Preparing Wildland Fire Scientists for Engagement
From 2022 to 2024, COMPASS partnered with the Federation of American Scientists, Conservation X Labs and the California Council on Science and Technology to lead the Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator. Responding to a policy window created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Accelerator helped wildfire experts develop recommendations around federal wildfire policy. COMPASS led a series of workshops for the cohort, including a Message Box workshop and a series of in-person engagement workshops in Washington, DC, targeted at preparing wildland fire experts for media and policy engagement.
Whether experienced via evacuations in the arid west or orange skies on the eastern seaboard, wildland fire is a growing threat to ecosystems and communities across North America, exacerbated by climate change and policy decisions that preclude adequate mitigation and response to uncontrolled fires.
In 2022, COMPASS and partners joined the Federation of American Scientists to lead the Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator in order to take advantage of a policy window created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s establishment of the Wildland Fire Management and Mitigation Commission (WFMMC), a group of diverse fire experts assembled to develop a set of policy recommendations intended to review the US federal government’s current fire management system and suggest policies to improve it.
Over the course of two years, COMPASS, FAS and partners led a series of workshops, convenings, and gatherings to help fire experts—including experts from academia, industry, Indigenous communities, utilities, and government—craft recommendations to be considered by the Commission for inclusion in the publication of their final report in September, 2023. As part of the Accelerator, COMPASS was able to help a diverse group of scientists and experts refine their messages in order to most effectively reach audiences that have the ability to affect change, while learning about the complex, constantly-evolving nature of the wildland fire space.
Our Approach
Along with FAS, Conservation X Labs, and CCST, COMPASS conducted outreach to experts working in the wildfire space—including experts who participated in a field trip to a burn site in Montana in 2019 and a 2016 convening assembled by the Wilburforce Foundation and facilitated by COMPASS to help fire scientists gain the skills to communicate more effectively with members of the media. In addition, COMPASS conducted an introductory survey of the wildland fire science landscape, with a particular focus on experts who worked across boundaries to foment change in how fire is managed on the landscape.
Experts with actionable ideas about how to address the federal government’s current fire management strategy were brought into the Accelerator, and we were off.
Phase I: Kickoff & Introduction to Strategic Science Communication
The Accelerator formally began in fall of 2022 in order to develop recommendations in advance of the final report published in 2023. As part of the initial phase of the Accelerator, COMPASS led an Introduction to Strategic Science Communication using the Message Box to give experts the opportunity to refine and distill the recommendation they wanted to share with the Commission. Experts were also given the chance to network and learn more about one another’s work—leading to several co-authored recommendations.
Accelerator participants also learned from FAS about various pathways to affect meaningful, systemic change across the federal policy landscape, with a focus on U.S. Congress.
Phase II: Recommendation Development
As the year turned over to 2023, members of the Accelerator spent a lot of time working on honing their recommendations, with assistance from FAS, COMPASS, Conservation X Labs, and CCST. Through calls and meetings, experts shared their ideas with fellow members of the Accelerator and workshopped them with staff from the four partner organizations in anticipation of the WFMMC Report.
Phase III: Follow-Up Workshops & Engagement
The WFMMC Report was published in September, 2023, but COMPASS’ engagement in the wildland fire space didn’t end there—the fire policy window remains open, and as wildland fires continue to burn out of control and threaten ecosystems, communities and livelihoods, the opportunity for engagement remains, as the WFMMC was assembled to inform congressional policy, not implement and pass it itself.
In continued collaboration with FAS, COMPASS in early 2024 led a two-day workshop in Washington, DC for wildland fire specialists to prepare them for engagement with both journalists and policy makers. As is typical for a COMPASS workshop, fire experts had the chance to workshop their messages in real time with one another and potential audiences. Policymakers are obviously a focus of the Accelerator, but journalists are vital points of connection for the scientific community with the broader public, which, of course, is affected by fire in myriad ways whether the fire is burning across the continent or over the property line. Following the workshop, COMPASS coached participants to set up and attend Hill and federal agency meetings, where they were given the opportunity to immediately implement what they learned.
Media experts included:
- Marcia Brown, Politico;
- Brianna Sacks, Washington Post;
- and John Upton, Climate Central;
And policy experts included :
- Ann Bartuska, Environmental Defense Fund;
- Erica Goldman, Federation of American Scientists;
- Bettina Poirier, American University;
- and Matt Weiner, Megafire Action.
Biographies for the seven experts can be found at this link.
Next Steps
As wildland fire continues to dominate landscapes and fire seasons turn to fire years, collaborative, science- and culture-informed policy needs to be responsive to both a changing landscape—both physical and social—and a changing climate. Collaboratives like the Wildland Fire Accelerator and, at a broader level, the Wildland Fire Management and Mitigation Commission are vital resources for policy that works for everyone. As the challenge of wildland fire continues to grow, COMPASS is well-positioned to help make sure that scientists and experts are able to share the significance of their work with the media, communities, and policymakers.
Additional Resources from COMPASS
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Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: Using Effective Communication to Bridge the Gap Between Wildfire Science and Policy—in this blog post, learn more about the wildland fire space and how tools like the Message Box help distill solutions to complex, cross-boundary issues into manageable messages.
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Advocating for Science at Capitol Hill with Dr. Jamie Peeler—read more about engaging with policymakers for the first time from the Dr. Jamie Peeler (University of Montana), one of the participants in the 2024 workshop series.
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Cultural Burning and Wildfire Policy with Dr. Nina Fontana—in this interview, learn more about Dr. Nina Fontana’s (University of California-Davis) work on integrating cultural burning with federal policy and her experience with the COMPASS workshop (and read her recommendation here!).
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