Factors influencing wildfire management decisions after the 2009 US federal policy update

Research background

Numerous actors contribute information and influence the decision making process on wildfires burning on US federal lands. These include agency staff, Incident Commanders (ICs), cooperating agencies, publics and politicians. However, only federal Agency Administrators (AAs) possess delegated authority within the Executive Branch to oversee programs derived from Executive Branch and Congressional direction (Lawton 1954). AAs are responsible for overseeing all aspects of wildfire preparation and response. During wildfire events, AAs are responsible for providing the overall intent about the strategy under which a fire is to be managed and ensure consistency with law and policy. They also possess the delegated authority to sign legal decision documents for the fire (Noonan-Wright et al. 2011). Understanding the factors these AAs and their fire management staff consider when making decisions, particularly when defining their intent for a discrete wildfire event, is important because tensions may arise if policies are not aligned with the motivations or institutional norms of decision makers. A more complete understanding of decision factors will allow future policies and strategic decision making tools to incorporate the realities of the decision environment and potentially lead to better outcomes. Research into how managers make decisions on wildfires has used a range of methodological approaches and research foci. Studies that have examined the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS), a tool developed expressly to guide decisions on federal lands, have shown that rather than being part of the actual decision process, it is most often used to document cognitive decisional processes. However, tools embedded within WFDSS were shown to be useful to validate any a priori assumptions or to examine alternative scenarios (Noble and Paveglio 2020; Rapp et al. 2020; Fillmore and Paveglio 2023). Other studies have employed ‘choice set’ surveys that present decision makers with multiple alternatives to choose from to determine their risk preferences. In one ‘choice experiment’, Calkin et al. (2012) found that social and institutional pressures can lead to increased suppression expenses. A follow-up study using the same choice set found that managers’ strategy selection was inconsistent with minimising expected losses and that they might over-allocate resources in low-risk scenarios (Wibbenmeyer et al. 2013). Studies focused on whether various heuristics and biases influence wildfire management decisions suggest biases such as discounting, status quo and risk aversion may contribute to suboptimal wildfire outcomes (Maguire and Albright 2005; Wilson et al. 2011; Thompson 2014). Heuristics such as Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPD) are seen as especially prevalent in the wildfire context owing to the need to make rapid decisions with limited information (Zimmerman 2011). Case studies have also been useful to explore decision making. For example, Steelman and McCaffrey (2011) found that even when there were divergent viewpoints, early communication between agencies and the public provided a common understanding that emerged over time. Econometric studies have repeatedly found that incentives exist to implement risk-averse strategies despite those strategies tending to be financially unoptimised (Hand et al. 2015; Katuwal et al. 2017).

A recent review (Fillmore et al. 2021) of published research that examined decision making factors related to wildfires managed with a strategy intended to achieve resource objectives found 110 individual factors that influence the decision to either suppress a fire or manage it with an OTFS strategy. These factors were categorised as barrier, facilitator, or unaligned to either. They were also assigned to one of six overarching key thematic areas (KTAs): Fire Environment, Fire Outcomes, Institutional Influences, Operational Considerations, Sociopolitical Considerations and Perceived Risk. Together, KTAs and decision factors were organised into a decision framework to help conceptualise the association between related but discrete prominent thematic considerations. The framework provides a useful leverage point for understanding current decision processes. However, all literature available predated the 2009 policy update, which raises the question of the degree to which the current decision environment has or has not changed.

This study seeks to answer the following questions:

Fire environment

When looking at the KTA of the fire environment, favourable expected fire behaviour, weather forecasts and fuelbed conditions acted as a facilitator when they were expected to contribute to favourable fire conditions (Table 1). Favourable fire behaviour was frequently described as slow to moderate rates of spread and low flame lengths and fireline intensities. Favourable weather conditions were weak winds, high humidity and moderate temperatures. Fires were more likely to be managed for OTFS when the fuel conditions were not too far from their historic range of conditions or had been reduced through prior fuels reduction work. Unaligned factors appeared to operate as background contextual elements, consisting of factors that were considered prior to new wildfire ignitions, and had no inherent indication of how they might ultimately influence the final decision. Here, the presence or magnitude of ongoing drought was considered, as were general weather and fuel condition trends. Several AAs offered their preferred environment under which to manage a fire for OTFS. One AA described the ‘perfect fire’ as one that:

