All these scenarios and more have been reported by Kenyan firefighters as routine occurrences when addressing fires. But for more than a decade, an organization called Africa Fire Mission has been working in collaboration with multiple stakeholders in Kenya to change this reality and make fighting fire safer all across Africa.
In 2025, as two University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information researchers we connected with Africa Fire Mission on a research study. We wanted to understand how high reliability organizations (HROs), which are organizations with human life and well-being on the line, operate safely and reliably even in under-resourced or fiscally challenging environments.
Researcher Dr Amber Lynn Scott on the Africa Fire Mission Study, Kenya 2025. Photo: AFM
In Kenya, despite a multitude of organizational, personal, and community challenges, Africa Fire Mission has led successful efforts to train firefighters in fire safety practices despite these identified limitations.
The initial findings of this research partnership were presented at the 2026 Wildland Fire Canada Conference and Canadian Smoke Forum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, last week. The study identifies five specific values cultivated through Africa Fire Mission training programs that promote safety practices in the fire service. These identified values include (a) knowledge sharing, (b) collaborative leadership, (c) enthusiastic learning, (d) shared purpose, and (e) community impact.
Although these values identified are largely familiar to most individuals working in the U.S. fire and emergency services, these findings are notable when contrasted with Kenyan knowledge distribution culture described by participants. Participants in the study indicated that in the past, knowledge has been perceived and treated as a tangible asset in many of their Kenyan communities, including the fire and emergency services. From this perspective, firefighting and emergency service knowledge was regarded as a source of power, status, and job security that should be closely guarded rather than shared with peers or other colleagues. Because knowledge has a tangible value in this cultural context, sharing knowledge (such as that from a training program) was viewed as giving away something with significant, tangible value. By holding knowledge close, those with knowledge could maintain their exclusive access to power, status and job security that others without that knowledge did not possess.
Africa Fire Mission 2025 Fire Symposium. Photo: Africa Fire Mission.Africa Fire Mission 2025 Fire Symposium. Photo: Africa Fire Mission.
Importantly, exposure to AFM trainers and training programs represented a shift in these knowledge-sharing norms for many Kenyan fire and emergency service team members. AFM’s training models, which rely on volunteer U.S. trainers to share their extensive knowledge with Kenyan participants, demonstrated a cultural value that emphasized knowledge sharing as a new form of power, status, and job security. Over the course of more than a decade in Kenya, AFM’s training model encouraged and demonstrated benefits of firefighting and emergency service workers sharing new knowledge with their teammates and community members. These training curriculums encouraged Kenyan participants to “pay it forward” by emphasizing mentorship and train-the-trainer programming. For example, one Kenyan study participant named Joel* described how he worked to share knowledge with other fire service members across Kenya but also made a “handshake deal” with these trainees to pass on what they learned to others. This handshake deal ultimately encouraged knowledge spread across Kenya’s fire and emergency service communities. Joel’s persistence in this approach is attributed to knowledge spreading across the Kenya fire and emergency services, as evidenced by several study participants specifically noting Joel’s individual impact on shaping their pro-knowledge sharing behavior.
Early research findings, including those presented at the 2026 Wildland Fire Canada Conference and Canadian Smoke Forum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan may help explain how culture is changing and evolving across the Kenya fire service in a way that ultimately shapes firefighter safety outcomes. Our initial findings indicate that Africa Fire Mission’s efforts to train specific values have shaped learning, leadership, and community service in Kenya, as well as reinforced safety practices in unexpected ways. Beyond their application in Kenya, these findings also support practical changes for HROs operating in international contexts (e.g., Africa) as well as under HROs in resourced communities (e.g., volunteer fire departments).
While these initial insights are interesting, they are only the start of creating a more vivid picture of changes across the Kenyan fire and emergency services. To date, the study includes more than 220 hours of field work, 1,300 photographs and more than 20 interviews has identified five key values that have shaped crucial changes in the Kenyan fire and emergency services. Ongoing analysis, combined with a 2026 University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information CURATE grant is supporting additional interviews and site visits, including research at the upcoming 2026 EMS and Fire Symposium scheduled to take place in Nairobi, Kenya this November.
Ultimately, a final report will go to the Africa Fire Mission and the study will be published in an academic, practitioner-focused journal.
Dr Amber Lynn Scott and Dr Ikeola Bodunde, are from the Department of Communication,College of Communication and Information, at the University of Kentucky.
Africa Fire Mission 2025 Fire Symposium. Photo: Africa Fire Mission.
US-UK collaboration produces UK Community Wildfire Resilience Framework
The UK’s 2026 wildfire season brought unprecedented attention to the growing challenge of wildfire risk and resilience. Record-breaking summer temperatures and extended periods of hot, dry weather contributed to a high number of wildfires recorded in England. By the end of August, fire and rescue services had responded to more than 1,354 wildfires, placing significant strain on emergency response resources, second only to the 1,592 fires in 2022.
The severity of the season prompted the UK Government’s largest use of the emergency mobile phone alert system to warn the public of very high wildfire risk and discourage activities that could ignite fires, including barbeques, campfires, and fireworks. Wildfire is no longer an isolated or infrequent hazard in the UK, but an increasingly significant national resilience challenge requiring coordinated and proactive action to reduce wildfire risk and protect communities.
Growing up in southeast England, flooding was a familiar hazard, but wildfire was not. That changed when, at 25, I encountered wildfire for the first time while hiking the Appalachian Trail in the United States.
This experience led me to relocate to Idaho and pursue a PhD focused on community wildfire resilience and human-wildfire interactions across the western US. Through the International Association of Wildland Fire and the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, I met Victoria Amato in 2022, a community wildfire planning specialist working with SWCA Environmental Consultants. Excited to meet a fellow Brit working in the US wildfire community, we began discussing how decades of wildfire preparedness and resilience efforts in North America could help communities in the UK prepare for a future of increasing wildfire risk.
Following the 2022 UK Wildfire Conference in Belfast, a group of individuals representing wildfire mitigation and management entities from the UK and US formed a knowledge-sharing partnership focused on community resilience and property protection, spearheaded by Amato. The collaboration resulted in the 2024 UK Community Wildfire Resilience Framework for Property Protection.
Drawing on successful programs, best practices, and lessons learned from North America and other regions, the paper outlines practical actions and opportunities that can help UK decision-makers build and strengthen community resilience and reduce wildfire risk to life and property.
The framework comes at a critical time. As higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and changing climate conditions contribute to weather conditions more conducive to wildfire activity, the UK is likely to experience more frequent and damaging wildfire events. Despite this growing risk, wildfire management remains devolved. In England, there is no single agency responsible for wildfire or active national wildfire preparedness program, leaving no clear governance structure for coordinated risk reduction and mitigation efforts.
With public awareness and concern increasing following the 2026 wildfire season, there is growing momentum for a more coordinated approach to wildfire preparedness, mitigation, and community engagement. The framework draws on proven approaches from other nations, identifying successful programs and strategies that could be adapted and scaled for the UK, including Community Wildfire Protection Plans, Fire Safe Councils, and WUI building codes. It also highlights opportunities to expand and strengthen existing initiatives such as Firewise UK through a more coordinated national approach. This framework could be used as a road map in response to the UK Parliament’s wildfire management.
