In order to identify pathways for increasing the deployment of prescribed fire while also protecting the public from smoke-related health concerns, agency partners in California, Oregon, and Georgia organized exercises to examine the existing policies and procedures for prescribed burns and public health communications.
The Western Governors’ Association convened officials this week (Jan. 13) from the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to discuss the lessons learned from these prescribed fire exercises and help future communities better align public health considerations with prescribed fire.
“50% of the particulate matter in the entirety of the air in the Western United States is from wildfire smoke,” said Dr. Antoni Neri, the Chief Data Scientist at the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice. “So public health agencies have no choice, either by force or by choice, to get involved in wildfire activities.”
“Scaling up prescribed fire is a must for our success in the future,” added Jeff Marsolais, the Associate Deputy Chief for State, Private, and Tribal Forestry at the U.S. Forest Service. “So as public servants, we all share the responsibility of activating around this and continuing to partner at scales we haven't even imagined yet.”
These exercises were initiated following a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that said the public health effects of smoke from catastrophic wildfires could be mitigated by increasing the practice of prescribed burns.
In response, the U.S. Forest Service, DOI, EPA, and the CDC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to coordinate the agencies' air quality and land management goals for wildfire risk mitigation – especially as it relates to a strategic increase in prescribed fires.
According to agency officials, these exercises facilitated mutual understanding and relationship building; improved the broader understanding of relevant regulations, terminology, and plans; and identified the strengths and weaknesses of current coordination plans.
“These tabletops highlighted a lot of important lessons for the future, areas that we want to explore, gaps that we want to fill, and best practices that we want to try to advance in other locations,” said Erika Sasser, the Director of the Health and Environmental Impacts Division within EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. “We want to try to build communities of practice that can do these types of events and replicate them in other locations over time, and we also want to figure out how to support these events in terms of resources, because it is very resource intensive.”
Watch the webinar on the embedded player below or on WGA's YouTube channel.
The panelists also provided the list of resources below:
Documents and Guides
Tools and Resources
