Life with Fire (Amanda Monthei)

The long-awaited beaver episode! In this episode, we learn about how beavers are not only champions of wildfire resilience but are also sleeper endurance athletes (climbing mountains to find new watersheds), dedicated anti-capitalists (not giving a **** about the regulatory or material concerns of humans), expert engineers (casually restoring entire watersheds) and pretty handy companions to have in our pursuit of restoring habitat and landscape resilience across the West (and beyond).

Dr. Emily Fairfax and Dr. Sophie Gilbert joined us to talk about everything from nature-based climate solutions to why we should learn to better coexist with beavers to that one time Idaho Fish and Game decided to try parachuting beavers into mountain meadows in Idaho. Rest assured there were also a lot of beaver puns.

Beaver's role in building fire resilience is probably one of the most requested episode topics we've had since starting the podcast in 2020. We got a pretty solid Beavers and Fire 101, but also had the chance to dig in deeper to talk about areas where beavers have made an impact in protecting structures during wildfires, how Sophie's work at Vibrant Planet is helping to prioritize areas where beavers and nature-based interventions (like beaver dam analogs) could make the biggest difference, as well as what both of their visions are for an idyllic beaver-friendly and more fire-resilient world. Also, be sure to stick around to the end of the episode where we speak about the concept of a "Stewardship Economy," or creating a world that is more supportive of community building and stewardship/restoration work that supports both resilience and community—in other words, the things we really need not only in the wildfire space but also in the broader climate/conservation etc spaces. 

Here are links to a few of the things mentioned throughout the episode: 

Beaver, Bison, Horse Book—The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains

Emily Fairfax's website/research. 

A fantastic stop-motion rendering of how beaver's change the landscape and build fire resilience (created by Emily!)

Vibrant Planet's Land Tender— a multi-faceted planning and monitoring platform for treatment area prioritization, risk mapping and decision making. 

"Leave It To Beavers," Patagonia's Cleanest Line Blog—Amanda's story about Trout Unlimited and Northwest Youth Corps crews building BDA's in the John Day River watershed.  

 

Liz Foster and Molly McCabe join us in this episode—the second of our Land Use and Resilience Series—to talk about fire-resilient communities and infrastructure, including the inherent inequities of disaster prevention, preparation, response and recovery. Liz is the former senior manager of Urban Resilience at the Urban Land Institute, which explores the wildland urban interface resilience to disasters like wildfires. Molly McCabe is owner of HaydenTanner, where she works in real estate finance and property development with an eye to sustainability and disaster resilience. This episode is chock full of great insights about hardening our communities to the threat of destructive wildfires, from two women who have been working in and thinking about disaster resilience for decades. This episode is a must-listen if you’re interested in learning more about the dynamic web of issues related to disaster-resilient communities, including wildfire insurance, adapting energy and transportation infrastructure for wildfires and the inequitable impacts of wildfires on vulnerable communities. For more on this topic, the Firebreak Report that is referenced in this episode provides a well of information about community resilience. Check it out here: https://knowledge.uli.org/-/media/files/research-reports/2020/firebreak-final-jan-2021.pdf?rev=b8e2429cc49a41dea506741bb9914bf4&hash=F6E84C4932B984965C9F5192C2557E5F

Isabeau Ottolini is one of the foremost experts on imbuing risk communications with values that are informed by communities themselves. As a PhD candidate on community-based communications at the Open University of Catalonia in Spain, Isabeau spends a significant amount of time thinking about how we can best reach those most at risk of wildfire's impacts, while also allowing those folks to inform how we approach them on this subject.

The ways we talk about wildfire are often highly localized—and dependent on a number of factors like community values, history and available resources. However, the things that make for successful risk communication are largely universal, with mutual respect being chief among the elements of successful communication. This is a primary point of Isabeau's: that when we are talking to community members about wildfire or other climate risks, embracing a two-way communication approach (rather than top-down, as she calls it) is essential. In other words, ensuring that you're actually listening to the community you're attempting to communicate with.

Isabeau is also a current member of PyroLife, which is a PhD training program that supports students across the globe to pursue cross-disciplinary, wildfire-focused research projects. She recently published a paper called "A toolkit for fostering co-creation and participative community engagement with vulnerable communities at risk," where she expands on many of the topics we cover in this episode—we'd highly recommend giving it a read. 

If you're interested in learning more about our open call for pitches, check out our blog post about it!

If you'd like to help us meet our objective to support Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and other creators from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by wildfires, please check out our Patreon.

Timestamps: 

05:36 - Introduction

06:51 - Interest in Wildfires

09:05 - Community Collaboration Over Expert Dictation

10:36 - Community Experience as Starting Point

11:35 - Limitations of Wildfire Communication

15:07 - Spain vs. US Wildfire Management and Communications

17:43 - Communication as Top Priority

18:23 - Leveraging Social Media Platforms

19:38 - Tips for the Upcoming Wildfire Season

23:09 - Future of Wildfire Prevention Gaps

24:50 - Complexity of Wildfire Management

 

Produced by Morgan McRae

What can life after wildland firefighting look like? With the issues facing wildland firefighters these days (including but not limited to: abysmal pay, nonexistent benefits and perpetually being let down by elected officials who suggest they might actually do something about it etc) many in this essential but overworked workforce are likely considering that question themselves.

After asking himself that question for years, today's guest Luke Mayfield finally got his answer in 2019, when he left his job as a hotshot captain to see what life outside of operational fire was all about. He now works as the fire program director at Mystery Ranch Backpacks, and is still very much involved the fire community—both through his policy work at Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and as an emergency fill-in for hotshot crews for the last four summers. He's also spent some time this spring talking to hotshot crews about mental health and general wellness during the fire season, which are topics that he's well-versed in after 18 years in fire.

This episode isn't just for the firefighters out there, though. It's increasingly important that folks outside of the fire community better understand the challenges firefighters are facing, and take advantage of advocacy opportunities at the state and federal level. Much of those opportunities for advocacy, in fact, are rooted in Luke's work with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

Luke was a founding member of Grassroots back in 2019 after recognizing a need for more lobbying power/legislative presence on the part of the wildland fire community, which had historically been left out of the conversation at the policy level and, thus, often in the media and greater public consciousness. If you're looking for a way to support the wildland firefighters in your life or community, supporting the work of Grassroots is a great place to start.

Huge thanks to Luke for coming on the show, and an equally huge thanks to Mystery Ranch Backpacks for supporting Life with Fire over the years. We have a fancy new affiliate link program with MR and thought we'd highlight their man purse (aka Murse), which is like the Bugatti of man-purses: https://bit.ly/42CyyN6 

TW:  Mental health challenges and suicidal ideation are discussed briefly in this episode. 

In this episode, we had a chance to sit down with author John Vaillant, who recently published a new book about the 2016 Fort McMurray fires in Northern Alberta. The book, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, is an in-depth exploration of the fires, which released in June 2023. We not only spoke about his reporting process in the aftermath of a catastrophic wildfire, but we also touched on some of the book's major themes and how these were, in many cases, paralleled by the 2023 fire season in Canada. 

