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MOUs & Other Collaborative Agreements

MOUs & other collaborative agreements can help to resolve challenges and establish standards and protocols that reduce barriers to prescribed fire use.

In some instances, when developing a new agreement, it may be helpful to review other successful agreements. A collection of these past and existing agreements was collected by SERPPAS and Tyler Carney of University of Florida, and is available here.

A recent publication by Tyler Carney of University of Florida entitled, “Fanning the Flames of Cooperation: A Collective Action Approach to Prescribed Fire Agreements” examines different formalized agreements, and showcase how these agreements differ depending on initial need and partners involved.

On February 9, 2023 a webinar in conjunction with the Southern Fire Exchange was held to discuss the applications, benefits, and major components of memorandums of understanding (MOU) and other formal agreements developed to support organization-level prescribed fire programs. The second part of the webinar included a discussion about the Georgia DNR Interagency Burn Team MOU. The IBT MOU has been credited with increasing prescribed fire use in Georgia. A recording of the webinar is available below.

These resources, developed by the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, provide examples of case studies with the strategies and tools they used to grow their cooperative burn programs, a “Pathways to Prescribed Fire” report to streamline cooperative burn partnerships between
nonprofit partners and the Forest Service, and a FAC blog post with lessons learned from cooperative burn partnerships.

See something missing or have an MOU or other cooperative agreement that you would like us to include? Please let us know at wildlandfire@ncsu.edu.