…occurs probably in the middle of a wilderness area to where it’s got a lot of land around it. It’s not going to move. It’s not going to threaten a whole lot of value. It’s not going to threaten communities. It’s not going to threaten a community’s infrastructure or water systems or power grid. And it would be one that would start late in September. Later in the year when we’ve got cooler temperatures at night, where relative humidities are improving and shorter days. Or one that starts maybe a little bit earlier in the season, but it’s surrounded by snow pack.

Barriers in the fire environment were mainly made up of newly identified, and often interrelated, factors related to the fuelbed, climate change and drought. Fuel beds were frequently discussed as overly dense or with too much accumulation to manage for OTFS, and climate change was perceived as contributing to drought, thereby creating fuels too dry to be managed with an OTFS strategy. One AA interviewed explained how the fire environment on their district led to using a fire suppression strategy on their fire:

But I feel like things have changed so much over the last 100 years with the climate, with the state of the drought that we’re in currently in this part of the state, that sometimes [people] feel that they can just pick up where they left off without really taking into account all of the change that has occurred, and the suppression actions that have happened over the last 100 years.

Fire outcomes

Except for observable first-order fire effects (e.g. obvious mortality, scorch height), outcomes are somewhat conjectural when discussed while the fire is still burning. The most mentioned outcome factor that facilitated the decision to use OTFS strategies was when managers expected to see reduction in fuel levels on the landscape. Although every fire will inherently reduce fuel, manager comments reflected a Goldilocks principle: enough fuel burned away to have benefits, but not so much that forests would be harmed. The benefits managers hoped to realise included improved forest health and resilience, reduced standing snags and reduced air quality impact from future wildfires.

Managers often described a general desire to allow fire to play its natural role. In several cases, managers described being surprised to see beneficial outcomes despite ongoing drought conditions. In one example, an AA described the effects they observed:

There’s a couple of places where it’s sat around and cooked a little hotter than you necessarily would want, but in general, both our fire and aviation staff, as well as the agency administrator folks, we see benefits… it’s almost 4000 acres. If you could just put that thing out right now and just walk away from it, that would be a great prescribed fire, and we’d all be happy. Yeah. I think we do see it doing good stuff right now.

The most prevalent unaligned factor was a generalised concern about fire effects uncertainty. Managers also gave general consideration to potential air quality and grazing impacts. Among barriers, air quality impacts were the most frequently discussed. There were five new fire outcome barriers; however, no individual outcome barrier demonstrated a strong signal: although several managers had previous bad experience using OTFS strategies, most barriers focused on the potential to cause environmental harm (tree mortality, degraded air quality, or reduced wildlife habitat).

Operational considerations

Two primary operational factors facilitated the decision to use an OTFS strategy. First, managers expressed a clear preference to keep managed fires at the local Type 3 (or lower) incident complexity level. When the complexity of a fire increased, requiring a Type 1 or 2 Incident Management Team (IMT), managers saw less potential for using OTFS strategies. This corresponds closely to the second facilitating factor, where participants reported greater success managing fires under OTFS strategies when they knew that their fire staff possessed a deep understanding of the local area. The first factor was newly observed; the second had been reported previously. Other facilitators included having sufficient resources, the presence of recent fires proximal to the current fire and extensive USFS land surrounding the fire. Regarding the use of IMTs, one participant remarked that:

You don’t bring in a Type 1 team because you want to manage a fire; you bring them in because you want to put it out. And maybe at most, you might be able to get them to do some planned ignitions to reduce fire severity and stuff like that along the way, if they have time.

Several unaligned factors emerged among operational considerations. The most frequently discussed regarded the use of ‘big box’ strategies. ‘Big box’ is a colloquial description of a strategy that utilises a large planning area and tends to employ tactical firing operations and other indirect fire control tactics. Participants also considered whether they were likely to have the necessary resources to achieve their management objectives, especially based on their personal expectations of the fire season’s continued duration. Many participants also considered the availability of planning support.