We even did some deep diving into the oil and gas industry's role in increasingly catastrophic fire seasons, about climate change and how we keep having unprecedented fire seasons—but our processes and protocols aren't catching up with how extreme conditions and fire behavior have become in some cases. 

We also highly recommend  Fire Weather for those who haven't read it yet. You can pick it up from my favorite local bookstore, Village Books, here. 

Timestamps: 

06:00 - Introduction

08:14 - 2016's Alberta Fire Warning of the Future

09:42 - John's Thoughts on the 2023 Fire Season

12:28 - The Shifting Baseline for Fire Fighting Efforts

16:55 - Weather Conditions Affect How Fire Behaves

19:26 - People's Humanity Makes Evacuation Efforts Possible

23:40 - Humanizing the Evacuation Process

25:01 - Interviewing Evacuees

28:18 - This Evacuation Changed Everyone's Lives Forever

29:34 - The Oil and Gas Industry Connection to Wildfire

31:56 - Humans are a Fire Species

35:32 - Society's Wealth Comes From Fire

37:38 - Gaps in Conversation Surrounding Wildfires

40:11 - We Have to Rethink Our Relationship With Fire

42:39 - John's Lessons Learned

44:12 - Houses Are Made From Petroleum Products

46:49 - Firefighting 90s Style Will Not Help Us

48:40 - No Precedent for Recent Fire Events

51:40 - This Requires a Nuanced Conversation

53:45 - Outro

What is it like to watch vegetation type-conversion in real time? How are invasive grasses changing the ecology of the desert and broader Southwest? What's being done to protect and restore Southwest ponderosa pine forests? 

This episode with Tonto National Forest fire ecologist Mary Lata dives into the fire regimes of the Southwest, how they're changing by the year, how invasive grasses are influencing those changes, and particularly how she's beginning to see more fire in the Sonoran Desert, where fire was not historically common. We also spoke about her work within the Four Forest Restoration Project, which aims to restore and protect the significant ponderosa pine forests within the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab and Tonto national forests. 

Mary was preparing for a public meeting the day of our conversation and had a few great slides that she showed me during our conversation, so I've uploaded the full video of our conversation to Youtube for folks who would like some more context for the topics we discussed in the podcast. 

This episode and our entire series on Fire in the Southwest was made possible with support from The Southwest Fire Science Consortium  and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative.

Timstamps: 

01:11 - Introduction

05:42 - Mary's Background and Career

10:04 - Four Forest Restoration Initiative

13:05 - Growing up Near Badlands National Park

15:33 - Different Ecosystems and Fire Regimes of the Southwest

17:19 - The Sonoran Desert

19:39 - Witnessing Desert Conversion Over Time

20:14 - Should Human-Caused Ignitions Be Part Of A Fire Regime?

22:05 - Lightning Caused Fires Versus Human Caused Fire

23:52 - Mary's Love of Nebraska

27:01 - Grasslands In The Great Plains

30:36 - Current Restoration Work and Climate Change Impacts on Southwest Fire Regimes

34:11 - What is Assisted Migration and Can It Help The Southwest?

38:04 - The Changing Role Of Disturbance In Grassland Systems

39:24 - Grassification of the Sonoran Desert. 

45:13 - Outro

 

Lenya Quinn-Davidson has committed her career to changing the ways we think about prescribed fire. She also started the Women in Prescribed Fire Training Exchange program, or WTREX, which empowers women and people of color to gain experience as firefighters, mentors and leaders in fire management through the use of prescribed fire. We spoke about the importance of diversity in the fire world, and about how we can do better in mentoring, empowering and retaining women and BIPOC in positions in wildland fire.

When smokejumper Tim Hart died from injuries sustained during a hard landing in New Mexico in May, his wife Michelle Hart quickly realized that she needed a way to channel her grief. She also realized she was in a unique position to draw attention to the needs of wildland firefighters—she had a personal connection to the issues facing them, and as a lobbyist, she also had the legislative chops to make legitimate change at a congressional level. This all culminated in the creation of the Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act, which addresses firefighter compensation, benefits, access to mental health resources and availability of housing for firefighters, among other provisions. We spoke with Michelle about the bill and the grief that influenced its creation back in November. They've continued garnering support for the bill, though not much as changed with the bill since when we chatted with Michelle. As of January 19, the bill has been referred to the subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry, where it awaits support from the senate.

In this episode, we speak with anthropologist Dr. Lindsey Raisa Feldman about her research on incarcerated fire crews in Arizona. Lindsey actually worked on the ground with these crews—and despite her assertion that she wasn't a very good firefighter, she did come away with some important insights about the nature of incarcerated firefighting, as well as a few profound experiences of her own. Lindsey's work can be found on her website: https://www.lindseyraisa.com/ Follow Life with Fire! Find us at @lwf_pod on Twitter or @lifewithfirepod on Instagram. And if you enjoy the podcast, we'd be honored if you shared it or left a review for us on Apple Podcasts. Life with Fire is made possible with donations! If you dig the podcast, please consider donating to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Well we finally got a chance to speak with Marek Smith, who is the North American Fire Director for the Nature Conservancy and the co-director of the Fire Networks, which houses the Fire Adapted Learning Network, the Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX), The Indigenous Peoples Burning Network and the Fire Learning Networks. Before I get too far into this intro, I do want to note that the Fire Network has a new website that is a veritable clearinghouse of good fire resources, knowledge and information on how to get involved—I highly recommend you go check it out!

New Fire Networks Website!!

Marek has quite a background of working in good fire implementation and policy, and recently represented 501 c3 organizations with expertise in forest management and environmental conservation on the Wildfire Commission which released its report and recommendations back in September.

In his role with the Nature Conservancy, Marek works to, quite simply, bring fire to the people while leading an organization that prioritizes our collective relationship with fire. All of TNC's programming through the Fire Networks is focused on developing more avenues for people to connect with fire, whether by exchanging knowledge/training,  sharing resources or empowering individuals and communities to build resilience to or change their relationships with fire.

We covered some ground with this one—not only about his role in the Wildfire Commission, but also his work with the Fire Networks, Amanda's experience at her first TREX back in October, and the future of the Fire Networks. This was such a fun conversation that was a long time coming, and we were left feeling like we could have talked to Marek for much, much longer than we did! Maybe a part two is in order....

Don't forget to check out the Fire Networks' new website!

You can also learn more about the new partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the Forest Service here. 

Looking for Christmas gifts for the outdoorsperson/backpacker/firefighter/hunter/skier in your life? Well boy howdy you should probably check out Mystery Ranch's selection of packs, made for every hobby you could possibly need a pack for.

I'm a huge fan of Mystery Ranch packs and am an especially big fan of their Saddle Peak ski pack and their Hip Monkey pack, which is a glorified fanny pack that is durable as hell and has SO MUCH SPACE. I use it for long days on my mountain bike, and also recently used it basically as a purse during a three-week trip backpacking around Italy. 

