BUILDING CAPACITY: WORKSHOPS HELP AGENCY ADMINISTRATORS MASTER PRESCRIBED BURNS
BY ERIN MYERS AND STEVEN MILLER
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service has ambitious goals: to treat an additional two million acres of hazardous fuels on national forests and grasslands annually; and to support partners by treating an additional three million acres of hazardous fuels annually on other federal, state, tribal and private lands.
To achieve these goals, the use of prescribed fire needs to expand significantly; an increase in prescribed fire is dependent on growing the workforce capacity. Agency administrator workshops are one way to expand that capacity.
The benefits of experiential learning (learning by doing) have long been recognized by the wildland fire community. In wildland fire in the United States, this is best exemplified by the position task book system of training; trainees are assigned a book of the many tasks necessary to be fully successful in a role, and they perform those functions under the watchful eye of a fully qualified mentor. Experiential learning is one of the quickest methods to expand the capability of the workforce.
The desire to increase workforce capacity through experiential learning led to the establishment of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (Center) in 1998. The Center’s mission is to maintain a national interagency center of excellence for prescribed fire, with an emphasis on actual field experience, to increase skills and knowledge and to build confidence in the application of prescribed fire.
Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Center originally focused on actual prescribed burning qualifications through 20-day field sessions. During those 20-day trainings, participants traveled to several remote sites to take advantage of prescribed burning and learning opportunities with a variety of agencies, fuel types, and challenges such as the wildland-urban interface. The training locations were in areas where hosts had well-established burn programs with broad prescription windows and high levels of interagency cooperation.
In 2002, the Center began hosting workshops on prescribed fire specifically designed for agency administrators to develop knowledge, skills and confidence in oversight of a prescribed fire program. An agency administrator is defined by the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group as “the official with the delegated authority, responsibility, and qualifications for decision making on incidents or prescribed fires within a particular administrative unit. The managing officer of an agency, division thereof, or jurisdiction having statutory responsibility for incident mitigation and management.” Examples of agency administrators are federal line officers, state forest officers / delegates or fire managers, tribal chairpersons, fire chiefs, police chief, sheriffs, mayors or county representatives.
Regarding wildland fire management, either prescribed fire or fire suppression, the agency administrator is the responsible person representing a particular agency. With prescribed burning the agency administrator has administrative responsibility and delegates the responsibility of technical fire operations to the burn boss. Agency administrators must be prepared to make critical and informed wildland fire management decisions related to land and assets under their span of authority.
“I strongly believe this should be REQUIRED for new line officers in the USFS within the first two years. The mix of hands on, situational, and classroom learning really made this a dynamic and effective course to learn more about both [prescribed burns] and the role of the [agency administrators] in [prescribed burns].”
“I recognize that communication between line, fuels and the rest of the district is critical to success.”
Prior to 2022, the Center’s activities were primarily in the Southeastern United States and included two agency administrator workshops annually. The 2022 National Prescribed Fire Review called for the Center to expand westward by January 2023. The agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, May 1-7, 2025, was the third session held in the western United States. Other workshops were in Bend, Oregon, in May 2024, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 2024.
Workshop participants are selected from numerous agencies across the United States including the Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Defense as well as partners such as states and The Nature Conservancy, a global non-profit dedicated to conserving land and water.
The workshops help agency administrators develop the core competencies necessary to hold decision-making authority for wildfires or prescribed fires. Participants learn about:
• Risk-informed decision making.
• Wildfire response and incident management processes.
• Wildland Fire Decision Support System / Integrated Fuel Treatment Decision Support System and other decision support tools.
• Fuels management and prescribed fire processes.
• Fire prevention, mitigation, and education processes.
• Social, political, economic, and environmental impacts of wildland fire management activities, including prescribed fire.
• Effective communication.
• Collaboration with partners and stakeholders.
• Fiscal management.
“I learned the importance of Leader’s Intent to support and grow my fire program.”
(According to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, the leader’s intent is a statement that outlines what people must know to be successful for a given assignment including tasks, purpose and end state – how things should look when successful completed.)
