Video
Managing Wildland Fires and Cultural Resources_ A NHPA Section 106 Primer for Fire Management Activities
Transcript
Karen: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the ArcheoThursdays May 2013 Webinar Series. My name is Karen Mudar I'm an archeologist in the Archeology program here in the Washington Office. The NPS Archeology Program is hosting presentations by people who have prepared papers to give at meetings this year, but were not able to attend.
Next week we'll hear presentations by our Cotter Award Winners, Justin Ebersole, Darlene Hassler, and Chris Findlay. The Park Service has started a tradition asking the award winners to give an overview of their research at the SAA meetings when they are given their recognition. Even though people could not attend that meeting, we wanted to keep that momentum going. We've asked Justin, Darlene, and Chris to give their presentations in this series. Join us next Thursday to hear Justin and Darlene talk about their archeological research at Harpers Ferry, and Chris to talk about the field school, I believe that's what he's going to be talking about, the field school that he's been running with local Native American tribes, Indian tribes.
Today, however, we're going to hear our chief archeologist, Stan Bond, talk about research that he started when he was an archeologist at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, and Pei-Lin Yu, a cultural research specialist in the Intermountain region give a talk about ethnoarcheological research on the signatures that children might leave in the archeological record.
Before we got to Hawaii and Southeast Asia, respectively, however, I'm going to give you an update on the efforts by Archeology Program to develop a chapter in the NPS Archeology Resource Manual, RM-28A, on managing cultural resources within the context of wildland, prescribed, and structural fires. Because we may have folks from the Fire and Aviation Division joining us for this webinar, I'm going to go first for logistical reasons.
That means I have to introduce myself. I'm a Southeast Asian archeozoologist by training. I also have a strong background in field work, and North American archeology. After finishing my degree, I was in the Repatriation Office at the National Museum of Natural History for seven years before coming to the National Parks Service. Today I'll be talking about the cultural resource fire guidance that will be rolling out soon. If anyone has questions during the presentation, please feel free to interrupt me. It's probably going to be easiest to answer questions at the time than wait until afterwards.
This presentation was originally developed for the George Wright Society Conference in March that I wasn't able to attend. It was intended to be co-presented with Jeff Durbin, the NPS Chief Section 106 officer. What you see before you is the title for the original talk, which is a little misleading because I'm going to give a more general overview today.
I have to wake up my computer here. There we go. Okay, cultural resource management and fire is the third chapter in the archeology resource manual, which is called the Archeology Guide.
Oh, dear. Somebody's having trouble with their phone. There’s a small problem, we're having a webinar.
The other two chapters are entitle Permits for Archeological Investigation, or commonly called ARPA permits, and Archeology Outreach. There are several chapters in various stages of completion, as well. Most recently, the program has started working on guidance for cultural resource stewardship in wilderness settings. I am very lucky to have one of our speakers today, Pei-Lin, as part of the working group for that.
The resource manual is only available online on the Archeology Program website. On the Director's Order web page, on InsideNPS, actually links to our entire website. Once you are on that website, you can find the manual listed in the upper right hand corner of the site map. Individual chapters and sections of the manual can be downloaded or printed for reference in the field. Even though it is in the Archeology Guide, the cultural resource on fire guidance is intended for multiple audiences, such as cultural resource managers, fire program managers, section 106 coordinators, and park superintendents. We've tried really hard to make it as accessible and as user friendly as possible, with lots of short documents, and many links.
The Fire and Aviation Program has been very instrumental in the development of this guidance, and wanted to see that it was written in such a manner as to be useful to the fire folks. Here I want to give a big shout out to our Division Chief, Tom Nichols, who's been unflagging in his support of this guidance. I also want to thank Rich Schwab and Jeff Manley, the Fire and Aviation Division, and Nelson Siefkin, Fire Archeologist in the Pacific West Region for all of their work. They were so stalwart. They shared their own documents. They wrote sections of this guidance. They attended teleconferences. They provided comments, and they really stayed committed. Thank you so much, guys.
This guidance, and others like it, would not be possible without the commitment of our colleagues in the field, who are our subject matter experts. I was very lucky in the composition of my working group. Thank you to everyone who participated.
Our primary goal in this is to provide tools to promote the consideration of cultural resources in the planning and implementation of fire related activities. You have much better chances of a good outcome for the resources if they are considered during the planning stage, rather than after a wildfire has started, or after the prescribed fire has taken place. Planning that incorporates cultural resource considerations will increase the likelihood that they're accounted for and protected. In doing so, cultural resource managers have a better chance of having an outcome like this, where the cultural resources are protected during prescribed burns, or protected during wildfires than having an outcome like this.
Our guidance emphasizes several key elements. One is good communication between the fire and cultural resource programs. This is critical to ensuring that cultural resources are considered when planning and implementing the fire activities. Also, early planning promotes the protection of resources and compliance with federal cultural resource laws, policies, and executive orders. Fire program managers may not be aware of these requirements, and good communication can facilitate this. As always, personal safety is the number one priority.