Timestamps:

03:55 - Episode Introduction

05:57 - Process For The Wildfire Commission

08:02 - Themes In Marek's Work

09:29 - Work Groups Within The Commission 

10:02 - Marek's Current Action Items

10:52 - Collaborative Approach To Recommendations 

12:11 - An All-Society Approach

13:02 - Multi-Year Funding

13:58 - Community Wildfire Defense Grants

15:21 - Wildfire Adaptation PODs

17:13 - Focus On What Is In Reach

18:14 - Community Level Practitioners

19:00 - The Fire Networks Partnership

21:24 - The Indigenous Peoples Burning Network

22:37 - Proactive Community Building

23:47 - Amanda's Experience On TREX

24:56 - The PIO Position

25:48 - Current Happenings At Nature Conservancy

27:21 - Indigenous TREX Experiences

28:41 - Women In Prescribed Fire Training

30:09 - How To Get Involved

31:04 - Ongoing Efforts

 

For our fifth episode of the the Fire in the Southwest Series, we're talking managed wildfires, which has a number of alter egos depending on who you talk to in the wildfire world, some of which include "wildland fire use" or "managing wildfires for resource benefit".

Dr. Jose "Pepe" Iniguez, a research ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, is our fearless leader on this journey through the fraught, occasionally contentious world of managed fire. Pepe has had a long career studying wildfire impacts in forested landscapes while building a better understanding of how our public lands have been shaped by disturbances like wildfire. His takeaway? We can't effectively manage forests at the landscape scale without the help of wildfires, and managed fire is the most feasible answer to the question of how we reach "scale" in our ability to build landscape resilience.

In short, managed fires are often lightning-caused wildfires that are determined to be burning in an area that is not likely to impact nearby communities, infrastructure, watersheds etc. As such, they are not managed with "full suppression" as the main priority. They are heavily monitored by ground resources (if the fire is accessible) and aircraft, though on occasion these fires become "wildfires for resource benefit" merely because there aren't enough resources to attend to them. See: the 2021 fire season in California. In many cases, these types of fires burn in wilderness areas where fire suppression can be extremely difficult because of a lack of access, and which is made all the more difficult by designations that disallow the use of things like chainsaws and helicopters. 

Want more information about managed fire? Check out this fact sheet from our sponsor for this episode, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium. 

This recent blog post from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network is also very much worth the read if you're hungry for more context around managed fire. This blog was  written by a recent guest of the podcast, Zander Evans from the Forest Stewards Guild. 

A huge thank you to both the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative for supporting this episode and all of the other episodes from our Fire in the Southwest Series. 

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Episode Start 

01:31 - Pepe's Background 

07:56 - 1996 Fires

11:04 - The Early Days Of Managed Fire 

14:01 - Thinning Versus Fire, Thinning PLUS Fire

16:00 - Prescribed Fire Scales As A Tool 

17:40 - Pepe's View On Managed Fire 

19:48 - Lessons Learned with Managed Fire

22:24 - The Benefit of Starting Small in Building A Managed Fire Program 

25:24 - Experimental Forests 

28:27 - Hotshot Crews Work On the Long Valley Experimental Forest 

30:47 - Smaller, More Local Incident Management Teams Often Work Better 

32:56 - Social Implications Of Managed Fires 

35:29 - Thoughts on Improving Public Perception of Managed Fires  

38:30 - Prescribed Fire and Managed Fire Have Different Liabilities

40:06 - Do We Need A Fire Influencer? Pepe suggests Britney Spears. 

41:37 - The Work of the Southwest Fire Consortium 

49:50 - Episode End

In our third and final episode from the International Association of Wildland Fire conference in Edmonton, Alberta, we spoke with FireSmart program manager Magda Zachara about Firesmart's objective to build scalable wildfire prevention and mitigation programming across Canada. Magda spoke about Firesmart's programming and the ways they've build more engagement with communities that want to improve fire resilience and home hardening. 

To learn more about Firesmart Canada, check out their website. 

Click here to donate to our Patreon—for a limited time, those who donate at the $20 level this month will receive a Life with Fire Calendar!

 

We're big fans of the Mt. Adams Resource Stewards here at Life with Fire. You may recall our episode with the organization's Executive Director back in 2022 (episode 28), but we're back today with an episode with MARS' Stewardship Crew Lead, Lucas King, who shared his thoughts on expanding capacity for more burning and fuels reduction from the ground up in Washington State. 

Lucas and Amanda spoke about expanding capacity for (and acceptance of) local burning in MARS' backyard—primarily through private lands burning and engaging community members through contractual opportunities and the Stewardship Crew itself. They also spoke about the Washington State Certified Burn Manager Program, engaging recreationists in the act of fuel reduction and land stewardship and a number of other topics, as well as what the stewardship crew has been up to this spring and summer. 

Speaking of expanding capacity for prescribed burning in Washington State—have you heard about the two TREX events taking place in Washington this fall? The Selkirk and Gorge TREX events are accepting applications for a few more days (July 17th is the deadline), so if you're available and interested, be sure to apply asap!

 

05:52 - MARS' Approach to Non-Intimidating Fires

08:18 - Role Model Programs for MARS' Startup

10:14 - Private Landowners Burning with Crews

13:14 - Education in the MARS Program

16:09 - Washington State's Prescribed Burn Manager Course

19:29 - Engaging Rural Communities in Fire Mitigation

21:50 - Fostering Collaboration Among Property Owners

23:08 - Lucas' Background Story

25:26 - Spring Job Opportunities at MARS

27:01 - Current Status of Wildfire Proactivity

 

Produced by Morgan McRae

 

There's been a lot of postulating about whether the firing of some 4400 (and counting) Forest Service and National Park employees on Friday will have an impact on fire operations this summer. We spoke with Riva Duncan, who has decades of experience in fire operations for the US Forest Service (before retiring with the agency), and her answer couldn't be more clear: yes, these losses in capacity are already having an impact on our ability to suppress wildfires this summer. 

Riva is vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which advocates and provides a voice for the wildfire workforce. Consider donating to support their work!

 

In our sixth and final episode of the Fire in the Southwest Series—sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative—we explore the complex, multicultural fire histories and management dynamics in New Mexico, with State Forester and Tribal Liaison Lindsey Quam.

New Mexico's recent relationship with fire has been fraught with distrust in the aftermath of the 2022 Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Fire, which started from an escaped prescribed fire and an escaped pile burn. Lindsey's career has been bookended by such events, having started his career in Los Alamos, NM in the aftermath of the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which also started as an escaped prescribed fire. This has allowed him to witness first hand how public trust has ebbed and flowed around the use of prescribed fire. It's also presented opportunities for him to help shape and better understand the many mixed emotions New Mexicans have around this topic.

Lindsey spoke to how the intersecting cultures and management values across New Mexico—including Indigenous peoples, the Hispanic population and, well, white people—presents challenges but also opportunities in trying to extoll the merits of prescribed fire.