The overwhelming operational barrier to managing a wildfire for OTFS concerned firefighting resources (e.g. fire engines, handcrews). This was also the most prevalent barrier found in the pre-2009 policy literature. As before, the concern centred around either having insufficient resources to begin managing the fire or that resources would be reassigned to higher priorities (such as communities at risk from other fires) after they had committed to managing their fire for OTFS. Other significant barriers included fatigue of firefighting staff, close proximity to other land ownership boundaries and seasonality.

Sociopolitical considerations

Respondents reported that the sociopolitical factor that most facilitated the decision to use an OTFS strategy was when cooperative relationships had been pre-established with local stakeholders who would be potentially affected. Examples include adjacent landowners, livestock producers, elected officials and other community leaders. Many AAs discussed the importance of deliberately forging relationships over time, long before a fire started. These relationships were often developed during previous fires or as part of various preparatory actions such as collaborative fuels treatments or fire safe councils. Sometimes relationships existed simply because the interview participant had grown up in the local area. Cattle producers who leased allotments on USFS lands were often reported to be among the strongest advocates for managing fires, as they saw a benefit when dense forests and shrublands were opened up for grass production following a fire. This support sometimes extended to their own adjacent private lands as well, where burning was welcomed as part of management strategies. Any sense the local public supported this strategy also gave managers more confidence to employ it.

Unaligned sociopolitical factors also focused on the status of local relationships; however, in this context there was greater uncertainty with how the public perceived the use of OTFS strategies. The media and its influence also were discussed and considered but did not influence the decision. Many participants viewed the media primarily as a tool for educating the public about alternative wildfire response strategies, especially when the fire was being managed for OTFS. Some participants expressed frustration around how to describe the spectrum of available strategies to the public, particularly when trying to explain the seemingly dichotomous intent of trying to both protect human-focused values and allowing fire to play its ecological role:

In a managed fire where you’re saying, ‘You know what, we’re going to go ahead and let it do its thing. And we’re going to watch it, and we’re going to manage effects, and whatever. This is the right thing to do, ecologically.’ That’s a different conversation with the public. Because now you’re making a choice. You’re not actively trying to save something, except you’re trying to restore [natural resources].

The most frequently expressed sociopolitical barrier also pertained to beliefs about the public’s perceptions of acceptable management practices. In half of the cases, participants believed that the public was afraid of wildfire and that managing fires with a strategy OTFS played into their fear. These AAs felt that employing a full suppression strategy helped prevent or alleviate those fears and was often reason enough to justify using a full suppression strategy. Believing that the local public did not support OTFS strategies was a barrier. So too was believing that local political figures were opposed to it. Several AAs felt that it was not palatable to publicly discuss any positive outcomes of fires (e.g. ecologically) if it was being managed with a full suppression strategy.

Institutional influences

The institutional factor most facilitative to the decision to manage a fire with an OTFS strategy was seen when the managing organisation possessed a culture actively supporting the strategy, even to the point of exhibiting pride in being known for it. The scale at which a facilitating culture was most discussed was at the level of a District or Forest; however, we also found evidence for its presence at the USFS Region scale. Whereas some participants believed their Region possessed a managed fire culture (Rocky Mountain and Southwest), others suggested theirs did not (Pacific Southwest and Southeast). A second facilitating factor was pre-planning in anticipation to use OTFS fires; this included planning within the Forest’s Land Management Plan (LMP), but also within pre-fire spatial planning tools such as Potential Wildfire Operations Delineations (PODS) (Thompson et al. 2016a, 2022). Having these types of anticipatory tools showed that the Forest had already gone through deliberations to prepare for the event. The third factor was when the Agency showed clear support for OTFS fires. The scale for this mimics that of culture; agency support was seen at all levels of the organisation, but the most profound for participants was when it came from the Washington Office level such as articulated support (or withholding of support) via the annual Chief’s letter of intent for wildland fire.