By promoting collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and the adaption of proven international models, the framework provides a practical roadmap for building long-term wildfire resilience in the UK. The framework aligns directly with and could help implement the recommendations of the recently published UK Parliament in its wildfire management report by establishing partnerships, governance structures, and shared learning needed to treat wildfire as a national resilience challenge. Through coordinated action across governments, industry, academia, emergency services, and land managers, the framework demonstrates how collective effort can accelerate process, strengthen preparedness, and better protect communities, property, and landscapes from wildfire risk.
First presented at the 2024 UK Wildfire Conference in Aberdeen, this framework will be featured again at Wildfire2026: UK Wildfire Conference in Leeds on 10-11th November, where it exemplifies the theme “New Perspectives – Shared Solutions” by showcasing how international collaboration and shared expertise can come together to support a more resilient future for UK communities.
Dr Meg Dolman is a Wildfire Mitigation Specialist with Idaho Power Company, Boise Idaho, and a Director on the Board of the International Association of Wildland Fire
Speakers at Wildfire 2026 – UK Wildfire Conference
With increasing frequency and severity, we are seeing large-scale wildfires and cascading consequences across the globe. In the 2026 summer fire season in Europe, major conflagrations occurred in Mediterranean and southern regions with lives and properties lost across Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Belgium, and Turkey. Albania, Germany and other countries have been affected, and the potential remains for more widespread conflagrations. Further north, Ireland and the United Kingdom had wildfires of a scale and complexity well beyond the historic norm.
These wildfires were preceded by periods of rainfall and growth in vegetation in some areas while prolonged drought occurred in others, followed by significant and widespread heatwaves disrupting European economies and lifestyles and baking landscapes and vegetation.
This From the IAWF President column is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.
Across the Atlantic, Canada again experienced extensive wildfires in several provinces, impacting populated areas, remote and Indigenous communities, and vulnerable boreal forests. Over the border, the United States experienced a similar situation of escalating wildfire commitments and impacts, with many parts of the country in a state of high risk even if ignitions have not occurred. As with Europe, properties and lives have been lost including fire crews and aviators. Indonesia, along with other parts of Asia, is dealing with major wildfire threats and impacts. Across all fire affected countries and continents, smoke accumulations and greenhouse gas emissions are disrupting more distant places as well as atmospheric dynamics. This situation is unsustainable.
Formal instruments for cross-border and international assistance have been activated, including mutual response and coordination agreements within the European Union, and longstanding resource sharing arrangements among Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada for firefighters and incident management teams. Such agreements require many issues to be addressed including training, experience and qualifications, fitness standards, deployment conditions, fatigue and safety management, national polices and cost recovery. Even for well-established relationships – e.g. between Australia and the United States – cross-walking processes to align roles, skills, competencies and training continue to be reviewed and refined each year so the expectations of resource providers and recipients are met when firefighters and incident management personnel are deployed.
The United Nations Global Fire Management Hub (UN Fire Hub), formed under the Food and Agriculture Organisation headquartered in Rome, established an Interoperability Working Group in 2025 that is tackling many current and emerging issues and making good progress. However, these challenges will be with us for a very long time and at different scales in different places. While some countries have relatively mature wildfire response and management arrangements, others are yet to develop, especially where large wildfires are a relatively recent phenomenon and fire services are localised rather than national.
Many of the interoperability issues go well beyond high-level agreements, intelligence and data sharing, and the like. Metropolitan fire services are generally organised, trained and equipped for structural fires, while forestry and park services have different cultures, equipment and skillsets for dealing with fires in vegetation. In some countries the military is involved, while the aerial firefighting sector also involves many corporations and private-public partnerships. The ability for different agencies and organisations to work together in planning and preparedness, and to establish command and control, develop operational strategies and tactics, deploy resources including aircraft for effectiveness and efficiency, and ensure the safety and wellbeing of their personnel, can be a significant challenge. This coordination requires mutual respect, communication at all levels, a common operating picture, training and exercising together, the ability to recognize and use specialist skills regardless of service or rank, and often long-term cultural change within each organisation.
Fundamentally, wildfires occur in vegetation. The point of origin may be remote and in difficult terrain. Directly applying water to burning materials from hoses and trucks, as in metropolitan contexts with reticulated water supplies and hydrants, will only ever be practical at small scales, in accessible areas, and for the protection of built assets. Hose lays and sprinkler systems can be effective for protecting landscape features of significant value, especially in difficult terrain where water sources such as collar tanks (or flexitanks) can be inserted by helicopter, and water remains useful for mopping up smouldering materials. Aerial firefighting, whether dropping water and suppressants on the fire edge, or retardants on unburnt vegetation, will always be limited by scale, cost, aircraft availability and proximity to refilling points. Even dry fire fighting, involving managing fuels using hand tools and earthmoving machinery to cut mineral breaks, separate areas of flammable vegetation, and create access for vehicles, has many constraints. While rapid fire detection and multi-agency emergency response are essential, as well as international and continental mutual-aid agreements, there will never be enough firefighters, water, trucks, aircraft and earthmoving equipment. Modern building standards and materials are also essential but do very little for historic towns, older suburbs, remote communities and disadvantaged populations.
As global fire regimes change and conflagrations have bigger impacts, the lessons to be learned and the strategies needed are old, not new. The use of fire for strategic and tactical backburns, and to burn out fuels between constructed or natural breaks and the wildfire edge, remains a powerful tool for fire fighting in the right hands, but can be a significant risk without expert judgment and skills. Beyond fire fighting, the use of fire in the landscape for prescribed burning is essential for managing vegetation and fuels at a range of scales, as well as for learning and development so that firefighters and managers acquire a practical understanding of fire behaviour. After successive unsustainable wildfire seasons in Canada, there is now a national prescribed fire training program that is expanding its focus and program delivery nationwide. The UN Fire Hub is also actively promoting Integrated Fire Management so that all aspects of living with and managing fire in the landscape are given prominence, including prescribed burning and land management. To protect life, property and the environment from wildfires, we need to better manage the environment before wildfires start.
Trevor Howard is the President of the IAWF and national manager, prescribed burning strategy, with the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC).
I fought my first peat fire in 2020 while working as a volunteer firefighter. We poured a lot of water onto it. Despite repeatedly spraying the blackened area, the peat continued to smoulder. That was my first encounter with the trickiest wildfire.
Later, while working for Greenpeace Russia’s fire prevention programme, I fought peat fires in Siberia and the European part of Russia, from Buryatia in the east to the radioactive marshes of the Bryansk Oblast. In 2016, we launched a similar programme in Greenpeace Indonesia, where I tackled some of the most impressive peatlands I have ever seen.
What have I learned? Peat fires are tricky, hard to detect and suppress, and it’s difficult to be sure the work is done properly. Peat fires can pop up weeks after fire crews have left the scene, convinced that there is no burning in the soil.
Greenpeace Russia has now been banned, and I fled my country to settle in the United Kingdom. What I see now is so similar to what I saw previously.
Wildfires across Europe are breaking records. France, Spain, Greece, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the UK and Ireland are affected. Lives lost, nature destroyed, people evacuated, houses burned. The media is full of images of terrifying flames.
In the flood of fire information, we overlook a threat that is less spectacular but no less terrifying: many UK and Irish fires, including the biggest ever in Belgium, are burning in peatlands, creating a high risk of long-term smouldering peat fires.
Greenpeace firefighters fight a peat fire in a radioactively contaminated marsh in Bryansk Oblast in 2019. Photo: Greenpeace Russia.A Greenpeace Russia volunteer works on a peatland in the Smolensk region in 2016. Greenpeace Russia is now banned. Photo: Greenpeace Russia.