"There’s no dispute amongst native New Mexicans who live off the land—there is a recognition that fire is important and necessary, but there's also a fear," Lindsey, who is himself a member of the Zuni Pueblo, said.

Lindsey also shared how his agency is scaling up forest treatments through collaboration, and establishing priority landscapes to implement landscape-scale resilience projects.

If you'd like to learn more about acequias, which are mentioned in this episode, I can't recommend Patrick Lohmann's reporting enough. He is a journalist with Source NM and did some stellar reporting on the impacts of the Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Fire on acequias and traditional (and often rural) communities in northern New Mexico. 

With fire season escalating across the West this week, many people are downloading Watch Duty App for the first time. But what is Watch Duty all about? Why was it created? Where does their information come from? What do agency employees think about it?

We spoke to Watch Duty CEO John Mills about the Watch Duty app as well as fire technology more broadly, and gave him a chance to respond to some listener questions from PIOs, wildland firefighters, community resilience experts and others in the Life with Fire community. His responses are about as no-BS as they come, and he provided an honest assessment of where the app is currently and where he'd like it to be in the near and far-off future. A few things they're adding in the near future include a version of the app just for first responders, which John speaks to in the episode, while in the longer term he's looking forward to exploring how Watch Duty can provide more opportunities for community education about wildfire and wildfire resilience. 

Timestamps: 

07:33 - Interview starts, John explains his background in Silicon Valley

10:10 - The Beginnings Of Watch Duty 

12:12 - John's experiences of the Walbridge Fire 

13:21 - Watch Duty's Functionality 

16:20 - How they find reporters/contributors for Watch Duty 

18:06 - Concerns and Questions from PIOs/PAOs 

21:07 - Gaining Trust And Users 

22:25 - The Future of The App

25:01 - Upcoming Watch Duty Features   

26:48 - Public Education Features 

29:40 - Watch Duty's Role In The Fire Tech Space 

34:48 - John's Thoughts On the Fire Tech Industry 

42:39 - Watch Duty's Main Benefit Is Efficiency 

47:16 - How People Use Watch Duty 

49:50 - The Reason They Don't Allow Comments on Watch Duty

50:49 - Outro 

Our first guest-hosted (an in-person) episode is live! In this episode, Zeke Lunder of "The Lookout" cameos as host of Life with Fire, and sits down with fire researchers Yana Valochovic and Eric Knapp at his office in Chico, CA. They spoke about Valochovic and Knapp's research on the Camp Fire, which deeply impacted the town of Paradise, CA three years ago this week. Their research explores how homes are arranged and built, and how these factors can impact their susceptibility to ignition during wildfires. This is an essential conversation on home resilience, defensible space and what factors contribute to home ignitions in wildfires. Call it "Building in The WUI 101," if you will, but you won't want to miss the invaluable insight, tips and lessons learned from Knapp and Valochovic's extensive research and work in the aftermath of the Camp Fire. 

To hear more from Zeke, check out Life with Fire Episode 14. More of his work with The Lookout can be found here: https://the-lookout.org/

The paper authored by Valochovic and Knapp and referenced throughout this episode can be found here: https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00117-0

Knapp and Valochovic are both members of the California Fire Science Consortium. More information on this organization can be found here. 

To support Life with Fire podcast, consider donating to our Patreon, which can be found here: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Our 50th episode! In today's episode, we spoke to professional forester Emily Dolhansky about the fire-adapted ecosystems of her home state of New Jersey. Perhaps you've seen some footage of the Jimmy's Waterhole Fire (pretty good fire name tbh) in southern New Jersey—as of this writing, it's sitting at nearly 4,000 acres and 75% containment after exhibiting fire behavior that would be extreme by almost any geographic area's standards.

Emily filled us in on the fire ecology and history of the pine barrens, where she spent  as a kid growing up in NJ. Emily wrote her master's thesis at Yale on the pine barrens of the northeast (which exist all over the northeast and midwest—not just NJ) and talked through some of the common misconceptions of Northeast wildfires while providing a good bit of context for all those wild videos we're seeing on social media this week. 

To learn more about the fire history of the pine barrens, check out this piece that Emily penned while at Yale: https://www.firesciencenorthatlantic.org/post/pine-barrens-of-the-northeastern-u-s-emily-dohlansky-2018

Looking for a new pack? Check out Mystery Ranch's stellar selection and let them know we sent you by using this link! https://www.avantlink.com/click.php?tt=pl&ti=4703&pw=348921&mi=13570&pt=3&pri=603  

 

You've probably heard of the Land Back movement, but an essential ingredient of Land Back initiatives will also be  Fire Back—that is, returning land stewardship and burning authority to First Nations and Indigenous communities across North America and the world. 

We've spoken to a few guests who have highlighted the importance of Indigenous authority in land management in the past, but today we've got a whole episode on how that authority can actually be achieved at the community level and how these practices are informed by traditional Indigenous values and land management objectives. While at the IAWF conference in Alberta last week, we had the opportunity to speak with Francis Johnson, who is the Forest Manager for Alkali Resource Management LLC—a First-Nations-owned land management company that manages a community forest in Alkali Lake, British Columbia. Francis, who is a member of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) First Nations Community, gave us some wonderful insights into how the oral histories of his band continue to inform land management activities on the community forest. We also spoke about the band's collaborations with agencies like the BC Wildfire Service, and the reconciliations that needed to happen to make those relationships both possible and productive.

To learn more about the work that Francis and Alkalive Resource Management do, check out the company's website: http://www.armltd.org/

To learn more about the oral histories and land management objectives of the Secwepemc Nation, check out this presentation from Francis that was featured by the BC Community Forest Association: https://bccfa.ca/cfa-wildfire-workshop-2019-presentation-francis-johnson/

 

 

In this episode, we talk to Annie Schmidt, who works for the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. Through her position at the Fire Adapted network, Annie has committed herself to helping communities build their fire-resiliency and, quite literally, learn to better live with fire. Annie offers some great perspective on how and why fire prevention work should be prioritized just as much as fire suppression, while also providing a few suggestions for other people who want to improve fire resiliency in their communities. One of the most interesting parts of Annie’s work is her commitment to bringing different voices to the table and empowering people with a variety of backgrounds to take greater authority over their land. You can listen, subscribe or review Living With Fire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

In this episode we spoke with Zeke Lunder, a pyrogeographer with a background in GIS and mapping on wildfires, and more recently with helping out on prescribed burns all over the West. We spoke about how the advancement of mapping and technology for use in fire suppression is misguided—and how those tech solutions would be better used as a way to get more prescribed fire on the ground. Zeke is from Chico, California, so we also spoke about the impacts of the Camp Fire and the North Complex/Bear Fire on his community, and how repetitive large fires re-traumatize communities like his. You can check us out on Twitter at @lwf_pod, or on Instagram at @lifewithfirepod. And as promised in the episode, here is the link for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod. Thanks for all of your continued support, shares, subscribes etc—every little bit of listener support helps us and our goal of educating folks about wildfires!

