Cutting Through Barriers and Innovating in the Field to Successfully Implement the Wildfire Crisis Strategy

Forest Service practitioners and researchers are working on an innovative new project to cut through barriers, bridge knowledge gaps, and address resource needs to ensure the success of the agency’s 2022 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy.

By working with partners, communities, and American Indian tribes, the agency has treated more than 8 million acres since receiving the $5.5 billion investment through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This important work reduces community exposure to wildfire. But this success also begs an important research question:

Is the agency meeting the ambitious goals of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, which calls for dramatically increasing potential wildfire risk reduction and fuel treatments?

May 15, 2023: Engine 626 crew members from the Tonto National Forest in Arizona use chainsaws to remove small trees and brush that could fuel a wildfire. USDA photo by Madeline Bautista.

David Flores, a research social scientist with Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, and Dana Skelly, team lead with the agency’s Innovation and Organizational Learning Unit, are working on a unique project to address this question. The project blends research on complex organizational operations with rapid sharing of lessons learned and best practices across the agency.

“Our intention is to develop a coproduced project between researchers and practitioners to identify barriers, innovations, and knowledge gaps in implementing the Wildfire Crisis Strategy,” said Flores. “We are gathering information directly from fire management personnel to learn what agency employees are experiencing as they conduct this important work. We are also highlighting innovations as we share successes stories and good ideas across the agency.”

The team is working with fire management practitioners, resource managers, and line officers to collaborate in helping the agency fulfill its goals and respond to changing conditions. This integrated approach allows data to be collected seamlessly in real-time from firefighters who are in the field implementing the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.

Questions to practitioners in the field will cover topics such as hiring, work culture, mental health, and recent innovations in the field.

Regular briefings provide Forest Service leadership at multiple levels with information grounded in data, along with any recommendations for process improvements that could help increase wildfire-risk reduction treatments and address workforce challenges.

“We are looking for the perspectives of people at the field level—how are they responding to the challenge? What type of work adaptation strategies are employees implementing, and how do these strategies interact with the organizational structure and culture as a whole?” said Flores.

The Forest Service has made great progress in reducing wildfire risk, but work remains to be done. This project will build a better understanding of the experiences of the fire management community, ultimately helping the agency build new capacities and capitalize on untapped resources in its ongoing efforts to confront the wildfire crisis.

Keywords: Workforce culture, adaptive management, organizational learning, wildfire crisis, fuels, wildfire risk reduction.

Objectives

Our objectives will evolve as we learn from practitioners in the field over the course of this research. We will distribute the findings from this work in reports and presentations to agency leadership to facilitate rapid, broad organizational learning. We will produce peer-reviewed publications based on these finding to further understanding of complex organizational operations in wildfire management and related wildfire-risk reduction work. Preliminary topics include: 

• Ways to increase prescribed burning opportunities and mechanical fuels treatments while addressing workforce challenges to meet objectives of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.
• Providing training and development for employees to build needed expertise for the changing conditions in wildland fire behavior.
• Identify successes and challenges in successional planning for the agency’s future workforce, from recruitment and retention to career development.

Expected Outcomes and Outcomes

The team will produce a series of internally focused reports and presentations to further the understanding within Forest Service about the barriers and knowledge gaps that the agency faces to ensure the successful implementation of its Wildfire Crisis Strategy. The team is also highlighting innovations at all levels of the agency and across geographic areas that speak to successes and provide valuable practices others can adopt. The social science research team will also produce peer-reviewed publications.

Forest Service leadership will be able to use the results of this research to design next steps, process improvement, policy changes, and whatever else is needed to accomplish the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. Our team’s social science researchers will compile results from these discussions into reports, sharing data and recommendations for rapid broad organizational learning, individual development, and process improvement to increase mechanical fuels treatments and prescribed burning opportunities, and potential solutions for workforce challenges to meet Wildfire Crisis Strategy objectives.

Metrics of Success

• The analysis will yield information that can be used to improve the work environment for employees in the agency.
• Social science research will help decisionmakers quickly and effectively meet Wildfire Crisis Strategy objectives.
• Published social science literature will increase understanding of complex organizational operations in land management agencies during crises.
• Replicable best practices for a blended research team’s operations will help future projects meet organizational needs in near real time by building on the skills of social science researchers and wildland fire practitioners.

Geographies

National Forest System lands within the United States