The emissions
Peatlands are incredible wetland ecosystems that can accumulate up to 600 gigatons (Gt) of carbon in their soil, making them crucial for climate regulation; they can be found in the boreal zone and throughout the tropics. Peatlands are an integral part of Northern European natural landscapes and are critical to some of the world’s most important forest ecosystems. Peatlands are home to a wide variety of species. However, peatlands can present a significant challenge in the event of a wildfire.
Human activities are damaging peatlands through drainage, peat harvesting, and conversion into agricultural land and plantations; this leads to the emission of 1.3-1.9 Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) each year. Peat fires also emit 0.2-1.5 Gt CO₂e annually. In the UK, peat fires have been responsible for 90 per cent of annual wildfire-related carbon emissions since 2001. Peat accumulation is a slow process, taking centuries, so even if burned peat could be restored, it would take far more than the time available for climate mitigation.
In addition to fuelling climate change, large-scale peat fires cause severe damage to public health by producing smoke haze. The peat fires in Indonesia in 2019 are estimated to have caused 87,000 excess deaths.
Today, more peatlands are at risk of burning, while the effectiveness of peat fire suppression is far beyond what is necessary.
After working on the issue of peat fires for more than 10 years, both as a firefighter and an environmentalist, I have concluded that a peat fire is the trickiest enemy a wildland firefighter can face: it is not the most terrifying or the most powerful, but it is undoubtedly the trickiest.
The fuel
What makes peat fires so special? The fuel. Peat is formed in specific conditions in peatlands from sphagnum moss and other species. Limited oxygen during formation slows decomposition, but its high carbon content makes it highly flammable.
Peat can smoulder underground without oxygen. Even with a 5:1 water-to-peat ratio, smouldering can continue. During smouldering, peat converts into a solid substance that prevents wetting. Suppression requires large amounts of water (at least one ton per 1 m2) and a high-pressure water jet to destroy smouldering peat conglomerates.
The relative flammability of peat depends on multiple factors. Long-term droughts, a lack of humidity and intensive surface fires altogether create ideal conditions for peat ignition. Therefore, we can expect an enormous number of smouldering peat spots in areas where the fire has passed through the peatland surface.
Once ignited, peat smoulders often without visible flames, and in the early stages of small-scale burning spots, it produces a very low amount of smoke, making it hard to detect without special technical devices such as portable thermal infra-red or special thermometers.
The challenge
Although peat fires spread slowly, they still present a serious challenge to firefighters because they’re difficult to detect, size up, control, and monitor post-fire. In addition, there are hot caves filled with smouldering peat and ash, toxic smoke, high carbon monoxide levels, and fires that can start again in random places. Fighting peat fires requires application of specific LACES protocols (lookouts, anchor points, communication, escape routes, safety zones).
Even a small particle that continues to smoulder can reignite a peat fire days or weeks after firefighters have left the scene. In the most basic terms, peatland firefighting is 90 per cent mop-up. It is dirty, hot and unglamourous work. While for most wildland firefighters mop up is only the last stage of battling flames and is definitely the least fancy one, the mop up is the main and sometimes the only way to put out a peat fire.
Climate change now ruins usual fire dynamics and assumptions, and this is true also for peat fires. For a long time, most peat fires occurred only in drier drained peatlands where the peat was exposed to surface vegetation fires; today even undrained peatlands in their natural state are catching fire.
When peat fires cease to be a rare, exotic phenomenon and become a regular occurrence – as has long been the case in Russia and Indonesia – they will become a real disaster for many countries in Northern Europe.
The situation
Ireland is an interesting study case in point: Peatlands in Ireland cover an area of around 1.66 million hectares (approximately 23 per cent of the country’s territory), and their depth varies considerably depending on the type of bog – raised bogs have an average depth of 7.5 metres (with maximum depths of up to 12 to 13 metres), while blanket bogs in mountainous and lowland areas have an average depth of between two and four to six metres.
By contrast, Peatlands in the United Kingdom cover around three million hectares (approximately 12 per cent of the country’s land area). The depth of the peat layer varies considerably: in mountainous blanket bogs it ranges from one to five metres, while in lowland raised bogs it reaches five to 10 metres or more.
Peatlands comprise an enormous amount of fuel that is potentially exposed for ignition due to climate change, and emissions from these fires become a climate change contributor in their own right. Again, Ireland becomes a useful study point – according to EFFIS (European Forest Fire Information System) between July 15 and Aug. 14, 2026, more than 2220 hectares of mainly peat-based wildfires produced almost 170,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, that was previously sequestered within the peat fuels affected by these fires. This represents a significant increase on expected average annual levels of approximately 90,000 tonnes arising from wildfire activity.
Recent fires in Ireland also prove that the new reality has come: if fires of this scale are possible in the country with traditionally humid and cool weather, then what should we expect elsewhere? There are no large-scale wildfires in peatlands reported in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Scandinavian states, but we are still in the middle of the season, and drought conditions continue to climb daily.
So, we are dealing with fires that come to the new areas due to climate change, that are easy to start, hard to detect and size up, hard to suppress, and hard to control. At the same time these fires are out of the scope of many fire services. There is no significant experience of managing this type of wildfires outside of a very few countries, and even regions within these countries, and as a result there are no internationally standardised methods, no strategies, no guides and no special equipment.
We are a little more than halfway through the fire season, but the total area affected by wildfires on peatlands in Ireland in 2026 has already reached approximately 2950 hectares, of which 2200 hectares is the area affected by problematic peat fires – that is, fires that were thought to have been extinguished but have flared up again. A similar situation exists in Scotland.
The fire services carried out the operations in accordance with current standards. However, these standards do not consider the specific nature and suppression requirements of underground peat fires.
Reignition is caused by active and widespread underground peat burning. Small pockets of fire can survive initial extinguishing efforts, even when water is used, and cause the fire to reignite once the surface fire has been deemed extinguished. Detecting a peat fire at an early stage is difficult, but particularly so in recently burned areas while firefighting efforts are ongoing. Smouldering vegetation in the wake of the fire masks the peat fires, which emit relatively little smoke. However, even at an early stage, extinguishing a peat fire is difficult – it requires a large volume of water, delivered under pressure directly into the centre of the fire. Simply spraying the burning peat with a mist of water will certainly not be enough – after all, peat has evolved to absorb and hold water.
A special team of Greenpeace firefighters fights a peat fire in a radioactively contaminated marsh in Bryansk Oblast in 2019. Strategies used to fight peat fires in Russia and Indonesia could be implemented by firefighters in Northern Europe if and if a proper peatland firefighting culture can be developed and adapted.
The tools
My experience fighting peat fires in Russia and Indonesia shows we must adapt to deal with this threat. Greenpeace fire crews have developed technologies and skills for early detection, effective triage, proper use of resources and comprehensive post-fire control. This meant our small team could respond to and prevent multiple peat fires.
GIS systems and software allowed us to identify surface fires and prioritise potential fires. This enabled us to react quickly with small crews and provide on-ground reconnaissance with infrared-vision drones and portable infrared systems to identify all the burning spots. If this work was done in early spring, each burning spot required limited resources and time to be suppressed. Specialised thermometers and infrared devices allowed us to effectively control post-fire reignitions.
Our teams were small, mobile and properly equipped, and had relevant experience. This gave them serious advantages over regular fire units.
If the way we fought peat fires in Russia and Indonesia could be implemented by firefighters in Northern Europe, and if a proper peatland firefighting culture can be developed and adapted, we will be better prepared when peat fires became a regular occurrence in this part of the world.
