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National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center celebrates 25 years

July 10, 2023

Photo of a man (from the chest up, wearing a blue shirt, backpack, walkie talkie clipped on the right strap, a white hard hat and protective sunglasses. In the background a forest engulfed in smoke.
Director Robert Trincado, National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center
 

Since 1998, more than 3,200 wildland firefighters from across the country and around the world have come to the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center in Tallahassee, Florida. There, they received hands-on experience using prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk and restore fire-adapted ecosystems. These students have helped treat over 1.2 million acres with prescribed fire in 10 southern states while developing skills that are transferable to their home units.    

This year the center celebrates its 25th anniversary with a new story map produced in cooperation with Tall Timbers, a research station and land conservancy that is widely considered to be the birthplace of prescribed fire science. The story map highlights the current and historical sites that have hosted the center training since its inception.

Over 250 local, state, private and federal sites have served as homes for the center prescribed fire trainings, helping both the sites and the students. The managers of these sites do some advanced planning and preparation, which then allows students and staff to go from one site to another performing prescribed burns when weather parameters are in the prescription according to the prescribed fire plan. During a 20-day session, students are provided an opportunity to learn about fire ecology, planning and implementation of prescribed fires in a variety of ecosystems with multiple land management agencies. Programs include fire leadership for women, mixed module sessions and agency administrator workshops. The center also provides detail opportunities.

Jointly managed by the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, the center’s success results from partnerships developed over the years with other federal land management agencies, tribes, state agencies, U.S. Department of Defense, universities and non-governmental organizations.

The demand for professional prescribed fire expertise has increased in response to the growing need to use prescribed fire to confront the wildfire crisis. Therefore, the center has embarked on an expansion in the western United States. Most of the center’s curricula are already national in scope and content; the learning objectives are not specific to the landscapes or conditions in the southeast, and presentations for all existing courses and workshops are delivered by a national cadre made up of experts from across the country.

However, a new curriculum—along with a changed module configuration—is necessary to increase the scope and scale of burning on western landscapes. A series of focus groups and meetings with partners across the West will help choose new training landscapes on private, public and tribal lands, and expand the training center steering committee’s non-voting advisory members to include partners representing western states.

As we confront the wildfire crisis in this country, prescribed fire continues to be an important tool. To that end, the training center is an important educational resource, and its evolution will ensure its relevance well into the future. We hope that 25 years is just the beginning.

A group photo of 8 men and 2 women.
The dedicated staff from NIPFTC is responsible for and continues to make all this work possible. From left: Mark Ploski, Phil Graeve, Tim Yurkiewicz, Todd Bates, Robert Trincado, Stewart Robertson, Tim Garity, Carolyn Detwiler, Greg Seamon and Aubrey Saunders.

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