Two rural Louisiana communities were selected to evaluate the effectiveness of certain types of communication in preventing man-caused forest fires. The communities were selected on the basis of differences in fire occurrence rates and other factors related to conservation. Questionnaires and personal interviews were utilized to determine views of inhabitants and access to communication media. The relation of sociocultural factors to fire occurrence rates, the social process of communication, the potential of mass media and informal media in communication of fire prevention messages, and selective perception and effectiveness of fire prevention messages were evaluated. It was recommended that persons with roles as fire prevention change agents design their information programs to reach all the inhabitants of a community after careful appraisal of all available data on local environmental factors. (SW)