摘要：Multiagency partnerships increasingly work cooperatively to plan and implement firemanagement. The stakeholders that comprise such partnerships differ in their perceptions of the benefitsand risks of fire use or nonuse. These differences inform how different stakeholders prioritize sites forburning, constrain prescribed burning, and how they rationalize these priorities and constraints. Using asurvey of individuals involved in the planning and implementation of prescribed fire in the Onslow Bightregion of North Carolina, we examined how the constraints and priorities for burning in the longleaf pine(Pinus palustris) ecosystem differed among three stakeholder groups: prescribed burn practitioners fromagencies, practitioners from private companies, and nonpractitioners. Stakeholder groups did not differ intheir perceptions of constraints to burning, and development near potentially burned sites was the mostimportant constraint identified. The top criteria used by stakeholders to decide where to burn were the timesince a site was last burned, and a site's ecosystem health, with preference given to recently burned sitesin good health. Differences among stakeholder groups almost always pertained to perceptions of thenonecological impacts of burning. Prescribed burning priorities of the two groups of practitioners, andparticularly practitioners from private companies, tended to be most influenced by nonecological impacts,especially through deprioritization of sites that have not been burned recently or are in the wildland-urbaninterface (WUI). Our results highlight the difficulty of burning these sites, despite widespread laws in thesoutheast U.S. that limit liability of prescribed burn practitioners. To avoid ecosystem degradation on sitesthat are challenging to burn, particularly those in the WUI, conservation partnerships can facilitatedemonstration projects involving public and private burn practitioners on those sites. In summary, anincreased understanding of stakeholder perspectives can provide insight into the potential long-termconsequences of current fire management and thus facilitate effective ecosystem conservation