Anton ‘Benny’ Beneslavskiy is a certified forest fire incident commander, author and educator.
Community wildfire adaption activities may not work as well as hoped because they downplay the importance of local contexts and local input, argues Catrin Edgeley from Utah State University, in an editorial for the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
Science, policy and practice surrounding how human communities navigate wildfire adaptation continue to evolve across changing social, political, economic and ecological contexts. The latest era of community wildfire adaptation progress elevates shared responsibility for risk reduction, collective action through coordinated mitigation efforts, frequent and transparent interactions between entities, and strategic allocation of resources to support larger, more concerted behavioral and environmental modifications in at-risk places (Charnley et al. 2020; Huber-Stearns et al. 2022; Edgeley and Paveglio 2024). Efforts to promote community-level adaptation have long centered on place-based, tailored approaches that reflect local contexts. However, pressure to adapt faster under increasingly hazardous conditions has led to policy and management changes that often de-center or are less responsive to community contexts, leading to outcomes that sometimes compromise the effectiveness of nuanced local wildfire adaptation approaches. Fluctuations in funding, staffing and resource availability to advance these efforts underscore the value of frequent reflection and adjustment to ensure that current approaches align with the social conditions under which wildfire adaptation is occurring (Davis et al. 2023; Nowell et al. 2025; Paveglio and Stasiewicz 2025). Documenting how varied approaches play out at the community level across different countries, cultures and environments, and intersect with changing policy, management and resources remains paramount for advancing international understandings of wildfire adaptation.
This editorial discusses opportunities to address four emerging challenges for community wildfire adaptation as pressure to demonstrate progress mounts internationally: (1) an increasingly circular wildfire economy that often detaches community capacity from mitigation progress, (2) a mismatch between public education, outreach, and messaging and information sought by community members, (3) emerging overreliance on regulatory approaches to influence collective action on private property, and (4) tensions surrounding modeling and mapping intended to guide community risk reduction planning. Observations shared here are drawn from recent community-based research efforts across the US West focused on wildfire adaptation in different social and ecological contexts. However, many of these challenges are present in other countries navigating wildfire risk, such as Australia, Canada, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Discussion below seeks to promote conversation about how communities can retain ownership or engagement in adaptation progress while navigating evolving technology, policy and management environments in international contexts.
Encouraging wildfire adaptation investments that improve community capacity
A recent uptick in funding available to support community adaptation in the US has prioritized hazardous fuels reduction and the development or update of core planning documents like Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs). Grant budgets often implicate contractors to lead proposed projects due to understaffing and limited capacity among both governmental and non-governmental applicants. This has fostered a circular wildfire adaptation economy that alternates between planning documents and implementation of document actions. A typical cycle might entail: (1) writing a grant to hire an environmental planning contractor to develop or revise a CWPP, (2) applying for funding to support fuels treatment activities outlined in the CWPP using a fuels contractor, then (3) upon completion of contracted fuels work, reinitiating the cycle by revising the CWPP. This process outsources or removes key elements of social adaptation such as leadership development and local networking, often unintentionally disengaging community members from planning and implementing activities beyond structured engagement opportunities. Contractors tasked with developing or updating planning documents often build committees or groups and hold public meetings to gather local input, but research suggests that the benefits of planning processes lie in informal and unstructured interactions, conversations and networking that occurs organically during planning processes (Brummel et al. 2010; Jakes et al. 2011; Hamilton et al. 2023).
Provision of grant funding to support wildfire risk reduction is positive, particularly in contexts where financial support is imperative for initiating progress. However, building local, sustained capacity for wildfire adaptation means transitioning away from growing dependence on outsourcing of adaptation activities to make progress (Meldrum et al. 2024; Paveglio and Shriner-Beaton 2025). Modifying the structure and requirements of current grant processes to begin better embedding local adaptation could include: (1) sustaining or creating community-based staff or liaison positions, (2) training and support for fuels treatments that empower the development of local risk reduction-based enterprises (e.g. small business loans to support growth and availability of local landscaping contractors for private property mitigation), (3) mentorship and training related to facilitation, planning processes and adaptation entrepreneurship, and (4) communal equipment for fuels work. Sustaining the impact of one-off or non-renewable grants may benefit from required maintenance plans for the work completed once grant funding ends to encourage applicants to think strategically about how grant funds can build longer-term capacity. Integrating local capacity into grants will also improve navigation of staff turnover at the organizations who often apply for these grants on behalf of communities, leaving projects in limbo during periods of transition. Finding intentional ways to build local involvement and capacity into grant process now is increasingly necessary for sustained community adaptation that can withstand fluctuations in funding, staff and capacity over time.
Moving beyond basic public education for cohesive wildfire risk reduction
The perceived absence of ‘social license’ as a barrier to hazardous fuels reduction progress has recently received renewed attention, often becoming a synonym for community acceptance (Moffat et al. 2016). Use of this term is declining among social scientists because it is often used to imply that wildfire risk reduction is delayed solely due to lack of public support or understanding, oversimplifying complex social, political, economic and ecological dynamics around vegetation management. One commonly proposed solution to garnering public support for fuels management is education, with the intent to bring public values and understandings in line with those of land managers (McCaffrey 2004). Yet, it is now rarely conflicts around the substance (or the ‘why’) of fuels management that emerge and benefit from enhanced education efforts, but instead questions about procedures to accomplish risk reduction (the ‘how’) (Daniels and Walker 2001; Paveglio and Edgeley 2023). Community members increasingly agree that actions to reduce wildfire risk are necessary, but they often need more detail about proposed approaches than is typically provided to assess approach suitability on landscapes that have personal meaning and community significance (Edgeley et al. 2026a, 2026b). Shifting education foci from basic fire ecology into fuels treatment decision-making contexts can reduce community-agency conflict and avoid exacerbating existing land management tensions.
Members of diverse publics are increasingly primed to be partners and collaborators in wildfire risk management. Moving beyond misconceptions of the public as uninformed requires greater transparency about how land management decisions are made in spaces where two-way conversations can take place. For example, residents interviewed in Parks, Arizona, supported hazardous fuels reduction, but had questions about how far in advance a prescribed fire or slash pile burning was decided upon, who made the approvals and how smoke was managed in the area (see Edgeley and Burnett 2025). Within these conversations, there is also an often-overlooked difference between tolerance and acceptance; a resident or community might tolerate smoke for extended periods of time but remain reserved about the timing or location of a prescribed or managed fire (Engebretson et al. 2016). Demonstrating how community values are incorporated or protected in risk reduction activities has also been shown to consistently improve public engagement, trust and support (Williams et al. 2018; Paveglio et al. 2019; Champ et al. 2022). One common example is consideration of residents’ aesthetic preferences in fuels treatment location and placement (e.g. Winter et al. 2002; Paveglio and Edgeley 2023). Continued investment in exploration of public attitudes towards risk reduction remains important for supporting more progressive fuels treatment activities; practitioners often hear from the most vocal individuals, who typically are not representative of the public at large. Education is a starting point (rather than an end point) in community-agency partnerships and requires layering with other community-based efforts to improve cohesive action.
