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Wildfire severity is increasing in the western United States. Simultaneously, many recognize that fire is a natural process and advocate for learning to live with fire. Indeed, the naturalness of fire can be an important reason provided to increase the amount of fire on a landscape. However, “naturalness” can be interpreted in incommensurate ways, such as the historic range of variability of a system or the absence of human influence. What makes wildfires feel natural or unnatural to the people who experience them, and how naturalness affects reactions to wildfires is underexplored. Using social representations theory, we examine the 2023 Lookout Fire at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (HJA). We use semi-structured interviews (n = 40) to explore how the research community associated with the HJA mentally constructs and uses naturalness to emotionally process and make meaning from the wildfire. We find even in a community with advanced training in ecology, respondents use a variety of metrics to determine naturalness, including ignition source, fire behavior, and pre-fire landscape characteristics and fire history. Respondents consider a variety of factors, and there was not consensus on whether the Lookout Fire was a “natural” fire. In general, respondents who described the fire as more natural were able to come to a state of acceptance and excitement for future research opportunities sooner than respondents who described the fire as largely unnatural. This has important implications for wildfire risk communication for scientists and practitioners who want to restore fire as a natural process. While fires perceived (or framed) as natural may be more readily accepted, fires perceived as unnatural may take longer to process. Fires perceived as human-caused and especially as climate-exacerbated may be the most difficult for people to process after and during the fire, and may have the most resistance for being managed for purposes other than full suppression. 

Natural resource managers (managers) value and use scientific information to inform their decision-making process in a variety of ways. The scientific information managers use depends on a variety of factors, including the source of the information and ease of access. Barriers, such as paywalls, insufficient capacity, and information overload play an important role in determining what scientific information managers have access and attend to. Additionally, characteristics of managers themselves also influence what scientific information they prioritize and implement. Specific factors likely play an important role in how managers evaluate the utility and strength of scientific information. We examine two potential factors, (1) the number of years of the study as an indicator of research quality, and (2) the cognitive bias to prefer confirming information. We surveyed public land managers in Oregon and Washington, USA and used a 2x2 experimental design to evaluate how time frame and agreement with prior beliefs influences the perceived usefulness of scientific information and the soundness of management prescriptions for three management issues: post-fire salvage logging, variable density thinning of mature growth stands, and translocation of native species as a climate adaptation behavior. We find in general respondents equally value the results of long-term and short-term studies but prefer information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs over information that challenges them. In open-ended responses about the soundness of action prescriptions, we found across all conditions respondents were resistant to adopting a management action because of the results of the example studies. Although previous research has examined the barriers and facilitators to getting managers access to scientific information, our study highlights the ways the mere provisioning of information does not guarantee its use, as managers evaluate information in light of their pre-existing values and beliefs. Scientists, science communicators, and boundary spanners should consider what characteristics managers use to evaluate the usefulness and applicability of information when designing studies and framing and communicating results. 

Abstract Federal and state land agencies lack diversity at the natural resource manager level, in turn limiting the agencies' capacity for creative problem solving needed for complex and wicked environmental problems. Diverse representation is imperative to increase public support and trust in natural resource management.We used an online survey method to examine the relationship and experiences between independent demographic variables (e.g. gender, ethnicity and years worked in natural resources) and two dependent variables: (1) perceived public support and (2) sense of belonging for resource management professionals in the Pacific Northwest, USA.We find in general, that gender is associated with how one progresses through a career in natural resource management. As years in natural resource management increases, sense of belonging decreases for women and remains constant for men. Similarly, as years in natural resource management increases, perceived public support increases for men and remains constant for women.Given that ample past research suggests strong links between sustainable management and diverse perspectives, this study has implications for addressing our current and future natural resource management challenges. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog. 

One of the dominant ethics of natural resource management (NRM), and arguably Western culture, is consequentialism, which evaluates the ethical merit of decisions based solely on consequences or outcomes of those decisions. When used in NRM, this ethic is largely applied as the default, without interrogation of whether it is appropriate or useful. In this case study, we examine the intersections of consequentialism, decision psychology, and fire response in the United States. We explore how trying to maximize beneficial outcomes creates dilemmas for fire managers who must make decisions despite considerable risk and uncertainty about outcomes. Consequentialism as a guiding ethic may exacerbate risk aversion and fire suppression and ultimately contributes to a dilemma, wherein fire managers trying to reduce negative outcomes may increase the probability of negative outcomes (via catastrophic wildfire) in the long run. In place of consequentialism, we explore how virtue ethics in fire response and moral pluralism may ultimately better support the goals of risk management and positive outcomes. From this case study, readers will gain insight on the challenges of applying ethical theory to current natural resource issues, the way cognitive biases can affect decision-making, and alternative ethics to the dominant consequentialist system in NRM.