Introduction

1. Workshop 1Collaborative vision and goals; landscape-scale ecological models Workshop 2Spatially-explicit desired conditions; restoration priorities and strategies Workshop 3Identify barriers, collaborative priorities, responsibilities and schedules; make tangible progress in one or more priority actions Workshop 4 Implementation capacity; Monitoring;being adaptive (B) (C) (A) Figure 3. Regional Fire Learning Networks and their component sites. A) Great Plains Fire Learning Network. B) South East Fire Learning Networks. C) South Central Fire Learning Network. Improving Collaborative Decision-making and Community Capacity through Fire Learning Networks Bruce Goldstein(1), Bruce Hull(2), Max Stephenson(1), William Butler(1) & Curt Gervich(1) (1)School of Public and International Affairs; (2)Department of Forestry, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060 Introduction Restoring natural fire regimes to North American ecosystems requires extensive coordination among managers and experts across government agencies, NGO's, and private lands. Over the past five years, in close collaboration with federal land management agencies, the Nature Conservancy (TNC) has pioneered the Fire Learning Network (FLN), a novel organizational model for addressing challenges associated with restoring disrupted fire regimes across multi-jurisdictional landscapes in the U.S. Doctoral students and faculty from Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and Department of Forestry are engaged in a multiple case study analysis of the FLN that focuses on national and regional network design, process, and function. In addition to exploring how learning networks are organized and operated, the research seeks to understand whether and how learning networks might enhance collaborative approaches to environmental governance. Research Questions and Methods Our casework cuts across the national, regional and project site levels of the FLN to address questions about learning and innovation, organizational efficacy and stability, and the diffusion of innovative approaches to adaptive management in conservation learning networks. Topics and questions we are pursuing include: Principal methods for this research are field observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups and document review. The Fire Learning Network Achieving Dual Objectives The Fire Learning Network initiative emerged as a cooperative agreement among TNC and federal land management agencies as those organizations realized their inability to restore natural fire regimes over entire landscapes unilaterally. For example: Key Elements of the FLN Integrated Fire Management How do learning networks influence and modify the objectives, structures, cultures and activities of participating organizations? Do learning networks offer participants additional organizational services?  Given the use of standard requirements and approaches across the networks, how do individual participants represent local knowledge and assure that local preferences are taken into account? How is each network organized and led, and how do different structures and approaches contribute to network continuity, effectiveness, and growth? Do networks enhance opportunities for innovation and diffusion of new or freshly interpreted information or expertise? If so, how? TNC’s global biodiversity conservation targets forced the organization to look beyond its own land acquisition and management programs. In other words, to restore the ecological integrity of lands outside of the organization’s ownership TNC came to recognize the value of partnering with other land management organizations; Amidst a shift toward ecosystem management public land management agencies grew to recognize their lack of expertise in some management techniques such as prescribed fire, and their inability to overcome institutional, cultural and political barriers to fire restoration. These public agencies recognized TNC as a leader in these areas. Figure 4. Integrated fire management framework The FLN serves as a venue for land managers to identify and overcome obstacles to fire restoration, as illustrated in Figure 4. Workshops and Homework Regional workshops serve as one cornerstone of the FLN. Each workshop focuses on a different aspect of fire restoration and planning and is designed to help identify solutions to local barriers to fire restoration, as well as build practitioners’ skills in collaboration and planning. Homework assignments are completed by site-level practitioners and relayed to regional members through peer reviewed workshop presentations. Workshop participants also visit local fire and ecosystem restoration projects that showcase innovative management techniques that they may wish to use at their home sites. Workshops allow network members to present restoration ideas, ask questions regarding partner projects and build relationships with other fire professionals, scientists and forest management experts. TNC and Interorganizational Learning Networks National and Regional Networks Preliminary Results, Conclusions and Applications Our investigation to date suggests that Network participants are indeed learning about planning processes and management techniques of which they were previously unaware, such as patch-burn grazing in the Great Plains or growing season burns in the South Central regions. In addition, participants suggest that the network has provided them with improved access to partners at state and federal agencies and TNC who can assist in coordinating efforts to engage in landscape-scale fire restoration. Evidence also suggests that: This research will provide USFS, TNC and other natural resource management organizations with information that will improve their capacity to work as members of complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystem restoration collaboratives. This project will also contribute directly to efforts to understand better the dynamics of network governance and especially of how innovation and learning occur within these complex and interdependent systems. The FLN is comprised of ten regional networks. These include approximately 448 partner organizations and 60 project sites that encompass over 69 million acres. Specific project objectives depend on location and partnership structures. The Fire Learning Network is one of many networked initiatives recently undertaken by TNC. Figure one illustrates the programmatic elements of TNC’s Conservation Learning Networks system. As the Figure suggests, TNC’s networks system consists of several ecosystem threat and landscape based networks designed to increase knowledge and capacity for managing the organization’s conservation priorities. This idealized figure illustrates that each network consists of regional networks located throughout the nation, with each region encompassing several project sites. For example, in the Great Plains region of the FLN, sites exist in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. Each site involves its own network of cooperators, responsible for implementing on-the-ground fire related conservation work. Figure 2. FLN projects and regions as of 2006. Networks have developed fire-grazing partnerships, produced remotely-sensed fire regime condition class maps and prepared interagency fire management plans, among other projects. Learning networks may serve as catalysts for organizational change; Learning networks may increase tensions among member organizations as they are exposed to methods and objectives different from their own; Learning networks increase opportunities for alliance building and leverage partnerships for greater access to funding sources and policy arenas; Leadership is important in network contexts although often involves a different perspectives and activities than typically practiced within TNC or other public conservation agencies; Networks serve other purposes in addition to learning, including opportunities to share resources and prepare for decision making processes; Network participation provides a conduit for sharing information and best practices among regional networks (diffusion) while also creating opportunities for collectively constructing new practices (innovation); While evidence suggests learning through imitating (mimetic learning) and sharing is occurring in many regions, higher forms of learning such as collaborative innovation are quite rare among regional network participants, although such attainment may be found in specific site level activities. Learning before, learning during, learning after. Figure 1. Idealized illustration of the Nature Conservancy’s Learning Networks Program. Regional Networks and Project Sites Figure 5. FLN workshop progression. Building Strong Relationships Many fire practitioners in the FLN suggest that one of the more important components of the initiative is the opportunity to build strong relationships with other professionals in the region. To foster strong relationships many networks include opportunities for social interaction, such as dinners and fishing trips, on their workshop agendas. Participants in these activities suggest that strong social relationships—friendships—serve as the foundations for working cooperatively across agencies in professional contexts. Literature Cited Photos and diagrams provided by The Nature Conservancy are denoted by their logo: Acknowledgments We thank the U.S. Forest Service Northcentral Research Station (http://ncrs.fs.fed.us/), and The Nature Conservancy U.S. Fire Learning Network (http://www.tncfire.org/training_usfln.htm), for funding this research. For further information Additional information on this project can be obtained at http://www.publicecology.org/fln/ or by emailing Bruce Goldstein (brugo@vt.edu); Bruce Hull (rbhull@vt.edu); Max Stephenson (mstephenson@vt.edu); William Butler (wibutle1@vt.edu); Curt Gervich (cgervich@vt.edu). Figure 6. FLN participants at regional workshops and on field trips.