Avoiding overreliance on regulation to resolve collective action issues
Regulatory mechanisms have become widely discussed approaches for overriding wildfire mitigation inaction on private property. Examples include local defensible space ordinances enforced with fines or liens (e.g. Payson, Arizona), mandatory fees in high-risk wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas to support risk assessments (e.g. Utah House Bill 48, passed in 2025) and requiring adherence to new building or WUI code standards in order to receive a permit to rebuild after wildfire (e.g. select Californian counties and municipalities). While interest in regulation often reveals good intentions, they are rarely a quick fix for large-scale social change because top-down approaches typically do not influence communities’ underlying relationships with wildfire. Regulation is most effective when residents already live in rule-driven community structures (e.g. Homeowners Associations) or areas where reliance on government is commonplace (Winter et al. 2009; Stidham et al. 2014; Steffey et al. 2020). Rural and unincorporated communities are generally unsupportive of top-down approaches that threaten independent lifestyles or require government involvement in private property decision-making (Edgeley et al. 2020; Paveglio et al. 2021). Misalignment of wildfire adaptation approaches with community conditions has long been a source of tension, distrust and inertia. Recent difficulty implementing regulatory mechanisms indicates that their use is not universally effective and may be better suited to small-scale, case-by-case implementation.
Exploring the suitability of regulatory-driven adaptation strategies requires careful introduction of a potenial approach with adequate time for input from affected residents and those responsible for local-level implementation. Providing opportunities to identify limitations or challenges to effective use can support integration of regulations into the existing constellation of adaptation activities already occurring, if appropriate. This might involve inviting local professionals to review implementation plans associated with regulations to proactively address place-based issues and nuance, which often takes the form of listening sessions, workshops, working groups, or advisory councils (e.g. state planning reviews after the Australian Black Saturday Fires; the Deschutes County, Oregon, Wildfire Mitigation Advisory Committee). Screening prospective regulation prior to implementation can support a balance between ambiguity and rigidity that accommodates local nuance while supporting broader consistency. It may also help reduce or remove ambiguity about the conditions under which a policy is implemented prior to widespread communication. Sudden or under-communicated introduction of regulations overrides opportunities for residents to understand why they are being asked to undertake actions, instead only telling them what they must do. These conditions can lead to misinterpretation of policy intent and may introduce or exacerbate conflict. While desirable, coproduction of regulation design and implementation requires longer timeframes and more upfront time investment to streamline implementation on the back end, conflicting with policy-making timelines and voting processes. Furthermore, regulation without provision of resources or capacity to enable compliance can create disparities between those with and without the skills or financial means to engage (Collins 2008; Ellery et al. 2023; Meldrum et al. 2024). Adaptation therefore cannot occur solely through regulation; where regulation is deemed necessary, it should be paired with voluntary, community-driven efforts.
Recognizing the limits of wildfire models in shaping community action
Novel wildfire modeling and related risk mapping of potential WUI fire behavior, risk and event-based scenarios (e.g. how structures might ignite each other, how retrofitting could change fire outcomes) has drawn interest from policy makers, practitioners and community groups (Price et al. 2025; Young et al. 2025; Fig. 1). Underlying these efforts is an assumption that better modelling will lead to better planning, and that model outputs like risk maps will subsequently motivate resident mitigation behaviors. However, it is not clear whether model outputs directly influence risk reduction activities. Modeling efforts have limited value if residents of properties within these higher-resolution studies are unwilling or unable to engage in fuels reduction, structure retrofitting, or other activities the model outputs indicate are beneficial. Additionally, conflict about model outputs between scientists and practitioners tasked with risk assessment or modeling and those living in modeled and mapped places continues to emerge, particularly regarding risk classification of private property (e.g. 2021 Oregon State Bill 762: see Casey 2025). This is particularly common in instances where outputs may be tied to financial consequences such as fees or insurance coverage, indicating limited public trust in wildfire models that may deter proactive risk reduction rather than enable it.
Models and related maps provide limited contributions to community wildfire adaptation if they cannot be merged with rigorous social science or their social limitations are not acknowledged. Evaluative research is needed that determines whether resident or community receipt of model outputs influence mitigative actions or broader behavioral changes and inquires how, if at all, model outputs change wildfire risk planning. Seeking opportunities to conduct this interdisciplinary work in teams with the capacity to navigate iterative rounds that document and respond to user needs (rather than generating an output and retroactively asking for input) can further improve practitioner and community engagement (Cleveland et al. 2024; Emard et al. 2024). The timing and saliency of model or map dissemination relative to community context is also important to consider; not all communities see value in these outputs or are comfortable with their generation and use (Paveglio and Edgeley 2023; Edgeley et al. 2024). Although deeper engagement may require extended timeframes to produce outputs, it can reduce delays and revisions later while encouraging more inclusive and engaged community planning methods, particularly in the context of CWPPs and similar strategic documents where risk maps are currently required.
Recentering community in wildfire adaptation
The four opportunities above collectively emphasize that proactive, place-based community engagement must drive wildfire adaptation progress, rather than intersect in stochastic and temporary ways in late stages of decision-making, in order for activities to be supported, adopted and implemented effectively. This is not a new observation in the wildfire social science literature, but one that must be re-centered and explored in new ways as the technology, policy and social dynamics surrounding community adaptation continue to mature internationally. Innovation in these spaces has allowed ideas about how adaptation might occur to evolve, yet it does not always translate to local progress, heightened understandings, or expanded capacity for wildfire risk reduction. Going beyond procedural, structured public engagement to prioritize emergent process-oriented approaches to adaptation is foundational to the evolution of community wildfire adaptation. Documenting how varied approaches play out at the community level across different countries, cultures and environments, and intersect with changing policy, management and resources remains paramount for advancing international understandings of wildfire adaptation.
Catrin Edgeley is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Wildland Fire. This editorial was written as part of the Journal’s initiative to spotlight emerging topics and foster discussion within the wildland fire community.
Wildfire drone operations have moved beyond the question of whether an unmanned aircraft can find heat or provide an overhead view. The harder problem is fitting another aircraft and another stream of data into an incident that may already involve helicopters, air tankers, lead planes, ground crews and changing airspace restrictions. For response professionals, useful drone work starts with aviation integration, disciplined mission planning and a clear path from observation to action.
Airspace Coordination Comes Before Sensor Capability
Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) around active wildfires are intended to protect firefighting aircraft and crews. Unauthorized drones can interrupt crewed aviation, yet authorized public safety flights still have to fit inside the same incident aviation structure. A technically successful mission can become an operational problem if the aircraft location, altitude or flight window conflicts with a helicopter or tanker assignment.
Authorized drone operations on active wildfires already work within established incident command and aviation structures. The challenge is maintaining that integration as UAS missions become more frequent, longer-range and increasingly complex. A drone may be operating under incident authority, but its flight area, altitude, timing, communications and data requirements still have to remain aligned with changing crewed-aircraft operations throughout the operational period.
For that reason, UAS coordination should extend beyond initial flight approval. Flight areas, altitude limits, lost-link procedures and an immediate grounding process need to be understood before launch and reviewed as incident conditions change. TFR and NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) information can also change during an operational period, so a single preflight review is not enough for a long mission cycle.
Key operating priorities include:
Define operating areas and altitude limits before launch.
Keep direct coordination between Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) personnel and incident aviation staff.
Recheck TFR and NOTAM information as conditions change.
Give aviation supervisors clear authority to stop unmanned flights when crewed aircraft need the airspace.
Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions can extend observation beyond practical ground access, but range brings new problems. Communications reliability, aircraft tracking, detect and avoid methods and lost link behavior become part of the safety case. More distance is useful only when the incident team can still account for the aircraft and control the mission.