At the Agency level, the annual letter of intent the Chief of the Forest Service issued for the upcoming fire season had a surprisingly strong effect on local decision making. Throughout the 2021 fire season, three such letters were issued. The first, in April, lent specific support for using managed fire to achieve National Cohesive Strategy goals (Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) 2014; Christiansen 2021a). After a challenging start to the fire season, on 14 July, the Chief issued a second letter urging staff to refocus their efforts towards supporting fire management. This second letter affirmed that managers may ‘use fire where allowable’ (Christiansen 2021b). However, after a continued busy fire season, a newly appointed Chief issued a letter on 2 August restricting the use of fire, directing that ‘managing fires for resource benefit is a strategy we will not use’ (Moore 2021), citing rationale that safety should be the first priority and that resources wwere limited. We saw an immediate effect in our research, as managers were no longer willing to entertain multiple-objective wildfires, even in Regions where conditions had moderated. Following these letters, managers also felt more restricted in their ability to publicly discuss any potential benefits if they perceived a positive net effect.

Interestingly, the majority of unaligned institutional factors were new, including the three most frequently mentioned factors. The first, described in almost half the interviews, was a sense of cultural changes within the USFS workforce. Many older AAs believed the new generation had much greater interest in incorporating consideration of ecological function into their work, including wildfire management. They also observed greater diversity in the workforce than when they had begun their careers. One person observed the change they saw in these terms:

But I think that’s one of the things that is maybe changing in some ways is that we do have some young people coming into the agency that are from non-traditional backgrounds, and they sometimes can be more engaged in those discussions because they aren’t burdened with a whole lot of preconceived notions about what firefighting is or what natural resource management is.

Other participants believed cultural shifts stemmed from changes in policies and practices, especially those that placed an increased emphasis on firefighter safety. Older AAs saw the change to using less aggressive tactics as a matter of risk mitigation, improved land management outcomes and reducing strain on the workforce. Frustration with the nomenclatural ambiguity inherent in the post-2009 wildfire policy update was a commonly mentioned topic. Many managers now found it difficult to describe their intent adequately and consistently to both staff and the public.

Institutional barriers were somewhat evenly distributed across eight factors, including two newly seen in this research. Some managers reported that the ambiguity in being able to adequately describe their strategy served to prevent managers from considering managing the wildfire for OTFS objectives: the simplicity of describing a full suppression strategy made it easier to message to the public and staff. Some indicated they thought that full suppression was the default acceptable strategy and deviating from it required extra planning and communication. One AA described their perspective as:

If we’ve made a decision that this is not a good place to manage, and we’re going to do 100% suppression, that’s considered the baseline acceptable position. If you really think about it, it’s when you go beyond that baseline of 100% suppression and have different factors that play off what nuances a decision, that’s when people want to have the communication.

Of note amidst this ambiguity is the challenge of trying to distinguish strategies from outside appearances alone, a dynamic noted in discussions during some interviews regarding the decision makers' intent for their fire, and how they chose to characterise their intent to the public, which were not always directly congruent. Two fire cases from one National Forest provide an example; see inset Box 1.

Perceived risk

Within the risk context, both of the facilitating decision factors identified in the pre-2009 literature carried over (personal satisfaction and a professional ethic to manage fires). Notably, an additional nine facilitating factors emerged in the post-2009 data. The two most frequently discussed were related to safety: whether managers felt it would have been unsafe for firefighters to employ direct suppression strategies, and when the presence of standing snags was considered too risky to use direct suppression tactics. Using OTFS strategies was also facilitated when AAs perceived risk was being shared across multiple levels of the agency. Other conditions that facilitated OTFS included when few values were at risk, or it was feasible to both reduce risk to firefighters while achieving ecological benefits.

Three related unaligned decision factors emerged from our interviews, focused on risk mitigation processes. First, most decision makers interviewed discussed their personal decision making processes, which tended to be flexible and open to input from internal and external sources. Most AAs were able to articulate the pros and cons of a given strategy and overwhelmingly used risk-based considerations. For example, one AA described their desired scenario when fire staff first evaluated a fire:

Okay, when you get out to a tree strike, this is the process we’re going to follow. We’re going to assess what we see. Is it one tree? Is it just a spot? Is dropping that tree going to be the best option? Or is leaving it burn and then when it falls apart, then we’ll deal with it because it’s also a nasty tree that somebody may die trying to cut down.