We'll be honest—we've been hoping to talk to Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz since this podcast's inception. Franz is responsible for the management of over six millions acres of public lands and the state's wildland firefighting workforce, so we were pretty excited to finally have the opportunity to have a conversation with her a few weeks ago. 

Our conversation ran the gamut from the forest resilience measures she's taken while in office, to the All Hands All Lands approach to fuels reduction, to her vision for a more fire-adapted Washington. Life with Fire is based in Bellingham, WA—an admittedly wet place to host a wildfire podcast—so we also spoke a bit about the changing conditions in the west Cascades and how her office is hoping to bring more wildfire awareness to the westside. 

You can support the Life with Fire Patreon if you dig what we're doing, or maybe write us a review or follow us on social media (@lifewithfirepod). 

If you're looking for a new pack (especially a fire pack!), be sure to go check out Mystery Ranch's wide range of fantastic packs for any activity you partake in: https://www.avantlink.com/click.php?tool_type=cl&merchant_id=dd2bb191-351c-479c-9877-7efa128a6335&website_id=d8132395-0578-4694-9ba8-65dc5a6ef74a&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysteryranch.com%2F

Welcome to our third episode of our Fire in the Southwest series! In this episode, we spoke with Jon Martin, who is the Director of Native American Forest and Rangeland Management Programming at the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University. Jon spent three decades working in forestry before retiring, and now uses his extensive interagency background to find pathways that can help tribes achieve their management goals within a Western fire management framework.

This topic is especially prescient right now, as the Wildfire Commission Report was explicit in its recommendations to incorporate more Indigenous knowledge into land management (see: recommendations 12, 15, 16). However, while this directive is a step in the right direction, actually accomplishing it will require overcoming significant workforce and budget constraints at the ground level, especially within tribal communities.

Jon and Amanda spoke about what this integration of different management practices can look like, how to overcome those barriers, the differences between cultural and agency fire, as well as the fundamental question of whether or not the differences between cultural and agency fire can be meaningfully reconciled. Jon also provided a great example of this integration working (the San Carlos Apache Tribe's use of Crisis Strategy/Infrastructure Bill funding). Finally, we wrapped the episode up with a discussion about the nature of federal land agency employment, which all but requires employees to move locations every 3-5 years to move up in their careers. Jon spoke about how the collaborative/shared stewardship pathway that is needed to meaningfully integrate Indigenous management into Western management requires a wholesale commitment to developing interagency relationships, and how this should be a major priority moving forward. 

"It’s not about going out and managing forests, silvicultural prescription or even forest management," Jon said in our conversation. "It’s become all about people management, almost a social science. I think people are starting to realize that. It’s a softer approach but it’s very real.”

This conversation and the rest of our Fire in the Southwest series is supported by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, as well as the Arizona Wildfire Initiative. We're so grateful for their support!

 

Time stamps: 

06:23 - Jon's Background and Navajo Upbringing 

09:42 - Northern Arizona University And Its Programs 

11:51 - Native American Forest And Rangeland Management Program 

13:00 - San Carlos Apache Tribe

14:12 - Western Land Management Agencies Working With Tribes 

15:38 - Opportunities And Funding Becoming Available To Bolster Tribal Management

18:45 - Fire History and Research in the Piñon Juniper Ecosystems of the Southwest

20:38 - Indigenous Fire History In Piñon Juniper Ecosystems 

22:41 - Culturally Informed Management In Higher Elevation Forests 

25:56 - Increasing Acknowledgement Of Cultural Burning 

26:33 - Wildland Fire Management And Mitigation Report Directives for Indigenous Burning

28:10 - San Carlos Apache Tribe—Wildfire Crisis Strategy Funding Leading to Tribal Management Success Story

29:34 - Collaborative Efforts Require Long-Term Commitments and Relationship Building

33:50 - Tribal Management Is Inherently Collaborative 

34:20 - Jon's Career Wins 

37:32 - End 

In the fourth episode of our series sponsored by Protect our Winters, we spoke with self-proclaimed snow nerd Andrew Schwartz about his work as the lead scientist at the the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, where he explores all sorts of snowpack-related science but also how wildfires are impacting that snowpack. From less canopy to protect the snow from the sun to ash on the snow attracting more solar energy, Andrew talks us through all the ways that our snowpack and glaciers will continue to be impacted by wildfires that are increasing in size and creeping further into the alpine. 

To see more of what Andrew's doing, give him and the Snow Lab a follow on Twitter. 

Learn more about Protect our Winters and their Stoke the Vote campaign at their website. 

Support Life with Fire by donating to our Patreon! We'll send you some swag for your troubles, and really appreciate the support. 

Music featured in POW Ad: The Times They Are A Changin' by Goth Babe. 

The practice of cultural burning hinges on one critical truth: healthy land means healthy people. Margo Robbins, who is a Yurok tribal member, basket weaver and the executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council,  explains the importance of cultural burning on Yurok tribal lands—located in Northern California— as well as why she has a vested interest in reintegrating cultural burns on her ancestral lands. Listen in to learn more about indigenous burning, the ecological and cultural benefits of fire and how cultural burning has helped renew the art and practice of basket weaving for Margo and other members of the Yurok Tribe. 

We're in Canada at the International Association of Wildland Fire Conference this week, and will be pulling some folks aside for some quick conversations about the conference themes and the research being presented and discussed. Our first "rapid fire" episode guest is Sarah Henderson, who works for the BC Centre for Disease Control as the scientific director of Environmental Health Services. Sarah has some fascinating insights into our perceptions of wildfire smoke, some common paradoxes that come up in the ways we talk and think about smoke, as well as some legitimate, scalable solutions for reducing the impacts of wildfire smoke, especially on susceptible populations like those experiencing homelessness, those who don't have the financial means of improving indoor air quality and those with preexisting health conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to smoke's impacts. Thanks to Sarah for taking a moment to chat with us, and hopefully this conversation provides some useful context for those who felt the effects of smoke this summer and fall. 

Wildland firefighters are disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety, PTSD, suicide and other mental health struggles. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest are quite simple: wildland firefighting is a high-stress job that takes firefighters away from their families for months at a time and often doesn't come with appropriate pay or benefits given the sacrifices that these folks make every summer. With that lack of benefits comes a severe lack of mental health resources and care for laid-off firefighters, resulting in something of a mental health epidemic for a seasonal workforce that grows more essential—and more exhausted—by the year. This episode dives into what these struggles look like from the perspective of currently laid-off seasonal firefighters, who each spoke about their individual challenges with mental health and wellness. 

Firefighters included in this episode: Ben McLane (hotshot), Coleman Wilson (handcrew member), Gabby Casper (rappeller), Eddie Klemencic (hotshot), Kat Sullivan (hotshot) and Livi Hughes (British Columbia Fire Service crewmember). 

As promised in the episode, here are a few resources for wildland firefighters who are struggling with mental health challenges this off-season:

1. Wildland Firefighter Foundation—https://wffoundation.org/resources/reference/. This organization provides emotional and financial support and assistance for wildland firefighters injured on the line, and also facilitates mental health support. The website above is a landing page for a variety of other mental health resources for firefighters.

