Trivia night in Bend Sparks Wildfire Awareness, Aims to Increase Safety, Support of Wildfire Risk Mitigation Work

Release Date: Apr 30, 2024

BEND, Ore., April 24, 2024 –Trivia night in Bend, Oregon is serious. Community members gather each week at a local restaurant for the thrill of competition and for a cause that hits close to home: wildfire prevention and safety.

“In this community we live with fire on a daily basis,” said Karen Walsh, executive director of Discover Your Forest. “Engagements like this one provide a wonderful opportunity for us to connect with and share our message with community members we might not reach without creative thinking around how we communicate. With events like this trivia night, we’re aiming to engage with populations we might not otherwise reach.”

The USDA Forest Service, working with established partners, is using trivia night to bring awareness to wildfire prevention, safety, and to explore the local efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, better protect communities, and make forests more resilient, including to areas important for water, carbon, and wildlife.

“Discover Your Forest, in partnership with the Forest Service, is working to bring together volunteers and community members in a comfortable, and fun environment while focusing on a very dangerous threat to our community,” said Walsh. “Engagements like this trivia night really work to inform the public, and ultimately serve to increase volunteer rates, and create ambassadors for our forests.”

Partners provide crucial capacity to the Forest Service in efforts to expand the pace and scale of wildfire risk reduction and forest health treatments. The community-focused outreach at weekly trivia night exemplifies community partners working alongside Forest Service employees in creative and meaningful ways to inform community members of risks and mitigation factors associated with living in a frequent-fire dependent area.

“This is an exciting way to get everyone in the community involved in learning about and educating themselves on what it means to live in a fire prone area,” said Walsh. “We’ve co-developed this trivia night to bring crucial information on wildfires and their effects to the local community.”  

In areas like Bend, the wildland-urban interface is rapidly expanding and creating community understanding about fire danger is critical to helping them understand the importance of fuels reduction and forest health treatments and the role they can play in minimizing fire risk. For Thomas Parker, a resident in the area, attending events like trivia night helps to create a robust and informed population.

“Attending trivia night was great,” said Parker. “I came to meet with some friends, have dinner, and enjoy a great evening but I walked away with so much more from the event. I learned more than I expected to, and understand we really need to come together as a community to get this right. We all live and work with a terrible danger around us.” 

Guests in attendance also included Forest Service employees looking to informally grow their fire knowledge alongside fellow community members. For Beverly Clement, a Forest Service archaeologist on the Sisters Ranger District of the Deschutes National Forest, the evening presented critical information for community members living in a high-risk fire area in a way that allowed for personal discussions and connection.

“Community events that encourage folks to gather and be social while also promoting awareness and education of an important topic like wildfire is crucial for those of us living in Central Oregon,” said Clement. “We all have a role to play to when it comes to fire safety and risk reduction, and I think trivia is a great forum to begin that engagement.” Trivia night was hosted by Discover Your Forest, the official non-profit partner of the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests and Crooked River Grasslands. Working side by side with community partners, Discover Your Forest reaches thousands of visitors each year in support of education, volunteerism, and conservation of the local region.

The Central Oregon landscape is considered at high risk to wildfire and covers State, private, and Federal lands on the eastside of the Cascades. This area is rich in collaboration and has been a leader in implementing the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program, Joint Chief’s Projects, and National Cohesive Strategy. Additional investments will continue to reduce the risk of fire transfer to numerous, growing communities and critical infrastructure and build upon work already accomplished.

Other community partners working in the Central Oregon landscape include Oregon Department of Forestry, Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project, Central Oregon Forest Stewardship Foundation, Deschutes Trails Coalition, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, Central Oregon Shared Stewardship Alliance, Deschutes County, The Nature Conservancy, Deschutes Land Trust; Walker Range Fire Patrol, Oregon Living with Fire, and local municipalities.

Launched in 2022 by the USDA Forest Service, the Wildfire Crisis Strategy (WCS) is a robust effort to address western wildfires in places where they pose the most immediate threats to communities. The strategy reduces aims to reduce exposure of people, communities, and natural resources to the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Additional photos for this story can be found on our Flick’r page here: 2024 Central Oregon WCS Trivia Night | Flickr.

For more information about the USDA Forest Service and its work in the Pacific Northwest, please visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/r6.

 

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The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages the 193 million acres of National Forest System land, provides stewardship assistance to non-federal forest landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.  

The Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region contains 16 National Forests, two National Scenic Areas, a National Grassland, and two National Volcanic Monuments, all within the States of Oregon and Washington. These public lands provide timber for people, forage for cattle and wildlife, habitat for fish, plants, and animals, and some of the best recreation opportunities in the country.