The second unaligned decision factor reflected managers consistently telling us that the first objective of any fire should be to minimise the risk to firefighters and the public, which aligns to national policy (USDI and USDA 2022). Third, to achieve this objective, managers aspired for firefighters to engage critical thinking while responding to and engaging at the fireline.

As in the previous research, managers reported numerous risk-based barriers; however, few discrete barriers appeared with consistency. The most expressed risk-based barrier was when private land was thought to be at danger, which corresponds to the similar operational concern with boundary adjacency. Several AAs expressed their belief that suppression was the best course of action for wildfires regardless of potential ecological benefit, although all regarded safety as the first priority in any fire response.

Wildfire decision framework

Given the high degree of flexibility the 2009 guidance provides AAs and managers, the factors presented in the results appear to have universal value for wildfire decision making, regardless of the strategy employed. Given this, we suggest that the ‘Managed Fire Decision Framework’ originally presented in Fillmore et al. (2021) might simply be called the ‘Wildfire Decision Framework’ (WDF) as our findings indicate it has value for all contemporary wildfire decision making scenarios. We present a simplified version of the framework in Fig. 2. The WDF framework demonstrates that each of the six KTAs and the factors nested within them influence the central decision nexus. Decisions are evaluated based on the relative influence assigned by the decision maker based on their risk perception and personal and professional motivations. After the evaluation is complete, a final decision emerges and is represented in a box below the nexus.

Fig. 2.

Simplified representation of Wildfire Decision Framework. Each of the six KTAs shown here contains barrier, unaligned and facilitative decision factors. A total of 150 decision factors are nested within the KTAs.

Strategic flexibility and manager preferences

The 2009 policy update was intended to give decision makers greater latitude by considering different strategies within the same fire rather than a single strategy across the entire fire (USDA and USDI 2009). The update has been successful to that end, as it is now common to see large fires managed to achieve different objectives across portions of the perimeter. Our research corroborates the findings of others suggesting that wildfire objectives now more accurately reflect a spectrum of opportunity that is adjusted throughout the term of the fire depending on the conditions and characteristics of the fire itself (Riley et al. 2018; Thompson et al. 2019).

We also found evidence that the 2009 policy intention for strategic flexibility appears to have inadvertently complicated the cogency of the message when communicating with internal and external stakeholders. Many AAs and managers we spoke to do not seem to feel the public would understand the wildfire decision making processes. This is evidenced by the disproportionate number of sociopolitical barriers, particularly those regarding public expectations and fear, which decision makers did not want to contribute to through their decision making. Although there were many more facilitating factors discussed, the barriers that exist appear to override them in decision significance. The notion that the public will not understand, is afraid, or is fundamentally opposed to it appears to be a persistent cultural belief perpetuated among the AAs and fire managers themselves, perhaps reinforced by discrete experiences and intermittent withdrawals of the strategy such as was seen in 2021 when the USFS declared that no fires would be ‘managed for resource benefit’ (Moore 2021).

Importantly, among the 15 fires we examined, no matter what the strategy, an end state with control locations was always defined. No strategy was implemented that included allowing the fire to burn without human intervention. Definitive control and contingency lines were established even on fires that had an OTFS strategy. One of the clearest signals for an OTFS fire was the use of a ‘big box’ strategy and the use of tactical firing operations designed to surround the planned perimeter with fire. The rate of tactical firing was often determined by the interior spread rate of the fire, whereas other times the ‘box’ was fired off as rapidly as conditions and resulting fire effects would allow. Managers liked this methodology for several reasons. First, having predefined control lines allowed them to describe an expected end state for the public and staff. Second, it allowed them to target specific areas of the landscape for management, particularly if those areas had been previously cleared through environmental planning documents and were intended to be prescribed burned in the future.