2. Your crew! Call up your crewmembers from last summer and check in on them. It's nice to talk to people who know the business and who understand what you're going through on a more personal level.

3. Wildland Firefighter Guardian Institute—https://www.wfgi.org/mental-health-resources. This organization covers mental health resources (including therapy and counseling!) at no cost to wildland firefighters.

4. Online therapy—lots of options, but https://www.betterhelp.com/ is a highly recommended (and decently affordable) one.

5. For military veterans: You local VA Center (not hospital) can provide mental health treatment. More info here: https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/index.asp?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=search-va&utm_content=help&utm_term=%2Bva%20%2Bmedical%20%2Bcenter&gclid=CjwKCAiAu8SABhAxEiwAsodSZB0WyjZJ0hF_ErGbqzG6rQfqtVCNih-LBcsXe2tGcYTOLTbIWdY2KBoCqs8QAvD_BwE

 

 

 

Today we're talking trails! What do trails have to do with wildfire, you ask? Well, ask any trail builder that question and they'll tell you that they're kind of a pain to rebuild (and cut out) after wildfires. Today's guest Dillon Osleger is a trail builder, an environmental advocate, scientist and Executive Director of the Sage Trail Alliance, and also works with Protect Our Winters as both a creative and an athlete. He's done a fair bit of both trail building and trail rehab in the aftermath of wildfires, and has some great perspectives on how folks who like to use trails can become more engaged in keeping those trails looking good both before and after wildfire impacts. 

To see what Dillon's been up to, check out his website as well as a recent film he worked on about the impacts of drought, beetle kill and wildfire on trails in southwest Colorado. 

To learn more about Protect our Winters, the sponsor of our wildfire and recreation series, and their Stoke the Vote campaign, check out their website. 

Music featured in the POW ad by Goth Babe. 

To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon.

The Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission, established in 2022 at the behest of Congress following the 2021 Infrastructure Act, recently released a substantial report highlighting recommendations that will shape the future of wildfire policy and action in the US. Fifty commission members were charged with creating the recommendations, one of which was Kelly Martin—who is a founding member of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighter organization and a longtime wildland firefighter. We had the chance to chat with Kelly about the commission, and she was able to provide us a glimpse into the process and efforts behind their whopping 340-page report. We spoke explicitly about how the recommendations relate to wildland firefighters, as well as what Kelly was able to bring to the commission with her extensive background working in wildland fire operations.

We're hoping to release a few more episodes about the commission report, which will focus on other recommendations and themes—including community resilience/adaptation, Indigenous burning and scaling up projects that reduce wildfire risk. Stay tuned!

Kelly is an outspoke advocate for wildland firefighters through her work at Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which you should definitely check out if you haven't already. 

This episode is brought to you by Mystery Ranch, which makes the best fire pack in the business--we will die on this hill! If you're looking for a fire pack (or a backpacking pack, or a briefcase, or a hunting pack, or a...well you get it), then Mystery Ranch is the place to go. You'll probably never have to buy a pack again!

Today's episode is all about post-fire—how to plan and prepare for post-fire challenges like debris flows and landslides, how to recover at a community and landscape scale, how to maintain a love of place after it's impacted by fire, and how we can reduce suffering in this often dynamic phase of wildfire response and recovery.

Our guest on this topic is Collin Haffey, the Post Fire Recovery Program Manager for the Washington DNR, who prior to working with the DNR worked as the Forest and Watershed Health Coordinator for the New Mexico Forestry Division during the catastrophic 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire. This fire burned over 340,000 acres in largely rural areas that were also, subsequently, impacted by intense debris flows and mudslides, spurred by monsoonal rain events only weeks after the fire burned through the area. These debris flows were in many cases more devastating to residents in these areas than the fires themselves—they destroyed wells and water systems, devastated roads and other infrastructure and destroyed hundreds of homes, including century-old adobe homes that had housed multiple generations of native New Mexicans. If you're interested in learning more about the HP-CC Fire, I highly recommend the in-depth reporting of Patrick Lohmann at Source NM. I also wrote about the post-fire impacts of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon, as well as potential policy solutions, for Land Lines Magazine back in 2023. 

For some background: post-fire concerns range from erosion and flooding events that can have major impacts on infrastructure and watersheds (and systems), but also includes the process of reforestation, erosion reduction and reducing the incursion and spread of invasive species in delicate post-fire landscapes. 

How communities prepare and plan for these challenges can make an immense difference in how quickly they recover, and Collin's work focuses heavily on encouraging communities to better prepare not just for wildfire, but for what comes after it. 

One of Collin's biggest projects at present is the After the Fire Washington website, where you can find tried-and-true recovery practices, resources for landowners, community members and community leaders, case studies and other information. 

Finally, if you'd like to read a bit more about Collin's experiences and insights gained from seeing the HP-CC Fire impacts first hand, check out this great blog post he wrote for the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network: Stuck in the Mud: Gaps in Post-Fire Recovery Programs - Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Episode Start 

00:38 - Amanda Monthei Intro 

06:54 - Start of conversation—Collin's background 

08:17 - Gaps In post-fire conversation, preparedness and planning 

09:57 - Lessons From Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire

12:41 - Good examples of post-fire response 

14:25 - Need someone to direct post-fire tasks

16:14 - Is the only way to learn about recovery through experience? 

16:52 - Suppression vs. recovery teams—a need for both

18:39 - The importance of community recovery collaboratives 

21:00 - Developing a CWPP 

24:35 - Overthinking CWPP documents

26:35 - Common post-Fire challenges 

29:02 - Managing mental & emotional trauma (both community and practitioner) during the post-fire period

33:12 - How community and resident relationships to the land change after wildfires

32:33 - Fostering a love of place after (and despite) wildfire

35:03 - Getting community involved in post-fire preparedness

36:43 - Disconnect between FEMA & local organizations 

38:36 - What does a community that is well-prepared for post fire challenges look like?

Mando Perez spent around six years fighting fire while incarcerated as a young man. Upon his release in 2010, he began the arduous transition into a position with a federal firefighting agency, and now works as a senior firefighter for the El Dorado Hotshots. In this episode, he shares his experiences of working on an inmate fire crew and details how he transitioned to a full-time fire career after his release. He also talks about why he continues to pursue fire as a career, what he loves about the job, and offers some suggestions for people who may be on a path similar to his. Follow the link below to watch the Vice News short documentary on the El Dorado Hotshots (which I mentioned in this episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6T9R-cjXc0&t=312s To learn more about California Assembly Bill 2147—which allows formerly incarcerated firefighters to have their records expunged in order to gain employment more easily after their release—check out this piece in Politico from September: https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/11/california-clears-way-for-inmate-firefighters-to-enter-profession-upon-release-9424131. Finally, here are a few resources for anyone interested in getting a job as a wildland firefighter, regardless of their background: The Wildland Fire Apprenticeship Program: https://www.nafri.gov/wfap/ The Rio Hondo Fire Academy (which Mando attended and mentions in this episode): https://www.riohondofire.com/wildland-fire-academy The California Conservation Corps—this is a particularly good choice for college-aged people who have an interest in fire, trail work or other federal natural resource jobs: https://ccc.ca.gov/ Youth Conservation Corps—this program is for high schoolers who have an interest in natural resources work in general: https://www.fs.usda.gov/working-with-us/opportunities-for-young-people/youth-conservation-corps-opportunities

Life with Fire Podcast, Mystery Ranch Backpacks and the American Wildfire Experience (AWE) have joined forces to bring you this episode with Junior Lazaro—a wildland firefighter who received a Backbone Scholarship from AWE to share his experiences of fire through the Mystery Ranch Backbone Series and Life with Fire Podcast. 