Image created by ZenaDrone
Thermal Imaging Has Limits That Matter on a Fireground
Thermal imaging can support hotspot searches, perimeter assessment and detection of residual heat. The risk is treating a thermal image as a final answer. Vegetation, terrain, sensor angle, smoke, heated surfaces and distance can change what the operator sees. A bright signature may need field confirmation, and hidden combustion may remain difficult to characterize from one aerial pass.
Repeated observations tied to coordinates are often more useful than a single image. The operational question should be simple: what decision will this flight support? A drone that detects heat outside a containment line may provide valuable intelligence. That value drops very quickly if the location remains on the pilot display and does not reach the people assigning resources.
Endurance and Night Operations
Battery endurance is another practical constraint, particularly across large incidents. Published flight time matters less than usable mission time after wind, distance, payload, reserve requirements and repeated recovery cycles are considered. Crews may spend a surprising amount of the operational period managing batteries, charging and launch locations rather than collecting data.
Night flights can support thermal observation during periods of reduced visibility, but darkness changes the risk picture. Terrain references become harder to judge and recovery may require more planning. Night activity still needs to remain coordinated with other aviation. It cannot be assumed that the absence of daylight means the airspace is available.
Data Integration Is the Larger Opportunity
Wildfire agencies already collect large amounts of information. Drones can add thermal images, video, maps and coordinates at a pace that becomes difficult to use. The real objective is not collecting more data. It is moving a smaller amount of verified information to the right person soon enough to influence a decision.
Different agencies may arrive with different mapping platforms, radio systems and data procedures. This can make a simple location report harder to share than expected. Incident teams benefit when drone outputs use common geospatial formats and when responsibility for validating and distributing UAS intelligence is defined in advance.
Autonomous docking stations may make repeated observation easier by supporting automated launch, recovery and charging. They still require reliable communications, weather limits, updated airspace information and a clear way to interrupt a mission when incident priorities change. Autonomy can reduce routine workload, but it does not remove accountability to incident command.
The strongest wildfire use of drones is likely to come from integration rather than aircraft quantity. Better airspace deconfliction, disciplined thermal interpretation, practical BVLOS procedures and interoperable data sharing can make UAS missions more useful without adding unnecessary risk. Wildfire response does not need drones flying simply because they are available. It needs missions with a defined purpose, controlled access to the airspace and a direct connection between observation and action.
Usama Mehboob is a Content Writer at ZenaDrone Inc, covering drone technology, its applications and related industry developments.More at www.zenadrone.com/wildfires/
Being a good leader starts with being a good person – in his Wildfire magazine column Mike DeGrosky rediscovers the early influences that shaped his core beliefs.
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by renowned political scientist and author Robert Putnam, who was speaking on making democracy work. While decrying the decline of social clubs and organizations in the United States and the resulting loss of social capital, Putnam mentioned the traditional Boy Scout creed. On the night of the lecture, I made a note to myself to check out the Boy Scout creed. My scouting career was brief, having never gone much beyond Cub Scouts, but my older brother’s copy of the Boy Scout Handbook was a prized possession, owing to my love of the outdoors and outdoor skills, and I continued to reference it for years.
I had convinced myself that I had developed my leadership ethos from a combination of professional experience and advanced education. But what I had intended as a casual review of the Boy Scout creed reminded me that early influences, even fleeting ones, helped form the values that underlie my leadership philosophy. What was Boy Scouts of America when I was a kid is now Scouting USA but the Scout Oath and Scout Law have remained remarkably stable.
For a long time now, I have told students of leadership that being a good leader starts with being a good person. If Wildfire readers have seen or heard me describe someone as a person of integrity, a person of character, or even just one of the good ones, they have witnessed me paying a person my highest compliment. I have spent what some might consider an inordinate amount of time considering how my core values, including my beliefs about integrity and character, infuse my leadership ethos. Recently, I went the other direction, comparing my core values to an early and nearly forgotten influence.
When I stripped away the religious and nationalistic elements at the core of the scouting mission, the influence on the values that shape my leadership philosophy seemed clear, beginning with a sense of duty and doing your best. Leadership is a duty, a threefold duty to one’s organization, to the people we lead, and to oneself. Leading well means giving our best; not as a perfect, flawless leader, but as one striving to be as good as we can be while pursuing the hard, often messy work of leading.
Twelve points make up the Scout Law, and six – being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind – resonate with me. Each are values, or exist within values, that I imperfectly strive to live. The six values also align with my strong belief that we must lead with compassion, empathy, and respect for people.
Trust is, of course, the cornerstone of effective leadership. No one willingly follows a person they do not trust or who does not trust them.
Leadership thrives in an environment of reciprocal trust, one in which leaders earn loyalty by first showing loyalty, by investing in relationships, and by demonstrating support for the people they wish to lead. Both in the Scout Oath and the associated Scout Law, the orientation toward being of service and helping others aligns with a servant leadership orientation and placing, over personal ambition and privilege, a sincere desire to help and uplift others.
We know that compassionate and empathetic leaders, by building deep connections with the people they lead, generate trust and loyalty. We also know that trust and loyalty represent the bedrock of leadership. There exists a long-standing assumption that being a friendly leader might somehow prove detrimental to effective leadership. Additionally, people who maintain a classical leadership perspective might dismiss leading with friendliness, kindness and courtesy as soft. However, leadership researchers are increasingly offering a counter-narrative that leaders focused on building strong relationships and creating a positive work environment are actually more effective. For example, writing for Harvard Business.com, Rasmus Hougaard and Angela Gest-McCall provided a more contemporary view, observing that studies have found that compassionate leaders are actually perceived by followers as stronger and more competent.
There are, of course, limits to leading in a friendly manner. A responsible leader must balance friendliness with professional boundaries to ensure fairness and respect for authority. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that friendly, kind, and courteous leaders who build connection and signal their intention to benefit the people under their stewardship, produce results.
Comparing my core values to an almost forgotten influence proved an interesting exercise, reminding me that early influences helped shape the values that power my leadership ethos. And I am still confident in my belief that being a good leader must start with being a good person. So, my advice to would-be leaders remains to build reciprocal trust, earn loyalty by showing loyalty, place desire to help and uplift others over personal ambition and privilege, be friendly, be courteous, and be kind. In short, lead with compassion, empathy and respect. Be a person of character. Be a person of integrity. Be one of the good ones.
Mike DeGrosky is a student of leadership, lifelong learner, mentor and coach, sometimes writer, and recovering fire chief. He taught for the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University for 10 years. Follow Mike on LinkedIn.
There is not much benefit in producing science that just sits on a shelf. Effective science must extend beyond publication and address real-world needs argues Lynn Johnston, a Forest Fire Research Specialist with Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Forest Service, in an editorial for the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
While reading journal articles in my roles as a wildland fire scientist and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Wildland Fire, I find the papers that grab my interest and inspire deeper thinking are those that have a very strong connection between the science presented and the real-world benefits that can come from applying that science.
When studies articulate how results can be applied and what benefits may arise, readers are better able to understand the practical relevance and potential influence of the work. This is especially important in wildland fire research, where risk – defined as the combination of likelihood and impacts – is inherently tied to societal outcomes. Fire poses significant threats to human life, infrastructure and ecosystems, and effective decision-making relies on robust scientific support. Consequently, research that contributes to risk reduction carries particular importance.