The objective of agency administrator workshops is that upon completion the agency administrator will:
• Demonstrate the knowledge and confidence necessary to grow or sustain a safe and successful prescribed fire program.
• Demonstrate an understanding of national policy, agency administrator responsibility, accountability, and authority to approve all prescribed fire management actions.
• Identify the principles, policies and procedures to effectively provide oversight of a prescribed fire management program.
A key strength of the training program is the instructors’ proficiency with prescribed burning. The cadre of instructors includes agency administrators and prescribed fire practitioners, who, as a group, have more than 550 years of experience in every aspect of a successful prescribed fire program.
The cadre – composed of federal employees, cooperators and private consultants – is organized into two groups: one focuses on development of exercises, burns, and logistics; the other concentrates on providing mentoring and presentations. The groups interact seamlessly to coordinate instruction and facilitate learning moments as they arise. (A cooperator is defined by the National Fire Coordinating Group as a federal, tribal, state or local agency that participates with other agencies in planning and conducting fire or emergency management projects and activities.)
An important element of the agency administrator workshop is the opportunity for mentoring between the cadre and the participants. Mentoring is a critical consideration in all aspects of the workshop including the formation of the agenda, the selection of the instructors and even the selection of the facilities. The instructors are fully committed to this concept and have arranged for every opportunity to stay involved with the participants including at meals, breaks and social hours. Small group formation is continually reorganized to maximize one-on-one mentoring opportunities and peerto-peer interaction. The overall design of the workshop maximizes the opportunity for mentoring.
The curriculum is designed around several foundational elements including risk management, overcoming constraints, effective internal and external communication, protocol and policy on escapes, burning in the wildland-urban interface, building successful programs, air quality and smoke, liability, land management plans, fire management plans, burn plans, landscape wide application, program monitoring, review and approval responsibility, accountability, oversight and developing partnerships. While the curriculum is consistent, it is also highly adaptable. On the first day of the workshop, participants provide their expectations for the workshop and the instructors then tailor agenda items to the expectations.
Each workshop includes two prescribed burn days. Each burn day has a specific set of objectives designed to give agency administrators hands-on experience. The objectives of the first burn day are to provide the participants with a better understanding of the burn-day organization and the roles and responsibilities of the agency administrator, burn boss, and firing boss. The objectives of the second burn day allow participants to experience simulated pressures, time constraints and the need for flexibility that employees experience on every burn day. This is achieved by allowing the participants to plan, organize and implement a small, prescribed fire with minimal input from the host unit or instructors.
Attrition at the agency administrator and burn boss levels leads to loss of institutional knowledge and experience. Land-management agencies need a system for transferring institutional knowledge and experience to new agency administrators and less experienced burn bosses, especially with respect to complexity analysis and burn-plan review processes. The workshops are one tool to facilitate the transfer of that knowledge and experience.
Workshops are planned for Oct. 30-Nov. 4 in Destin, Florida; Jan. 29-Feb. 3 in Florida (location TBD); and May 14-19 in Redding, California.
“It was obvious why each cadre member was selected. They were experts in their field with decades of experience, and they each had a passion for both their work and teaching others.”
Steve Miller served on the board of directors for IAWF from 2017 through 2023, serving as vice president in 2022. Miller has worked in fire since joining the Texas Forest Service in 1985. Since 2018, he has been employed by the US Forest Service, as the director of fire and aviation management for the eastern region. Prior to joining the USFS, Miller spent 31 years working for the State of Florida. He has a passion for prescribed fire and teaching, having served as adjunct instructor for the University of Florida and the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point.
Erin Myers joined the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center cadre in 2023, after completing the agency administrator workshop in 2022. Myers became a Florida state certified burner in 2005 and primarily assisted private landowners with prescribed fire planning until 2020, when she became a refuge manager with the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System in Southwest Florida. In 2018, Myers started training to become a public information officer for wildfire and prescribed fire. She works closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Zone 3 fire team in South Florida, assisting with prescribed burning on multiple refuges as either a public information officer, FFT2 or agency administrator. Myers loves sharing information about the benefits of prescribed fire on the landscape with partners and communities.
