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The Nature Conservancy builds the capacity of governments, organizations, communities and landowners to implement ecologically and socially acceptable solutions to fire challenges.
Fire Learning Networks
One way the Initiative builds partner capacity is by sponsoring collaborative, multi-stakeholder learning networks. Fire Learning Networks take a long-term approach to restoring the natural role of fire through a collaborative process that ensures the needs of different stakeholders are met. All stakeholders—from community groups to federal agencies—come together to develop a shared vision for a given landscape, and to learn how to overcome critical challenges related to maintaining or restoring ecosystem health. Network projects demonstrate successful approaches, speed technology transfer and generate on-the-ground results.
The Nature Conservancy presently has two Fire Learning Networks, one in the United States and one spanning Latin America and the Caribbean.
On-the-Ground Fire Management
In the United States, Nature Conservancy fire staff safely perform prescribed burns on approximately 100,000 acres per year. In conjunction with partners, staff also support the planning and implementation of burns on another several hundred thousand acres per year. The Conservancy is also rapidly developing ecological fire management capacity in Latin America and the Caribbean. All Nature Conservancy fire management programs employ a rigorous planning process, including defining ecological goals, developing operational guidelines and managing smoke.
The Global Fire Initiative develops and oversees standards and qualifications for staff who conduct fire management work. For more information about the Conservancy’s prescribed fire work, visit our web site for fire practitioners.
Fire Training
Our international and United States fire training programs trained more than 450 people from 5 countries in ecological fire management in 2007, including representatives from land management agencies and governments, NGO's and local communities.
In the United States, the Conservancy builds the capacity of state, federal and private partners to restore and maintain fire-dependent ecosystems through the use of prescribed fire and carefully managed wildland fires. The majority of this work is funded through a cooperative agreement with the USDA Forest Service and the US Department of the Interior called Fire, Landscapes and People: A Conservation Partnership.
The Global Fire Initiative also offers hands-on fire training for conservation professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 2001 we have trained more than 100 practitioners in prescribed fire management from 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and eight countries in Africa. In 2005 we began offering this training in Spanish as well as English.
For more information about our course offerings, contact us at fire@tnc.org or visit http://tncfire.org/training.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Chris Helzer (restoration burn, Nebraska); Photo © Bill Daunis (Karner Blue butterfly).
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