Covering how results of a study have relevance to the real-world is a standard part of a research paper. But this discussion should aim to be substantive, going beyond a perfunctory statement relegated to the closing lines of the discussion section. Statements along the lines of ‘the results of this study can be used in fire management’ are common, but when added to a paper as a placeholder for a more genuine and thorough discussion, they lack sufficient specificity to be actionable. Concrete guidance could include things such as specifically how the results can support adaptive or proactive risk reduction, who might find the work useful, what kind of decisions can the science inform and what other information is needed.
Communicating science through publication
Communicating the value of new results, approaches, and scientific knowledge in risk research is crucial. Scientific publishing plays a critical role in this – it is central to broadly sharing knowledge and ultimately advancing innovation and discovery. It brings a level of quality control to the scientific record as papers are vetted through the peer review process. It ultimately promotes transparency and reproducibility in science. Publishing is also very much ingrained in measuring academic achievement, which motivates researchers to publish for improved success in obtaining research funding and for career progression.
However, publication alone is insufficient to ensure uptake by practitioners and decision-makers. Even in a hypothetical situation where scientists have produced ‘the best’ model, or ‘complete’ knowledge, not much benefit will be produced if the science just sits on a shelf. Effective science must extend beyond publication, with research designed to address real-world needs and integrated into broader processes of application and implementation. In this context, publication should be viewed as one component of a larger knowledge-to-action continuum rather than the endpoint.
Fire risk information overload
Fire risk has long been a priority topic across the scientific community. Scanning through International Journal of Wildland Fire issues since its inception in 1991 shows early inquiries into weather and fire activity, fuel moisture and fire behavior, development of fire danger systems, fire spread modeling, fire impacts – much of this work ultimately is fueled by the need for understanding and managing wildland fire risk.
Looking at International Journal of Wildland Fire publications over the years, there has been an increase in the number of publications that use the term ‘risk’, easily keeping pace with the rapid increase in overall number of papers being published. Moreover, there has been a notable change around the late 2000s to early 2010s where the number of papers that focus on fire risk as a major component of the paper, have ‘risk’ in the title of the article, or use the term ‘risk’ in the more specific natural hazard risk analysis context become much more prevalent. What was once a relatively niche topic is now a dominant and widespread focus within the journal and across the broader literature.
Annual number of publications (including article types: research article, review, or research note) in the International Journal of Wildland Fire from 1991 to 2025. The term ‘risk’ may be used in many ways, this includes all uses found in title, abstract, or main text. *Note: the year 1999 has no data as there were no issues that year.
The information overload is expected to continue in the future. At the same time, technology and capacity for intensely data-heavy and sophisticated assessments and detailed modeling are rapidly developing. Availability of more and more data will enable real-time and dynamic risk assessments. This could lead to a level of support for decision making and planning that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of many current careers in the field.
Since there is so much fire risk science and much more to come, it is worth asking how much of this work is ultimately applied and whether the abundance of publications effectively addresses the problems relevant to end users. How is all this work used and who is using it? The reality is that science uptake and implementation cannot possibly hope to keep up with the rapidly growing body of research outputs. This means it is even more essential to effectively communicate research applications and strive for improved uptake and implementation.
Considerations when publishing
When focusing on putting out scientific papers, there are considerations that can set up research for success in implementation, such as:
Formally aligning research priorities with end-user priorities in research planning to strengthen relevance.
Capitalizing on insight from personal and professional connections built with end-users, science communicators, and boundary organizations.
Use of multiple ways of scoping and framing research topics to broaden potential impact.
Inclusion of communication, engagement, implementation, and knowledge exchange activities in research proposals.
Cover how scientific results can be used when drafting manuscripts in a specific and detailed way by including a thorough discussion, an example of implementation, a case study demonstrating use, or mentioning what next steps might lead to impact.
Going beyond the research paper
It is important to acknowledge that publishing science (and more broadly, the knowledge system of science) is just one tool available to share knowledge and reduce fire risk on the ground. To extend fire risk science beyond text on a page, various actions to promote the utility of science can be pulled from existing frameworks for knowledge exchange, best practices in implementation, and guides on technology transfer. One approach that can help close the research-practice gap is science communication using multiple strategies. Another key is to foster knowledge exchange opportunities. Significant benefits can be achieved through communication, collaboration, and reciprocal learning between researchers and end-users of science, especially when done early and often throughout the research process.
Looking to the lessons learned from past efforts in navigating published science to implementation in fire risk management can be very informative in guiding science implementation. There are many examples of implemented science – including various fire danger products, risk assessment systems, property hazard reduction programs, operational resource modeling, and air quality warnings. There’s quite a lot of work that focuses on what strategies were used and what challenges were faced. Just within this journal there are papers that review risk-based decision support tools in fire management (Miller and Ager 2013; Hyde et al. 2013), and papers that use expert surveys and interviews to identify barriers and facilitators in science implementation (Hunter 2016; Glenn et al. 2022; McFayden et al. 2022; Rapp et al. 2020; Varzeshi et al. 2026).
External to what has been done within the world of wildland fire, there is a huge amount of work in the broader field of science implementation and knowledge exchange. Research on dedicated, often interdisciplinary, knowledge exchange and translational science strategies can be applied in the fire risk science context. The same goes for work done in other fields such as medical or environmental science. Successful efforts to integrate science and society have shown us the benefits of co-production of tools and research, how crucial it is to have people functioning as knowledge brokers, the importance of boundary organizsations, trust as a systemic necessity in the collaborative process, and mutual learning within and between groups of players.
One thing to keep in mind is that individuals do not have to undertake all of these efforts simultaneously. Small steps toward better implementation of fire risk science absolutely counts. Creating long-term formalized knowledge exchange programs, building collaborative networks, and implementing large projects with continuous stakeholder engagement takes a whole lot of time and effort. All well-worth the effort, but easy wins might include using knowledge translation tools such as targeted evidence briefs of recent research, or even making connections with others interested in fire risk and having a casual conversation about the work.
Conclusion
The International Journal of Wildland Fire aims to publish impactful science that leads to benefit in the world of wildland fire. In support of that goal, I encourage the research community to clearly lay out potential benefits and meaningfully discuss the practical applications of a research project when writing papers.
That said, the impact of fire research can be dramatically bolstered through broader and more diverse forms of science communication and through knowledge exchange activities. Implementing research findings should be prioritized just as much as making the findings in the first place. Ultimately if the research isn’t fed into—and fed by—operations, planning needs, traditional knowledge and values, or local priorities, its potential impact remains limited. As researchers and practitioners reading this journal, there is a need to carefully consider how the science can lead to societal benefit. Particularly for topics related to fire risk, there is a certain moral duty associated with the application of science and its role in society. Thoughtfully applying the available abundance of new knowledge, tools, or approaches by distilling practical benefit from research papers has significant potential for reducing wildland fire risk.
Closing the gap between fire risk science and implementation should be prioritized and even incentivized. With the rapid rate of science being produced, the gap will widen unless there is conscious effort. Greater emphasis is needed on ensuring that published work not only advances knowledge, but also clearly supports its application in practice.
Wildfire preparedness in the United Kingdom is decades behind others – and we are running out of time to catch up.
In New Zealand where I grew up, I was part of a volunteer rural fire brigade that specifically fought wildfires, and a national Fire Danger Rating System communicated elevated wildfire danger warnings (think road signs of wildfire danger level, like Australia and the USA have).
Given the similarities between New Zealand’s and the UK’s maritime climate and vegetation, I had imagined the UK was similarly equipped to deal with wildfires.
