using it.

Second – is mapping of the desired conditions and identifying priority places and sets of actions to move toward the desired condition

Third – is to take a hard look at how to implement the restoration priorities, and identify the barriers – mostly social and economic, but also policy and culture – and then come up with strategies to overcome those barriers

Fourth – to develop the capacity to implement the plan, including funding, put the monitoring plan into place, using it to assess progress against the desired future condition, and then adapting the management strategy as the results are learned

The regional networks are collections of landscapes that share what they have tried and learned, and the national network convenes once a year for a big showcase and learning session.

## FLN Products

**Conceptual **_**ecological models**_
**Landscape-scale fire management **_**goals**_
**Current and D**_**esired Future Conditions**_** across landscape**
_**Monitoring**_** and adaptive management plan**
- Identification of _community values_ to help choose desired future condition
- Alternative _fire regime and restoration strategies_
- Evaluation of _ecological and social outcomes_ of alternative strategies
- Short-term (2- to 3-year) _priorities_ for taking action
- Three-year _implementation plan_
- Identification of primary _barriers and solutions_ to short-term implementation

**Notes:**
Here is a list of the products that FLN landscapes generate. 
We surveyed the FLN participants a few months ago and this list shows their top four products – in bold. But all of the products were deemed useful and in use by at least 20% of the landscapes.

## Uses of FLN Products

- Survey told us how landscapes use the products:
- Prescribed burn plan (45%)
- Fire management plan (37%)
- Forest Plan or Resource Management Plan (27%)
- Community Wildfire Protection Plan (12%)
- Management plan for private forest/ranch (11%)
- State plan (8%)
- County or municipal plan (6%)

**Notes:**
In the survey we also asked how they USED the products.
You can see the set of 10 products get incorporated in a variety of place – from site-specific burn plans to area-wide fire management plans, and from forest plans to community wildfire protection plans. 

To make the idea of this fire learning network tangible, I am going to give one specific example. 
I picked this example in part because the landscape has close ties to some FHAC members, but there are many others examples that are equally strong.

## Tieton Forest Collaborative

- Tieton Forest Collaborative:Dry Forest Restoration in WA State

**Notes:**

Here is an aerial view of the landscape (press three times).
The reference condition is characterized by frequent, low to mid severity fire.
Recreation, second homes. 
And Timber Industry.

## Tieton Forest Collaborative

- DFW Director

- Commissioner of Public Lands

- Regional Forester

- Forest Supervisor

- TNC State Director

- MOU IS  SIGNED

**Notes:**
The partnership has a formal MOU -- signed two years ago in May – here you can see Linda Goodman the RF in PNW
And we are happy to share that the Yakama Tribal Council has agreed to join the collaborative 
We will develop a new MOU and have a signing soon
The landscape is now at 1.8 million acres

## Tieton Forest Collaborative

**Notes:**
Drilling down to show you how it works, this is a map from a project EA within the Tieton landscape, on the Wenatchee NF
While the map was created before the fire learning network came into being here, it illustrates two points.
The DFC includes restoring fire to stands where fire used to be frequent.
All of the dark purple and blues are harvesting units or precommercial thins that also will have spring underburns
The olive color is spring underburn; dusty rose is fall underburn
That is a lot of fire.
But note the checkerboard pattern – do you sense an operational problem here?
The WA DNR requires landowners to put fire line around all of their property before they can light a prescribed fire.
The collaborative developed a desired future landscape condition across ownerships – and you can guess here that the planned burn areas are supposed to cross landownership boundaries.
Well it happened that TNC was in the process of acquiring the checkerboard lands from Plum Creek. 

## Tieton Forest Collaborative

- Tieton Forest Collaborative

**Notes:**
Here you can see the same area – with TNC lands in bright green, plus proposed acquisition from Plum Creek. In fact, now that acquisition is complete and if this map were redone, all the bright green and red would be WA Fish and Wildlife.
Two accomplishments to highlight:
1) First, an outcome of this collaborative was that the DNR decided tolet  the Forest Service, F&W and TNC do cross-boundary Rx without requiring line to be dug around each of the checkers. The estimated savings for the first round of burns is $180,000 in fire line that did not have to be dug. 
2) Second, is that the land acquisition and transfer took almost four years, and because of the increase in land values during that time, a profit was made. Those funds, about $400,000, were just put into a donor advised fund at the Yakima Community Foundation – with the Tieton Forest Collaborative as the advisors. The Collaborative is going to award grants to support the development of a restoration infrastructure that uses the by-products of treatments. While this is probably not a part of the model that can be replicated elsewhere, it is significant because it illustrates the commitment of this collaborative group to the twin goals of ecological restoration and local economic development.

