www.wilderthanwildfilm.org

Producer/Director: Kevin White

Producer/Writer: Stephen Most

Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future is an independent one-hour documentary that reveals how fire suppression and climate change have exposed Western forests and wildland-urban landscapes to large, high-severity wildfires. It also explores strategies to mitigate the impact of these fires.

The film began as a short film made with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation focusing on the impact of the Rim Fire, which was then expanded to be a feature length documentary on wildfires and what we can do to address them in the future.

Goal:

Engage the public in understanding the critical role wildfire plays in forest ecosystems, and how those that live in wildfire prone areas might rethink how they can live with wildfire.

Strategy:

Create a film that gives communities in fire prone areas an accessible overview of the role wildfires play in our forest and wildland urban ecosystems. Use the film to foster community and share knowledge by providing public and private stakeholders with media tools that encourage engagement and discussion. Promote Community Screenings and extensive PBS broadcast through educational, non-profit, and resource agency organizations.

Audience:

Fire safe councils, firefighter stations, resource agencies, NGOs, and engaged citizen groups in fire-prone Western states.

Approach:

For science to serve human communities, it must first establish a connection with people to develop a means of communicating and receiving information beyond science’s traditional venues. We are using the film to overcome this information isolation by working across discipline boundaries to engage the public in forest management issues that affect local, regional and statewide constituencies. The film explores the connections between human and natural systems, the wisdom and practices of Cultural Fire by a tribe located in a fire prone area, and ideas about how we might live with wildfire in more productive and less destructive ways. 

To initiate grassroots change, a key component of our distribution strategy was to partner with community organizations to host event screenings that function as forums for constructive, community dialogue. By bringing community members together in these spaces, we motivated participants to rethink and transform regional policies and practices.

Impact:

Wilder than Wild is bringing people together to rethink how communities can live with wildfires and what can be done about wildfire in the future. The hour long film has been highly successful, being screened at hundreds of community screening events, airing nationally on PBS, and winning multiple awards at film festivals. To date, the film has been broadcast over 600 times, covering 72% of PBS markets. We have provided a means to understand the role of fire in forest ecosystems, particularly in the most critical target audience of citizens living in fire-prone areas.