When I moved to the UK in 2020, I learned this was not the case at all – despite the fact that the UK experiences more vegetation fires (~30,000 annually) and has a much higher population density within the ‘rural-urban interface’ where vegetation and people, property and critical infrastructure co-exist.
Wildfire wave
Historically, the UK’s temperate, humid climate and vegetation have protected us from vegetation drying out enough to produce large and intense wildfires. But we are increasingly seeing years with hot, dry extremes that prime our vegetation for wildfires to spread. The UK has been experiencing a ‘wildfire wave’ in 2026 amidst heatwave and drought conditions, with extensive wildfires across the full length of the country. This comes off the back of the UK’s worst wildfire year on record in 2025 that burned nearly 48,000 hectares.
For decades, fire behaviour prediction tools have been a cornerstone of wildfire management in many countries. These tools forecast how a fire will behave – its probability of ignition, flame length, rate of spread – and that information underpins everything from firefighter training and suppression tactics to prescribed burn planning and long-term mitigation strategy. Countries with serious wildfire exposure have invested accordingly: Australia, Canada, the USA, several Mediterranean nations and NZ have each developed fire behaviour models built for, or adapted to, their own landscapes and fuels. However, until recently, the UK has lacked such tailored fire behaviour prediction tools.
University of Birmingham researchers with fire fighters, United Kingdom.
Wildfire tools
To address this critical gap in decision-making support, wildfire researchers across the UK came together to create FireInSite – the UK’s first fire behaviour prediction system. FireInSite is specifically designed for the UK’s vegetation, having been built on over four years of UK-wide intensive data collection. The freely accessible web interface overcomes barriers to accessing fire behaviour predictions, by integrating geolocated weather forecasts, topography and in-built fuel models. FireInSite was developed closely with groups like the UK’s Wildfire Tactical Advisors to meet their user needs from a wildfire behaviour prediction tool. It has been used operationally since 2025, with user feedback and validation demonstrating its success across the 2025 and 2026 extreme wildfire seasons.
This work sits within a wider effort at the University of Birmingham to take natural hazard risk seriously. Our Network for Emerging Systemic and Multi-Hazard Risk brings together researchers from engineering, climate science, economics, and social sciences to understand how hazards like wildfire don’t just burn land – they can cascade into failures of power networks, water supply, and transport infrastructure. Real disasters rarely respect disciplinary boundaries, and neither should our research.
Consecutive extreme wildfire years in the UK have provided the awareness of and momentum to address the UK’s wildfire preparedness, and we are starting to make significant progress, FireInSite being one aspect of that.
The challenge is to sustain this momentum to keep pace with a threat that isn’t waiting for us to catch up.
Dr Kerryn Little, is a Postdoctoral Researcher in PyroGeography at the University of Birmingham, and a Director on the Board of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
By Matthew Auer, University of Georgia, and Dhruv Gupta, Dartmouth College
Europe’s terrible wildfire season should stir empathy. It’s an apt feeling not only because wildland fires have claimed lives and charred forests, homes, and businesses, but because we know that pain firsthand in the US from our own deadly fires.
In the US, the toll includes six firefighters losing their lives – a reminder of the dangers inherent in wildfire management and the courage of those who perform it. Among those who perished was a Canadian Forest Service firefighter. Which underscores a second reality. At the time of this writing, around 675 wildfires are actively burning in Canada, many that are remote enough, they won’t be actively suppressed. Yet, smoke from these fires creep east and south, smudging the skies of major American cities and pushing some to the top of the world’s worst air pollution rankings.
The 2026 wildfire season should make us think about fires not from a US perspective but a continental perspective. Responders from Canada traveled south to help contain fires in Colorado in June and July. In turn, US wildfire experts collaborated with Canadian counterparts to manage wildfires in Quebec. The same transcontinental approach is underway in Europe. The European Commission pre-positions hundreds of firefighters from EU countries to high-risk areas. In July, Spanish crews fought fires in Portugal even as Spain battled its own blazes and received help from neighboring countries. France, too, has been a prominent participant in this mutual aid – both giving and receiving help during a difficult wildfire season.
Managing wildfire risk today requires partnership and collaboration like never before, across national boundaries. With collaboration in mind, it’s appropriate to examine the performance of the newly established US Wildland Fire Service. The agency consolidates five fire management services within the Department of the Interior in an effort to, as a White House Executive Order states, “streamlin(e) Federal wildfire capabilities to improve their effectiveness and promot(e) commonsense, technology-enabled local strategies for land management and wildfire response and mitigation.” The president hopes to go further still, absorbing the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire management operations into the new, unified structure. Congress has resisted, calling for an independent, non-partisan review of the proposal’s potential impacts. The Forest Service recently awarded a contract to Research Triangle Institute to study the feasibility of incorporating the Forest Service Fire and Aviation program into the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service.
We have performed our own analysis of the stakes involved in a streamlined, unified wildland fire service. Our research framework recognizes the wide-ranging perspectives on this issue. Associations like Grassroots Wildland Firefighters are backing efforts to improve and simplify procurement processes, expedite provision of equipment to the field, and simplify and harmonize agency-specific rules for hiring and performance evaluation. In contrast, critics say the Trump administration’s wildfire reorganization has sown confusion among firefighters over chains of command, arrived after a major wave of workforce downsizing in Interior and the Forest Service, and was pushed through without congressional approval or funding.
Our own view is that, whether you are a proponent or critic, all parties should demand careful oversight of the new streamlined service even as the administration is building and flying it. Too often, public administration students are taught that policymaking follows a neat, sequential set of steps with evaluation taking place towards the end of a “policy cycle.” This is flawed reasoning in several ways, but notably because any job that involves daily, major risks to human health and safety – the quintessential reality for a handcrew, engine crew, smokejumper, or air tanker pilot – cannot wait for an end-of-year program evaluation. The stakes for wildfire managers – particularly wildland firefighters – are too high for a wait-and-see approach.
The Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index ranks the most trusted professions across dozens of countries. The top five vocations are doctors, scientists, teachers, restaurant staff, and members of the armed services. As a greater share of the population encounters wildfire and its effects, we predict that firefighters will crack the top-five. But respecting or even lionizing the work of wildland firefighters won’t make their work less hazardous. Our own research underscores this point. While Congress funneled substantial amounts of funding to federal and state wildland fire managers under the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we heard from state foresters that Biden-era funds were not nearly enough for the task at hand – whether for hazardous fuels reduction, training of wildfire professionals, purchase of equipment, or community education. And we note that neither the executive order creating the new US Wildland Fire Service nor the associated Department of Interior order address what other sources, including the Government Accountability Office, deem top-tier challenges for firefighters, namely low pay, obstacles to career advancement, poor work-life balance, mental health challenges, and remote or expensive duty stations.
All else equal, consolidation and streamlining are neither inherently good nor bad as policy prescriptions. What matters are the results. Good wages, career advancement, safety, high-quality healthcare, access to the best equipment, comprehensive situational awareness training, clear communication standards, the preservation of partnerships across networks of wildfire managers – these are among the key metrics for US Wildland Fire Service authorities and their congressional overseers to monitor, in real-time.
Continual, not periodic, evaluation of the consolidation effort is needed – not simply because wildfire incidents are increasing or because more people live in or downwind of wildfire-prone areas. Constant evaluation is imperative because wildland firefighters literally sacrifice their health and well-being to preserve the general public’s.
Matthew R. Aueris Dean and Arch Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Georgia.
Dhruv Gupta is at the Department of Government, Dartmouth College, United States.