There was a very clear preference for managing fires for OTFS at the Type 3 complexity level when overseen by local fire staff or staff from neighbouring Forests within the Region. All the OTFS-described fires we investigated were managed this way. Given that wildfire is often driven by local factors, such as terrain-driven winds, unusual weather patterns, or fuels-driven burning conditions, managers placed more value on fire management staff with local experience, believing them more capable of managing the fire in a way that produced acceptable (ecological and social) outcomes. There was great reluctance to step the complexity up to a Type 2 or 1, as managers believed this would require ordering and turning over operational control to an IMT made up of people from outside the local area. Doing so increases the pressure to implement direct control strategies and tactics, which managers may not desire. However, Type 3 fires are somewhat limited in how large they can become or how many people can be assigned before the complexity level has to be increased. Together, these dynamics create an inherent ceiling to how large most fires managed for OTFS can become, with the related effect of reducing the scale of potential benefit that these fires can provide on the landscape.

Risk and institutional culture

AAs overcame risk aversion to managing fires for resource benefit as well as discussing the realised benefits on fires managed for suppression in several ways. The personal and professional ethic held by the AAs to utilise wildfire to achieve an objective besides suppression was among the strongest motivators and carried over from the pre-2009 framework. Motivational drivers were expressed variously as deep-seated personal philosophies stemming from a naturalistic upbringing while others saw overcoming barriers as a professional duty bolstered by years of experience, especially if they had participated in wildfire events where damage had been done to communities and they believed restored fire regimes could be a preventative action.

The presence of a local organisational culture that embraced using wildfire to achieve multiple benefits was a key facilitator in making the decision to both implement a non-suppression strategy and to feel they could openly explain that decision to the public. In many ways, this could be considered as required, as many other attributes are founded on it. For example, in locations with a strong culture for managing fires for multiple objectives, we often found a history of supportive planning efforts, especially when Forest LMPs actively supported the use of fire as a restoration tool. Other types of plans included programmatic prescribed fire environmental analysis, which greatly increases the chance wildfires may be counted towards fuels reduction accomplishment targets, or pre-fire spatial planning like PODs. Sometimes planning was as simple as District staff having discussions throughout the season regarding where and when they thought they could manage natural ignitions.

Although local organisational culture had the power to override wider, regional or national scale influences, managers developed greater confidence when they perceived that the risk was being shared across multiple levels of the organisation. Specifically, this often meant District AAs were more confident when they knew their next-level supervisor at either the Forest Headquarters or the Regional Office supported their local decision. Several locations mentioned their use of formal risk sharing processes. Typically, these were a structured conversation early in the wildfire with staff at both the local and regional offices. These conversations ensured that local managers understood they would receive adequate operational and sociopolitical support if the wildfire resulted in adverse outcomes. The only Region we saw this formalised into a policy was the Southwestern Region; however, Forests in other Regions followed similar processes.

One theme we saw repeatedly was managers relating decisions to actions that reduced risk for firefighters and the public, which was a factor also observed in the pre-2009 research, although to a lesser extent than post-2009. This is consistent with multiple safety and risk-related initiatives the USFS has implemented in the last several decades, including the ‘safety journey’, the ‘five rights’ and enterprise risk management (Thompson et al. 2016b; Flores and Haire 2021, 2022). The most expressed facilitator we found was when managers thought implementing direct control actions (fighting the fire directly on the perimeter) was unsafe. Culturally, this is a reversal of the long-held view that direct fireline tactics are the safest option. More recently, indirect tactics (placing control lines away from the perimeter) have grown increasingly common, both as a matter of reducing fatigue for firefighters and increasing focus on protecting specific values (e.g. structures), and because extreme fire conditions have not allowed it (Plucinski 2019).

Many managers we spoke to often justified these large-scale firing operations as necessary to restore fire at landscape scales. However, neither media coverage nor USFS policy overtly acknowledges the use of indirect suppression strategies, particularly tactical firing operations, as a potentially net positive scenario for landscape resilience outcomes. By employing risk management reduction as the primary reason for their strategic choices, the current policy allows managers to legitimately achieve landscape scale objectives while publicly advocating a full suppression strategy. Although perhaps a useful outcome from a management perspective, this raises concerns about whether such distinctions are understood by the public. Also, this communication pattern may create a mixed message when individuals are told the fire is employing a full suppression strategy when they do not see traditional suppression tactics being implemented.