[Pink and Purple are state forest and F&W lands; Yellow is Yakama]

## FLN Outcomes

- FLN Survey Results:
- What did the FLN do for you?
- 72%  Improved group process/collaboration
- 59%  MOUs/Agreements signed
- 52%  Appropriate fire restored to landscape
- 48%  Cost savings resulted
- 41%  Public acceptance of fire and restoration improved
- 34%  Fire management practices changed
- 14%  Policy change resulted

**Notes:**
Back to the national network.
Here is what the FLN participants told us they got out of the process:
Number 1 = collaboration, the central theme of the 10 Year Comprehensive Strategy and the focus of the updated Implementation Plan
Number 2 = collaboration formalized in agreements and MOU’s – with a legitimization of agency participation
Number 3 = an ecological outcome, fire restored to the landscape
And Number 4 = saved money!

## Lessons Learned

- Builds Collaborative Relationships
- Fewer Planning Conflicts
- Speeds Up Implementation
- More Restoration with Fewer Resources

**Notes:**
We categorized the lessons learned from the survey into four sets:

1) Collaborative Relationships: 80% of survey respondents told us that FLN improved their collaborative relationships and reduced existing level of conflict. Some agency partners told us that FLN taught them how to collaborate.

2) Fewer Planning Conflicts: The landscapes are finding that the collaborative relationships developed in the workshops carry over to their NEPA work. Not only can they use their collaboratively developed FLN products for NEPA, but the trust carries over too. 

3) Speed Up Implementation: The most dramatic example we have is the Bayou Ranger District on the Ozark-St. Francis NF – one of  our first FLN demonstration landscapes – that upped their treatment from 1,000 acres of Rx per year before FLN to 18,000 acres Rx in one year plus 2,500 acres of mechanical treatment.

4) More Restoration with Fewer Resources: Loess Hills in Iowa created mobile fire crew to do Rx across all ownerships – NPS, NRCS and private; second crew in Texas, and next in upper Midwest.

## Findings

- Integration of resource activities across landscapes
- Peer learning is important to success
- Network of collaboratively developed, landscape-scale restoration

**Notes:**
In our analysis of the survey, we found two trends that we weren’t expecting.

The first was INTEGRATION. We found out that landscapes are reporting accomplishment of multiple kinds of work. The three most common treatments were prescribed fire, mechanical treatment, and invasive species control. 
Second to those three were habitat restoration and erosion control. 
And less common, but still reported, were burned area rehabilitation, road decommissioning and reconstruction, and stream reconstruction and stabilization.

The second finding was the importance of peer-learning. One out of two people responding told us that peer learning from other landscapes was the most important factor contributing to their success.
So the network approach – providing a forum to share information and learn from each other – turned out to be effective. And in fact each of the networks has grown and, like everywhere else, demand far outstrips the funding.

Now I am going to issue a challenge: that this network approach, consistent with the 10 Year Implementation Plan, can be used to turn the holes into the cheese. 

## US Fire Learning Network

- 10 Regional Networks
- 80 Landscapes
- > 76 Million acres
- > 500 Partners

- Leveraged more than $12 million to support restoration activities
- Treated more than 450,000 acres since 2002

**Notes:**
Here is the swiss cheese map again – To really achieve restoration at the scale we really need it – we need the landscapes to be the cheese and not the holes. 

Think of all the collaborative restoration projects that the FHAC members and their peers are involved in. Add them to this map and the holes start to fill in
Think about the treatment maps on the healthyforests.gov web site – each treatment entry gets a dot, and some of them are collaborative by the standards put forward in the 10YIP update. Add these and you fill in more.

Imagine what we would get – collaboratively developed landscape-scale restoration, 
desired future conditions that are measurable, 
integrated treatments that leverage dollars and human resources, 
and peer learning as a strategy to share what works. 

In the color six-page handout you have a lot more detail about the FLN accomplishments. And in the briefing paper with the WiFLC header, I provided a list of implementation tasks from the 10YIP update that the Fire Learning Network can help to inform. 

The fire learning network is not just a cool map -- it is a practical example that demonstrates we can achieve the tasks right before us, landscape by landscape until we have restored fire-adapted ecosystems where it is possible to do so. 

THE END AND FLIP TO LAST SLIDE.

- For more Information:
- The Nature Conservancy:  *nature.org*
- Global Fire Initiative:  *tncfire.org*

**For more Information:**
**The Nature Conservancy:  *****nature.org***
**Global Fire Initiative:  *****tncfire.org***