IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v9y2020i9p318-d410826.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liability and the Use of Prescribed Fire in the Southern Plains, USA: A Survey of District Court Judges

Author

Listed:
  • Alissa Hinojosa

    (Ecology and Conservation Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA)

  • Urs P. Kreuter

    (Ecology and Conservation Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA)

  • Carissa L. Wonkka

    (Northern Plains Agricultural Research Lab, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Sidney, MT 59270, USA)

Abstract

Suppression of historical fire regimes has changed the composition and structure of many fire-dependent ecosystems, frequently resulting in decreased grazing productivity and biodiversity in grasslands and savannas. Land managers have attempted to reverse these trends through the application of prescribed fire, but regulations and liability concerns often deter them. District court judges play a key role in defining the legal context of prescribed burning by interpreting applicable statutes in personal injury or property damage cases resulting from escaped prescribed fire. However, information about the way judges interpret open burning statutes and regulations is difficult to obtain. We conducted a mail survey of district court judges in Texas and Oklahoma, USA to shed light on decisions judges might make presiding over an escaped fire case. The survey included questions regarding their perception of prescribed fire, their understanding of the laws affecting prescribed burning, and hypothetical questions to determine how they would apply relevant law in an escaped fire case. We found that judges cited fewer factors as evidence of gross negligence than simple negligence. This suggests that a shift toward a gross negligence liability standard for escaped prescribed fire cases might result in fewer findings of prescribed burner liability.

Suggested Citation

  • Alissa Hinojosa & Urs P. Kreuter & Carissa L. Wonkka, 2020. "Liability and the Use of Prescribed Fire in the Southern Plains, USA: A Survey of District Court Judges," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-12, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:9:p:318-:d:410826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/318/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/318/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Armstrong, J. Scott & Overton, Terry S., 1977. "Estimating Nonresponse Bias in Mail Surveys," MPRA Paper 81694, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Sun, Changyou, 2006. "State statutory reforms and retention of prescribed fire liability laws on U.S. forest land," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 392-402, December.
    3. Jonathan Yoder & Marcia Tilley & David Engle & Samuel Fuhlendorf, 2003. "Economics and Prescribed Fire Law in the United States," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 218-233.
    4. Jonathan Yoder & Marcia Tilley & David Engle & Samuel Fuhlendorf, 2003. "Economics and Prescribed Fire Law in the United States," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 218-233.
    5. Rebecca K. Miller & Christopher B. Field & Katharine J. Mach, 2020. "Barriers and enablers for prescribed burns for wildfire management in California," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(2), pages 101-109, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shrestha, Anusha & Grala, Robert K. & Grado, Stephen C. & Roberts, Scott D. & Gordon, Jason S. & Adhikari, Ram K., 2021. "Nonindustrial private forest landowner willingness to pay for prescribed burning to lower wildfire hazards," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    2. Autumn S. Clark & Devan Allen McGranahan & Benjamin A. Geaumont & Carissa L. Wonkka & Jacqueline P. Ott & Urs P. Kreuter, 2022. "Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part I: Systematic Review of Socio-Ecological Research," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-16, September.
    3. Autumn S. Clark & Devan Allen McGranahan & Benjamin A. Geaumont & Carissa L. Wonkka & Jacqueline P. Ott & Urs P. Kreuter, 2022. "Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part II: Critical Review of Presently Used and Potentially Expandable Solutions," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-13, September.
    4. Thomas W. McDaniel & Carissa L. Wonkka & Morgan L. Treadwell & Urs P. Kreuter, 2021. "Factors Influencing County Commissioners’ Decisions about Burn Bans in the Southern Plains, USA," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-13, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Regmi, Arun & Kreye, Melissa M. & Kreye, Jesse K., 2023. "Forest landowner demand for prescribed fire as an ecological management tool in Pennsylvania, USA," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    2. Autumn S. Clark & Devan Allen McGranahan & Benjamin A. Geaumont & Carissa L. Wonkka & Jacqueline P. Ott & Urs P. Kreuter, 2022. "Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part II: Critical Review of Presently Used and Potentially Expandable Solutions," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-13, September.
    3. Sun, Changyou, 2006. "State statutory reforms and retention of prescribed fire liability laws on U.S. forest land," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 392-402, December.
    4. Autumn S. Clark & Devan Allen McGranahan & Benjamin A. Geaumont & Carissa L. Wonkka & Jacqueline P. Ott & Urs P. Kreuter, 2022. "Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part I: Systematic Review of Socio-Ecological Research," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-16, September.
    5. Eliott, Martyn G. & Venn, Tyron J. & Lewis, Tom & Farrar, Michael & Srivastava, Sanjeev K., 2021. "A prescribed fire cost model for public lands in south-east Queensland," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    6. Marian Lankoande & Jonathan Yoder, 2005. "Firefights And Fuel Management: A Nested Rotation Model For Wildfire Risk Mitigation," Others 0506012, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Christian Langpap & JunJie Wu, 2021. "Preemptive Incentives and Liability Rules for Wildfire Risk Management," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(5), pages 1783-1801, October.
    8. S. Arunachalam & Sridhar N. Ramaswami & Pol Herrmann & Doug Walker, 2018. "Innovation pathway to profitability: the role of entrepreneurial orientation and marketing capabilities," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 744-766, July.
    9. Yoon, Junghyun & Lee, Hee Yong & Dinwoodie, John, 2015. "Competitiveness of container terminal operating companies in South Korea and the industry–university–government network," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1-14.
    10. Sousa, Carlos M.P. & Bradley, Frank, 2008. "Antecedents of international pricing adaptation and export performance," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 307-320, July.
    11. Son K. Lam & Thomas E. DeCarlo & Ashish Sharma, 2019. "Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: do customer base characteristics matter?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 659-680, July.
    12. Danilo Soares‐Silva & Gustavo Hermínio Salati Marcondes de Moraes & Alexandre Cappellozza & Cristiano Morini, 2020. "Explaining library user loyalty through perceived service quality: What is wrong?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(8), pages 954-967, August.
    13. Van Wijk, Raymond & Nadolska, Anna, 2020. "Making more of alliance portfolios: The role of alliance portfolio coordination," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 388-399.
    14. Jarle Aarstad & Olav Andreas Kvitastein & Stig-Erik Jakobsen, 2019. "What Drives Enterprise Product Innovation? Assessing How Regional, National, And International Inter-Firm Collaboration Complement Or Substitute For R&D Investments," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(05), pages 1-25, June.
    15. Jonathan H. Reed, 2022. "Operational and strategic change during temporary turbulence: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 589-608, June.
    16. Tarifa Fernández, Jorge & de Burgos Jiménez, Jerónimo & Céspedes Lorente, José Joaquín, 2018. "Absorptive capacity as a confounder of the process of supply chain integration," MPRA Paper 120125, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2018.
    17. Dirk Boehe & Luciano Barin Cruz, 2010. "Corporate Social Responsibility, Product Differentiation Strategy and Export Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 91(2), pages 325-346, February.
    18. Aziz Barhmi & Omar Hajaji, 2023. "Multidisciplinary Approach to Supply Chain Resilience: Conceptualization and Scale Development," Central European Business Review, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2023(5), pages 43-69.
    19. Franck Brulhart & Sandrine Gherra & Bertrand V. Quelin, 2019. "Do Stakeholder Orientation and Environmental Proactivity Impact Firm Profitability?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 25-46, August.
    20. Chin-Shan Lu & Kuo-Chung Shang & Chi-Chang Lin, 2016. "Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(8), pages 909-927, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:9:p:318-:d:410826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.