Southern Blue Ridge Fire Learning Network
TNC, the USDA Forest Service (USFS) and land management agencies of the US Department of Interior (DOI) established the US Fire Learning Network (FLN;http://conservationlearningnetworks.weebly.com/fire-learning-networks.html) in 2002. Organizers aimed to catalyze the restoration of fire-dependent ecosystems through landscape-scale collaborative planning, regional capacity building, and national coordination. As of early 2009, a total of 14 regional networks and more than 150 landscape collaboratives involving over 650 partner organizations have participated in the network.
The Southern Blue Ridge Fire Learning Network engages multiple federal, state and private land management agencies in a collaborative effort to enhance the capacity to implement ecological fire management in the Southern Blue Ridge ecoregion. Together they work to define a healthy, resilient landscape and to identify where, when and how to restore these ecosystems. Expertise in numerous aspects of restoration is distributed among partners and researchers involved in the collaboration. Sharing this knowledge among partners and with other networks accelerates restoration. The partnership has identified shortleaf pine-oak, pine-oak-heath, dry-mesic oak-hickory and high-elevation red oak forests as target communities for restoring fire regimes. Partners in this regional network seek to restore and maintain fire adapted ecosystems on lands within the Southern Blue Ridge landscape under a model partnership of interested agencies and organizations which will work to increase the capacity for and reduce obstacles to conducting prescribed burning.