Junior is a young wildland firefighter who shared his experiences of working in fire in his third season on a BLM handcrew out of eastern Oregon. In this episode, he spoke to some of his challenges and triumphs in pursuing wildland firefighting, and spoke especially to the role his father had in inspiring him to pursue this job. 

We appreciate both AWE's and Mystery Ranch's commitment to sharing the experiences of those working on the fireline, especially those from communities often underrepresented in content/media around wildland fire. This episode is the first of two that center the operational experiences of folks whose perspectives are not well represented in wildfire media. 

 

Need a gift for the outdoorsperson in your life? For mountain bikers, day hikers, travelers and festival lovers, I recommend the MR Hip Monkey.  It's almost too spacious—I always end up packing way more in it than I end up needing, but you never know when you're gonna need an extra layer or that second bag of gummy bears. 

For folks who love a good overnight ski trip, I can't recommend the Gallatin Peak 40 Liter pack enough. I've used this pack for everything from hut trips in the winter to traveling through Europe this fall to backpacking to alpine lakes in the summer. For those who don't have a ton of space to have a bag for every activity in their life, the Gallatin Peak checks multiple boxes and is a wonderfully multipurpose pack that can keep your life simple. Who needs four bags when you really just need this one!?

Triss Seemiller is a trans woman who started gender-affirming hormone therapy when she was on a shot crew in California. She transitioned soon after she left the crew. She has occasionally felt uneasy about sharing her identity with coworkers since transitioning, and in this episodes walks us through her breadth of experiences on different crews to talk about situations where she felt most empowered and comfortable being herself, as well as the situations that made her question her desire to stick with fire as a career. Through it all, she provides some incredible perspective on what it's like to navigate modern fire culture as a trans woman, and offers some suggestions for folks who want to build a more inclusive culture on their own crews and districts. 

This episode is sponsored by #ForestProud—a community of land stewards focused on keeping forests as forests while fighting for forest climate solutions in the era of climate change. They serve to "connect the dots" between organizations, initiatives, those interested in joining the forest sector and those already involved. To check out some of their great content, follow them on Instagram and Twitter at @forestproud. To become a member, learn more about them or donate, check out their website: https://forestproud.org/. 

Jeremy Bailey is a prescribed fire manager with the Nature Conservancy, and the brains behind the Prescribed Fire Training Exchange or TREX. On this episode, we talk about his inspiration for starting the TREX program, about how firefighters, homeowners, Indigenous peoples and communities have used prescribed fire to manage the landscapes around them, and about how prescribed fire is a critical tool for adapting ourselves to wildfire.

In the second half of our conversation with Jane Park, we spoke about some of the diversity initiatives that Jane has spearheaded within Banff National Park and Parks Canada as a whole. We also spoke about Jane's experiences of working in fire as a Korean-Canadian woman and type 1 incident commander, and why she thinks it's imperative to bring more people of color and women into the wildfire and prescribed fire spaces. Be sure to check out our first episode with Jane, which covers prescribed fire and fire management in Banff National Park! 

Mystery Ranch's new women's-specific fire packs: https://www.mysteryranch.com/Packs/Fire/New

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

 

Bobbie Scopa has had quite a long and storied fire career—she recently retired after 45 years working in both wildland and municipal fire, during which she worked her way into the Chief position and into numerous leadership positions over her career with the Forest Service. Notably, she was present on the Dude Fire in 1990, where six firefighters were tragically killed, and even served at Ground Zero after 9/11.

But Bobbie's story doesn't start and end with firefighting. She's also a trans woman, and has experienced the fire world as both a man and woman, having transitioned to female between fire seasons in the late 1980s. This gives Bobbie an exceedingly rare perspective on gender dynamics on the fireline—perspectives that she now shares widely through her podcast, Bobbie on Fire, as well as her new book, Both Sides of the Fireline, which is available for pre-order and will be released this fall. Through it all, Bobbie maintains an incredible ability to tell stories that serve not only as valuable lessons learned, but often as funny and relatable anecdotes for anyone who has worked in fire—and especially for those who are underrepresented in the fire space. 

To hear more of Bobbie's stories, check out her podcast and website. 

To pre-order Bobbie's book, find it on Barnes and Noble  or through our host's favorite local bookstore, Village Books in Fairhaven, WA. 

For more information on our newest sponsor, #ForestProud, check out their website. 

To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon. 

You've probably heard of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) but how about Traditional Ecological *Practices*?

In this episode, we spoke with Dr. Melinda Adams of the N’dee San Carlos Apache Tribe about translating Indigenous knowledge into Indigenous-led action—which means giving Indigenous practitioners the "space, opportunity and action" to see their knowledge systems play out on the landscape. We spoke about a whole lot more than that, though; we heard about Dr. Adams' PhD work at UC-Davis, about her new assistant professor position at the University of Kansas, about "rematriating" fire (bringing  women back into cultural fire decision making) and generally bringing more humility into the use of fire. We also spoke at length about her recent paper titled "Solastalgia to Soliphilia: Cultural Fire, Climate Change, and Indigenous Healing," which she co-authored with Erica Tom and Chairman Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono Tribe (who coined the term "Traditional Ecological Practices").

A bit more about Melinda: As a fire scholar, Dr. Adams concentrates on encouraging public participation in prescribed and controlled burns, getting more people fire certified, and placing more Indigenous-led cultural fire to the ground with allies, agencies, and Tribal members— “decolonizing fire” as she describes. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Haskell Indian Nations University (one of thirty-seven tribal colleges located across the United States), her Master of Science from Purdue University, and PhD from the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the intersection of ecology, environmental science, environmental policy and Native American studies; through her research and work, she envisions a future where cultural fire is used as a climate adaptation strategy while mitigating the frequency and intensity of catastrophic wildfire.

This is an important episode for those interested in Indigenous knowledge, understanding and practice of land stewardship—including the use of fire—but is absolutely essential for anyone who works in an agency or organization that emphasizes the importance of TEK, and especially for those who recognize a need for a different and more humble approach to fire and active stewardship.  

Beyond that, if you're looking for an antidote to your climate grief, look no further than this conversation with Melinda. Her energy for the work is incredible, and is bolstered by countless other Indigenous practitioners and allies who envision a more sustainable, Indigenous-led, community-based future of land stewardship and fire use. 

