This article was originally published in Florida Forests magazine. 

Festivals celebrating the use of prescribed fire have sprung up across the United States in recent years, building public awareness and support of fire’s role in nature.

ON A CRISP Saturday morning in February, smoke and ash suddenly swirled into the air around Austin Cary Forest, a 2,600-acre forest in North-Central Florida managed by the University of Florida. Flames danced around the ankles of the burn crew, a five-member team from the Florida Forest Service charged with safely setting the woods on fire. As the crew carefully ignited the shrubby vegetation under an open canopy of longleaf and slash pine, they were closely watched by hundreds of onlookers; from toddlers with their toes teetering on the firebreak, to grandparents holding their young charges back by the wrists.

Drawing the public to this prescribed burn was exactly the point of the 2025 Flatwoods Fire and Nature Festival, a daylong event held every other year in Austin Cary Forest. It’s one of several “fire festivals” that have been popping up across the United States in recent years, aiming to increase public support of prescribed fire. The events combine education about the ecological benefits of prescribed fire with a carnival-like atmosphere involving food trucks, live music, live animals, and games. The marquee attraction, however, is the prescribed burn itself, where festivalgoers can get right up close to the fire; watching, smelling, and listening as it ripples through the landscape.

Fascination and Fear

Humans have been celebrating fire for centuries. Festivals like the Allendale Tar Bar’l and the Up Helly Aa Fire Festivals, both in the United Kingdom, use fire in brilliant artistic and acrobatic displays that keep ancient cultural traditions alive. Festivals celebrating prescribed fire, however, with their focus on science and conservation, are a new phenomenon that sometimes flies in the face of public opinion.

Despite the historic and successful use of fire by many indigenous communities in North America, it was largely discarded as a land-management tool in the last century. Driven by fears of wildfire, which the public shared, the U.S. Forest Service for decades pursued policies that suppressed all wildland fire. In the 1940s, the agency even mounted a vigorous campaign on wildfire prevention that featured Walt Disney’s cartoon deer Bambi. Inspired by the film’s harrowing scene where woodland animals flee a raging forest fire, the Forest Service created posters that depicted the sweet-eyed fawn, a baby rabbit, and a skunk alongside a caption that read, “Please, Mister, don’t be careless. Prevent forest fires – greater danger than ever!”

Bambi was the predecessor to Smokey Bear, the Forest Service’s next mascot for wildfire prevention who quickly became a household name. Smokey’s message that wildfires destroy lives, homes, and property gave rise to the abiding public perception that fire is destructive to natural areas too.

It’s a perception that prescribed fire professionals are still fighting to change, despite being backed by years of research documenting the benefits of prescribed fire – how certain species rely on it for regeneration; how it supports biodiversity and the integrity of native plant and animal communities; how it’s a critical weapon against invasive species; how it prevents far more dangerous wildfires. In many parts of the country, decades of fire suppression have led to the degradation of many native ecosystems, including the prairies of the Midwest and the longleaf pine forests of the Southeast.

Helping the public understand the differences between “good fire” and “bad fire,” however, is a long and difficult road. Complaints or panicked emergency calls still flood local police departments and government offices wherever prescribed burns are conducted, even in regions like the Southeast where prescribed fire has increasingly been embraced as a valuable land management technique.

Writing for the journal Ecological Restoration in 2004, Colette R. Palamar suggested festivals as one way to increase public understanding and support of prescribed fire. Actively involving the public in burn demonstrations, while providing food and entertainment, would cultivate a community invested in ecological restoration and conservation, she argued. Factor in fire’s mesmerizing appeal, she added, and “fire festivals will almost certainly prove to be far more successful than an ‘herbicide festival’ or a ‘tree-cutting festival.’”

Playing With Fire

The nation’s longest-running fire festivals, Fire in the Pines and Party for the Pine, both in North Carolina, started more than a decade ago, and other festivals have since cropped up in states from Florida to California, the latter of which hosted its inaugural Good Fire Fair in 2024. Despite the challenges – and potential headaches – of hosting an event that involves multiple stakeholders, is totally dependent on weather, and is prefaced on allowing members of the public, especially children, to interact with fire, so many prescribed fire advocates have expressed interest in hosting their own fire festivals that there’s now an informal group that gathers on Zoom every few months to discuss tactics.

Figuring out ways to interest kids in prescribed fire – and the reasons it’s done – is a common thread among fire festival organizers, who typically represent state or federal agencies, Cooperative Extension, environmental NGOs, and local government offices.

“We want attendees to be pretty hands-on with the burn equipment, especially kids,” said Ashley Martin, program coordinator for the Conservation and Environmental Lands Management department of Hillsborough County, FL, which hosts an annual fire festival. “We have a variety of kids’ games that involve some of the standard burn equipment, like fire hoses and our PPE” (the Nomex clothing, helmets, and gloves worn by the burn crew). “They also get to see the brush trucks and helicopters up close.”

The Fire in the Pines festival in Wilmington, NC, also lets young attendees try on fire gear and examine burn equipment. There’s also food, face-painting, and hayrides through the forest. Educational booths, run by myriad environmental organizations, are sprinkled throughout this and other festivals. Many of them bring live animals or devise games and activities that teach about the local ecology.

“People are getting to learn about the forest, the adaptations of species to fire, [and] the role of fire, and those messages are carried through by all these different vendors,” said Troy Frensley, an associate professor in the Environmental Sciences department at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. “Everyone tells it a little bit differently, related to their interests and the work they do.”

The most popular activity with festival-goers, however, is the actual burn. Families will walk or pile into trolleys to observe the burn at close range, occasionally brushing ash from their clothes and sniffing at the smokescented air. Small children gaze transfixed at the flames, which curl close to the ground.

“The burn demos are clearly the star,” said Scott Sager, manager of UF’s Austin Cary Forest and the lead organizer of the Flatwoods Fire and Nature Festival. “You can’t get much better than having little kids get right up on the firebreak.”

Creating Community Advocates

In attracting members of the public to festivals celebrating the use of prescribed fire, organizers hope to create advocates who will spread the word about good fire.

“Fire festivals help us, as prescribed fire practitioners and communicators, develop champions in our communities for prescribed fire,” said Ludie Bond, wildfire mitigation specialist and public information officer for the Florida Forest Service. “It’s not just to reduce your phone calls, and complaints and angry faces on Facebook.”

Social media is a typical platform for public discussion on prescribed fire. People often register fear or annoyance on social media when prescribed burns are happening in their area; however, practitioners like Bond and Martin have also noticed others defending the use of prescribed fire.

“I’ve noticed that in social media forums, while there are a lot of ‘Where’s that smoke coming from?’ questions, many people seem to have the answers,” Martin said. “They’ll post links to fire maps or alerts and talk about prescribed fire and why it’s good. It’s amazing to see community members being the educators and interpreters – it means we’ve done our job well.”

Ultimately, public awareness and acceptance of prescribed fire is a gradual thing, just like the rebirth and recovery that happens in nature after fire has been present in it. From blackened trees and ashes to fresh green shoots, wildflowers, and returning animals, people need to see the full story of fire. With the way our urban communities have developed, not many people get to witness that process, Bond said.

Although they’re only daylong events, fire festivals can educate attendees about the richness and diversity fire restores to a landscape, and encourage them to return to those natural spaces again and again, to see it with their own eyes.

“Fire festivals provide the opportunity to tell that story,” Bond said. “And it’s a beautiful story to tell.”

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