The Link between Attitudes about Fire and Environmental Values

Attitudes about fire are related to interests in other components of the environment and understanding of the effects of fire on those other assets.  Opinions of fire, for instance, are influenced by people’s knowledge of the way wildfires affect recreation opportunities, and landscape aesthetics, wildlife (mammals, birds, fish), timber, non-timber forest products, wildflowers, forest structure, and biodiversity.

Ethnicity and cultural background can produce different environmental values (Kaplan and Talbot 1988).  Opinions may vary between and within communities of Latino migrant workers, Southeast Asian refugees, Appalachian farmers, high-status urban African-Americans, Gullah basket-weavers, and coastal fishermen.

Among Southerners, values may vary by age, gender, and education (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002).  In the South, women and younger individuals have stronger pro-environmental attitudes than men and older individuals.  Women in the South tend to value scenic quality in public forests more than men in the South while men value wood production in private forests more than women (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002).  Among Southerners, pro-environmental values are highest among urban, educated women (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002). 

Environmental attitudes vary depending on the type of ownership that applies to a piece of land.  Southerners rate clean air as the most important value on public forests, scenic beauty as the second most important, cultural and natural heritage as the third most important value, and wood production as the least important value of public forests.  On private forests, wood production is the third most important value and cultural and natural heritage is the least important (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002).  Southerners feel more strongly about their right to influence practices on public forests and less strongly about determining regulations for private forests.

The decisions that homeowners living in wildland urban interface zones in north central Florida make about land management are influenced by their preferred environmental surroundings (Nelson, Monroe, Johnson, Bowers 2002) they prefer:  to live near “natural” areas with woods; to have a view; to have space for recreation (entertaining outdoors, hiking/walking, ATV-ing, gardening, relaxing, swimming in pools, shooting at firing ranges, hiking on trails, throwing horseshoes, playing soccer); a private, secluded homesite; having a place to watch and feed wildlife; and value open space for crime prevention, gardening and pets (not for defensible space). 

Southern attitudes about forestry practices differ from national attitudes on several points.  Residents of the Southern Appalachians have moderately stronger pro-environmental values than the national average (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002).  An illustration of this is that 46.5% of people in the Southern Appalachians are against timber harvesting on private lands and 72.1% are against timber harvesting on public lands. Another illustration of Southerners’ pro-environmental attitudes is that 81% of South Carolinians believe that maintaining water quality is more important than increasing jobs.  Most private non-industrial forest owners (NIPF) in the South manage their land for non-timber values (Tarrant, Porter, and Cordell 2002).  This is significant because 70% of forests in the South are owned by NIPF (compared to 58% in the nation as a whole).