Editor’s note: The Watershed Center, based in Hayfork, CA, is a non-profit organization working to create meaningful partnerships for land stewardship and empower the local community. It is also the parent organization for FAC Net. The Watershed Center’s Fire Program hosts hands-on trainings and cooperative prescribed burns across the state to engage partners and communities in long-term strategies that use fire as a natural land management tool. In this blog, Fire Program staff share reflections from their recent efforts to conduct outreach in communities around Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs). Blog cover photo credit: Heather Murphy/The Watershed Center.

This year, the Watershed Center was granted an award from the Shasta-Trinity National Forest’s Resource Advisory Committee for the “Trinity County Prescribed Burn Association Community Outreach” project. It was an exciting opportunity to leverage pre-existing multi-year PBA capacity building investments supported by the California Natural Resource Agency’s Department of Conservation Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program. This project focused on building momentum and capacity for Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) throughout Trinity County, California. PBAs are community based, mutual aid networks that help private landowners put beneficial fire back on the land.

As part of the project agreement, we hosted “PBA 101” workshops in six Trinity County communities, held a burn planning workshop, and performed site visits at interested private landowners’ potential burn units throughout Trinity County.

We designed the workshops and events to cover a variety of topics: 

• The role of prescribed fire in helping to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk and improving forest resiliency and health in our fire-dependent ecosystems
• How and why PBAs contribute to capacity and skills building
• Examples of successful, safe, and cost effective uses of prescribed fire on private lands from around California
• The nuts and bolts of planning a prescribed fire
• Resources to support burning on private lands
• Liability and policy considerations when conducting prescribed burns 
• Trauma-informed communication skills to conduct outreach to communities that have experienced wildfire with sensitivity and care

Now that we’ve been able to reflect on the workshop and event series, we’ve come up with some “lessons learned” to capture what worked well, what changed along the way, and the challenges we faced in conducting outreach and hosting workshops related to prescribed fire in the area. Planning any community outreach can have its rewards and challenges, and we hope our reflections can support the development of similar projects in other areas.

THEME 1: Outreach Methods, Logistics, and Intentional Invitations

• Put time in well in advance to figure out what methods of outreach will work for a particular community. 
• Try multiple methods to get the word out. This could include putting up flyers, posting on social media, and using other partners with media outlets to promote the event. We posted on social media (see example visuals below), but also relied on word of mouth and making sure community leaders knew to help spread the word.
• Be mindful about the location, day of the week, and time of day – design the workshop logistics around the community’s rhythms.
• If communities are over-taxed, consider how you can co-organize with other trusted community entities, or tack on with something that is already happening and has good attendance.
• Offering food and refreshments creates a welcoming environment and keeps people present and satisfied!
• Intentionally invite strategic and relevant partners. This way, the community can put a face to the names of people managing public programs and increase their understanding of land management in the area. Perhaps even have a list with the partner attendees, titles, and contact info that participants can take a photo of to follow up with any questions.
  

THEME 2: Quality and Nuanced Facilitation

• Make sure to have a designated facilitator. This role could rotate depending on topics, but it’s important to have a person keeping the conversation on track. The facilitator helps the organizing team and community stay on schedule, and keeps the conversations constructive, open, and solution-based. 
• All facilitators should be briefed on trauma-informed communication and openness in order to hold the community’s concerns (more trauma-informed resources below under Theme 3). 
• It’s important to state the scope of the conversation from the beginning. Community members may have strong opinions about land management in your area, and it’s good to be prepared to steer the conversation toward productive ends while still giving people a chance to say what they need to. 
• Along those lines, leave open time for letting discussions unfold, rather than taking up the whole agenda with specific talking points.
• Continue to frame the safe application prescribed burning as achievable and accessible for communities. Keep the conversation big picture to avoid folks getting overwhelmed or lost in the weeds. 
• During conversations within the workshop, it’s important to validate the knowledge of each participant. In the event that the information someone shares is not correct, it’s important to refer to the sources of information rather than to personal commentary. 
• Remember that you are not trying to teach folks how to do permits, write a burn plan, and understand all the ins and outs of prescribed fire planning and implementation. Instead, it is a community-focused meeting where folks can understand the big picture of a PBA, voice concerns, and ask questions.
• Create clear and honest expectations (for instance, remind participants that returning fire to landscapes can be a long process that requires sustained engagement and responsibility to place).
• Remember that creating these spaces is so necessary because without it, the community simply has a hard time organizing itself for this topic.
• Click here to see an example of our agenda for a PBA workshop in Lewiston, CA. 

THEME 3: The Importance of Trauma-informed Communication

• Remember that many communities are traumatized by wildfire (and in some cases, escaped prescribed burns). Coming to these conversations equipped with trauma-informed training and resources can help create a productive, healing conversation around fire’s presence in a community.
• “Naming” the wildfire or escaped prescribed burn that a community may have experienced, instead of talking around it, may create better conversational outcomes.
• Be prepared for people to join that are scared or skeptical. Having multiple perspectives represented can provide for a richer conversation that brings all voices to the table.
• If inviting partners from other agencies to present or facilitate parts of the workshop, ensure they also understand and are on board with a trauma-informed approach. 
• Try to focus on what can be done and away from what may have already gone wrong before, while still being compassionate and trauma-informed. The shift from trauma-informed to healing-centered is a helpful framework here.
• Some additional trauma-informed resources:
  • Depolarizing Conservations
  • Trauma-informed communication

THEME 4: Follow-Up for Continued Conversations

• Have a plan for continued outreach and facilitation. Folks go home energized from these events and quickly get overwhelmed with next steps. 
• Ask any local PBA coordinators to have an event planned for shortly after the workshop, such as a small pile burn in the fall/winter. 
• Consider preparing a short checklist to give to participants with things to observe and consider when spending time in the land around them to keep the possibility of beneficial fire in their minds.
• Continue to use social media and other communication outlets to spread the word about local fire work in the area to keep community members informed.

This work is important for building networks of change and creating cultural shifts in our relationship with fire. Enabling a dialogue between community members, PBAs, and partners can be complicated – but well worth the effort. We hope to share more lessons and findings from future outreach endeavors in Trinity County and beyond.

The work upon which this publication is based was funded in part through a Regional Forest and Fire Capacity grant awarded by the California Department of Conservation. The work described in this publication is also funded in part by the March Conservation Fund and Secure Rural Schools Resource Act Advisory Committee (RAC) with support from the U.S. Forest Service. In addition, the work in this publication was also funded in part through the Wildfire Strategies program of Resources Legacy Fund. WRTC is an equal opportunity provider.

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