Historical perspective on the influence of wildfire policy, law, and informal institutions on management and forest resilience in a multiownership, frequent-fire, coupled human and natural system in Oregon, USA

Michelle M Steen-Adams,Mark D Adams,Susan Charnley

doi:10.5751/es-09399-220323

Abstract

Steen-Adams, M. M., S. Charnley, and M. D. Adams. 2017. Historical perspective on the influence of wildfire policy, law, and informal institutions on management and forest resilience in a multiownership, frequent-fire, coupled human and natural system in Oregon, USA. Ecology and Society 22(3):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09399-220323

Highlights

Fire is a fundamental ecological process that maintains diverse ecosystem services and social values in communities around the world (Noss et al 2006)
Deschutes National Forest (DNF) and Fremont National Forest (FNF) foresters continued to deal with wildfire hazard through fire suppression and harvest fuel treatment while not directly treating forest fuels
We found that informal institutions and institutional history play roles in wildfire management adaptation through interactions with formal institutions because of effects on managers’ decision-making flexibility when responding to ecological feedbacks

Summary

Introduction

Fire is a fundamental ecological process that maintains diverse ecosystem services and social values in communities around the world (Noss et al 2006). In recent years managing wildfire risk in human-settled, fire-prone, forested landscapes has become a nearly intractable problem in the U.S West and globally. Ecological resilience to wildfire, i.e., the capacity to experience shocks yet retain essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and identity (Gunderson 2000, Walker et al 2004), appears to be declining in frequent-fire ecosystems (DíazDelgado et al 2002, Savage and Mast 2005, Chapin et al 2010). Forest fuel treatments have disproportionately treated the wildland urban interface (WUI), thereby limiting restoration of the broader wildland area (Schoennagel et al 2009) where ecosystem services and timber are at stake. S. land management agency budgets in 11 of 14 years (2000–2014) and exceeded $2 billion in 2015 (Whitlock 2004, USDI-NIFC 2016), limiting agency capacity to fulfill its range of policy and legal mandates (Stephens and Ruth 2005, USDA-FS 2015)

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