Now, I want to turn to the way that the web pages are organized, and how the guidance may be best utilized. Here's a typical web page. It is the first page of the chapter overview. The right hand column is the navigational panel. The topics in this particular chapter are organized roughly in chronological sequence, with some digressions, from planning through implementation, and it ends with monitoring. The panel highlights the section that you have open, so you can see that the overview is in a different color. The overview subsection is in a different color. It also opens the subsection titles. When you move away from that particular section, the subsection title closes. You can also go to, in this part of the document, you can go to specific sections from links in the section overviews.
We've tried to make it as easy as possible to move around in the document. There's lots of links between sections, and also links to other guidance, and to reference documents. You can print out each section independently, but it's meant to be a web document.
Also, a number of the sections have checklists to help both cultural resource managers and fire program managers ensure that they've carried out all of their responsibilities. The checklists are Word documents, and they are going to be easy to adapt to specific parks and activities. We hope that they'll be very useful to the field. As always, we would love to have feedback, if you have suggestions that would improve these checklists, and improve these documents.
Within the topics, the information is arranged in, more or less, three levels. The broadest level will take a big picture look at activities or responsibilities. One example here that we have is the Overview for Compliance with Federal Cultural Resource Laws, Executive Orders, and Policies. It lists examples of fire-related activities that must comply with these legal mandates, and then also a list of the specific legal mandates. There's a frame of reference for, hopefully, almost everyone.
Here, I want to say that we worked very closely with Jeff Durbin to integrate practical information about Section 106 compliance for fire activities. The guidance identifies the types of activities that require compliance, and identifies a lot of resources to aid in consultation and in documentation for NHPA and for NEPA.
From this first level overview, there are links and different directions that you can go to, to second order sections, such as programmatic agreements or consultation information. There's also links to other types of assistance, such as the NPS Programmatic Agreement tool kit, which is listed on the NPS website. I also want to put a plug in here for the handbook to integrate NEPA and NHPA that Council on Environmental Quality has recently rolled out. The link to the handbook was announced in the E-Gram last month, and can be easily downloaded and printed. It should be a very useful tool for managers that are figuring out how to comply with both laws simultaneously, and to figure out the timing for different stages of the compliance.
In an effort to promote good communication between the programs, several sections summarize specific activities and outlines the implications for other programs. Here, we have the section on managing cultural resources during a wildfire. The top part of the page talks a little bit about what the fire program is doing at this time, and then what the implications are for the cultural resource program. We have boxed them in to emphasize them, and we hope that this will provide more contextual information for the different programs to understand their responsibilities, and understand what's happening with other programs.
On the far right hand side, where the navigation panel is, I've circled the Tool Box, Useful Links section of this chapter. These are sort of the third level, most detailed how-to documents, and links to other detailed how-to types of documents that may be useful to people who are trying to implement the guidance. The Tool Box and the Useful Links have a wide array of documents and links to other websites. They range from copies of the workbook for the fire and cultural resources class, which was really the inspiration and the impetus for this chapter that Paul Gleason and Trinkle Jones worked on over 10 years ago, to practical guides for equipment that archeologists should take with them to a fire.
People have been very generous in providing educational Power Points about cultural resources and fire. Here's an example of one that Nelson gave to me to put into our Tool Box. There's a lot of really good and basic Power Point information that people can adapt to their own presentations, or use to provide education to other people within their programs. The Useful Links goes to a variety of interagency fire websites, and other places.
Another example that we have are publications and links to publications. Here's an example of the Forest Service's Rainbow series volume on cultural resources and archeology, and the effects of fire on them. You'll be able to go here and download and print a copy if you should want to look at it. We also have a huge bibliography of fire publications. It's a spreadsheet that at the moment has something like 500 references in it. We are always happy to accept new references, and update the bibliography.
The last thing that I wanted to talk about today is the time table for this chapter. We're still coding text for the website, but we're nearly done. When it's completed, I'll send out an e-mail announcement to my working groups, and to the NPS archeologist e-mail lists, asking everyone to review and comment on it. After revisions, we'll make all of the navigation and the URLs public. I'll announce that it is public on InsideNPS, and in the E-Gram. Look for when the guidance is finalized.
While the guidance is an important component of cultural resource protection during fires, the involvement of cultural resource specialists is really key. Archeologists can work at fires and other emergencies as Resource Advisors, and on BAER teams. If anyone is interested in getting these skills, and working on these emergencies, I would urge them to contact Nelson Siefkin or Rich Schwab. Their e-mail addresses are on the screen. Thank you for your time today. Does anybody have any questions?
Description
Karen Mudar, NPS, 5/23/2013, ArcheoThursday
Duration
16 minutes, 23 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
05/23/2013
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