Application of fire under changing conditions

Discussions around the fire environment and outcomes were focused on fuels and fire behaviour in a more deliberate and sophisticated way than seen in the pre-2009 results (Fillmore et al. 2021). Managers related great concern about potential fire effects, especially when the strategy was to manage to achieve resource objectives. Discussions frequently turned to their desire to achieve specific and measurable outcomes, often likening desired outcomes to those seen in prescribed fire plans. This desire was often linked to their individual risk appetite, in that if a manager was willing to take the risk of using an OTFS strategy, or even publicly state the benefits of a wildfire that had been suppressed, managers felt such risk should be justified by a certain level of ecological gains. Even in cases where ecological benefits will be gained, managers appear to be unwilling to use OTFS if they perceive sociopolitical risks or negative public feedback. However, the extent to which this influences their decision making is unclear.

The influence of ongoing drought also concerned many managers who feared that their fire could result in a higher burn severity than ecologically appropriate. Interestingly, several AAs decided to manage a wildfire for OTFS despite the ongoing presence of drought and climate change. We attribute this to some managers and unit cultures having greater comfort with riskier strategies when they may result in positive ecological outcomes. However, interviewee comments also suggest that some managers are sensing that the drought may never actually end (owing to climate change), in which case there is little reason to wait for that ‘perfect year’, as those years are no longer going to arrive with enough regularity to be able to manage for it. In several cases, participants reported observing fire effects that were surprisingly favourable, leading them to question the actual difficulty in managing fires when in a drought state. In a sense, these managers may represent an ‘early adopter’ approach to managing fires under changing climatic conditions.

The importance of relationships

Concerns related to the sociopolitical environment were mostly consistent pre and post-2009, with some important exceptions. As before, managers maintained a high level of concern about smoke affecting downwind communities, with managers often anticipating local community reactions related to smoke from prior experiences. Such anticipation also affected pre-fire messaging and the level of openness managers could relate with regarding potential ecological benefits. The sentiment of numerous AAs was that the best time to discuss ecological benefits was outside the fire season, and not while the fire was actively burning, as they perceived the inherent tension associated with a fire as obstructive to education. Also, by engaging with the community after the fire, an AA could appear to be standing on the side of fire suppression and risk avoidance if fire outcomes included damage to property or resources. However, if the fire did provide tangible ecological benefits, those benefits could be discussed after the fire when fear and tension related to the fire were absent.

As seen in other research, AAs were well attuned to the connection between their decision latitude and the status of relationships with land users, local politicians and the public at large (McCaffrey and Olsen 2012; Davis et al. 2022; Huber-Stearns et al. 2022). Besides the policy framework, the presence or absence of pre-existing relationships between managers and the community appeared to be among the most important decision factors related to managing a fire for OTFS. Most AAs we interviewed seemed to either understand this intrinsically or had learned it through experiences during and after previous fires. Although some AAs welcomed interacting with the public and seemed to embrace it, others saw it as a burden and sought to avoid it regardless of fire outcomes. In the latter case, they seemed to prefer suppression strategies.

The most positive relationship experiences interviewees described was when they were working directly with advocacy groups who had an interest in specific areas (e.g. a mountain range, community, or watershed). These groups had the advantage of being tightly tied into the local community and local politics. In areas with a strong culture of managing fires for multiple objectives, these groups often performed the bulk of the community outreach instead of the USFS. Overall, we were told that this led to fewer sociopolitical issues related to wildfire events, assured consistent messaging and reduced conflict with local community members who were vocally opposed to OTFS fire management strategies. Other than meeting regulatory requirements, having constructive relationships with those who would be most directly affected by any wildfire was regarded as one of the most important facilitators for managing with OTFS.

Implications to wildfire management outside the United States

Although the current analysis was in the context of United States wildland fire management, with a focus on USFS AAs, we contend that salient generalities can be considered in global wildland fire management. Numerous countries have wildfire management governance and cultures analogous to the US experience, such as those operating in Canada, Australia and throughout southern Europe, (Hyde et al. 2017). Many countries are developing new management structures to deal with increasing risks of wildfires due to changing climate (Gazzard et al. 2016; Smith et al. 2016). As such, we contend that the six KTAs discussed in the present study could be broadly applied to both established governance and that now emerging, especially if their policies allow for different response strategies based on objectives. The factorial difference and similarities should be explored in future comparative research.