Promoting Prescribed Fire on Private Lands in the Historic Longleaf Range
Abstract
This project examined barriers to prescribed fire implementation on private lands
located within the historic longleaf pine landscape. Native to the coastal plain of
the southern United States, the longleaf pine ecosystem once covered 90 million acres
from southern Virginia to the Texas Gulf coast. Deforestation decimated these forests
to a remaining ~5% of the historic range and remaining stands suffer from insufficient
management. Longleaf pine is closely adapted to fire and needs prescribed fire, a
land management technique that mimics natural processes, to restore ecosystem balance.
As 86% of southern forestlands are privately owned (Wear et al. 2013), it is critical
to educate and engage individual landowners on the benefits of fire to the longleaf
ecosystem.
To shift negative attitudes on prescribed fire, it is important to assess current
trends and engage in informational campaigns that can influence behavioral change
(Winter et al. 1998). This study conducted a literature review and personal interviews
with private landowners and professional forestry consultants in the southern states
of Georgia and Mississippi to identify perceived barriers to implementing prescribed
fire on private lands within the historic longleaf pine ecosystem. Ultimately, the
project sought to identify effective strategies to increase the number of private
landowners who are willing to conduct and/or allow controlled burns on their properties.
The project involved interviews with 8 private landowners and 4 private forestry consultants
in the states of Georgia and Mississippi. These contacts were identified with the
help of the researcher’s project partners at The Nature Conservancy, The Longleaf
Alliance and The Mississippi Forestry Association. The personal interview approach
utilized by this study looked for real world examples of how impediments to prescribed
fire play out on the ground for private landowners and forestry consultants alike.
The study found that the three most common motivations for burning are enhancing biological
diversity, deriving income from the land, and the influence of neighbors. The most
common impediments to burning were smoke management concerns, fear of an escaped fire
or wildfire, absentee landowners, a lack of capacity for burning, and the expense
of burning. As a result of these findings the study issues recommendations around
lessening smoke management concerns, addressing a lack of burning capacity, and helping
to resolve private landowners’ fears of wildfires in order to ultimately implement
more prescribed burning on private lands in the South.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16577Citation
Vacek, Lindsay (2018). Promoting Prescribed Fire on Private Lands in the Historic Longleaf Range. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16577.Collections
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