Timestamps: 

07:17 - Introduction

09:42 - Fire in Tribe's Cultural Stories

10:35 - Soliphilia

12:32 - California and Tribal Recognition

15:19 - Healing Powers of Cultural Fire

17:34 - State Agencies Invited to Cultural Fire Demos

18:37 - Wildfires and A Lack of Relationship with the Land

21:20 - Community Education

23:30 - Generational Protocol and Practices

24:46 - Traditional Ecological Practices

27:25 - Melinda's Teaching and Her Students' Focus

31:50 - The Humble Fire Approach

34:12 - Learn Homeland History Where You Burn

36:15 - Caring for the Place You Live

38:28 - Collaboration with Different Tribes

39:31 - Storytelling to Translate Scientific Findings

44:02 - Final Thoughts from Melinda

 

In this episode we speak with Sasha Berleman, who has a whole lot of irons in the...prescribed fire? Sasha has a doctorate from UC Berkeley, is the founder and director of the Fire Forward Program through Audubon Canyon Ranch, is a founding member of the Bay Area Prescribed Fire Council and much, much more. Oh, and a former hotshot. We've wanted to get Sasha on the show for a while now, and we were excited to talk about her community work and dedication of building up land stewards, regardless of their backgrounds. You can see more about Sasha on her website, https://www.firepoppyconsulting.com/, or by following her on social media (@thefirepoppy).

For the first episode of our mini-series on land use planning for fire resilience, we spoke with Molly Mowery about her background as a land use planner with a specific interest in preparing communities for wildfires, as well as about her work with the Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program. Listen in for some perspectives on community wildfire resilience, and stay tuned for the rest of the mini series, which will include interviews with other planners, builders and architects. As always, you can follow us on Twitter at @lwf_pod, or on Instagram at @lifewithfirepod. For those interested in supporting the podcast financially, our Patreon can be found at https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod.

In this episode, we talk with renowned author John Maclean about the decades he's spent investigating and writing about fatality wildfires in the West, as well as his latest project, a book about hotshot history and the Yarnell Hill Fire. We also touched on the influence his father—Norman Maclean, the preeminent voice of wildfire fatalities with his book Young Men and Fire—had on his early writing career, and even got a short cameo from the squirrel who lives in John's attic/workspace.

There's a chance you've seen Nez Perce wildland firefighter and model Celilo Miles in a recent advertisement for Victoria's Secret—in it, she wears Nomex pants and holds her hard hat, emblazoned with the Nez Perce Tribe's fire management program logo. After seeing the ad making the rounds in the wildland fire community, we tracked Celilo down to chat about her background as both a wildland firefighter and a model and how her appearance in the VS advertisement came about. She spoke about balancing modeling and fire, and what each vocation has taught her about the other. We also spoke about the dynamic of being a woman in fire, during which she provided some suggestions for other woman who are interested in fire or are just getting started.

This episode is the first in our series on women in wildfire, which will run until early May. 

Celilo in Vogue Magazine: https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/victorias-secret-love-cloud-launch-celilo-miles-interview

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Life with Fire website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Life with Fire email: lifewithfirepod@gmail.com

This episode's guest, Sue Husari, went from pounding dirt as the first woman to work for the Lassen Hotshots in 1976 to an eventual role as the Fire Management Officer for the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service, from which she retired in 2012. In between, she saw fundamental changes not only in how fires burn but in how we fight them. She provides some truly invaluable perspective in this episode, which is guest hosted by our friend Zeke Lunder from The Lookout, an online project that aims to contextualize wildfire information through storytelling and digital media. 

For more information about (or donate to) Zeke's project at the Lookout, check out their website: www.the-lookout.org.

To read a little bit about Sue's time on the Lassen Hotshots, check out this story by Life with Fire host Amanda Monthei from summer 2020: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/first-women-hotshots-wildland-firefighters/

To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Welcome to the first part of our six-episode series all about the Southwest, sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative!

In this episode, which is serving as an introduction to the series, we spoke with Mary Stuever, who is the Cimarron District Forester for New Mexico Forestry Division. Mary has a breadth of experience across disciplines in the fire world, which is well-reflected in our conversation. She's worked in suppression, prevention, fire ecology, community education, post-fire support and public information, among other roles in her long career in fire. As such, we touched on everything from her background in suppression (and subsequent health problems from smoke exposure) to her time providing post-fire community support for the folks in Mora, NM, which was devastated by the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire. Mora was not only impacted by the fire itself, but also by subsequent flooding and debris flows that destroyed wells, choked out acequias (critical agricultural waterways) and destroyed untold homes, properties and livelihoods. 

Mary reflected on the situation she found herself in in such a devastating post-fire environment, including what was needed and opportunities she saw for helping other communities prepare for similar situations. She also gave us a quick Southwest Fire Ecology 101 lesson, and was all around a great guest to chat about the huge diversity of wildfire issues facing the Southwest right now. Most of the topics we spoke to will be elaborated on in greater detail in upcoming episodes, so we hope you'll stick around and listen in as we release more episodes of this series over the next six weeks. 

For more information on post-fire impacts in Mora, check out some of the fantastic reporting  Patrick Lohmann of Source NM did both during and after the fire.

For more information about our sponsor for this series, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, check out their website, which is chock-full of resources related to Southwest fire ecology, research, management and communications. 

You can learn more about the Arizona Wildfire Initiative and their great work in community outreach, science communications and fire education on their website. 

Timestamps: 

08:55 - Role Of Fire In The Landscape

10:10 - Health Issues in Wildland Firefighting

12:13 - Basing Operational Decisions On Smoke Exposure

14:18 - Fire Ecology of the Southwest 101

23:22 - Intersecting Cultures And Fire Management in the Southwest

25:34 - Ecosystem-Specific Challenges and Different Tactics For Different Landscapes

27:51 - Mary's Experience Providing Post-Fire Support In Mora, NM (Following Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak)

36:29 - Post-Fire Recommendations For The Southwest

40:49 - Utilizing Art And Theater For Fire Education

44:03 - Bringing Community Members In As Partners

In our second Backbone Scholarship episode—sponsored by Mystery Ranch and the American Wildfire Experience—we chatted with Nez Perce wildland firefighter Riston Bullock, who spoke about his experiences working in fire over the last decade, about the challenges that have come up as he has gotten older and become a father, as well as the challenges of the Nez Perce Reservation to have more authority over their own fire management. Riston also spoke about his experience of seeing a fatality on a wildfire last summer, as well as the processing he's had to do in the aftermath of this incident. 

As we wrap up this year of Life with Fire, we want to thank Mystery Ranch Backpacks for the ongoing support not only of this podcast, but of storytelling in the wildland fire space more generally. For one stellar example, we cannot recommend their series on Sasha Berleman ("The Fire Poppy") enough. Go check it out if you're looking for something to do in these wierd days between Christmas and New Years. 

 

 

Listen—we know that prescribed fire liability insurance is a big, scary topic. But we encourage you to check out this episode, because while liability insurance is one of the bigger challenges in getting more "good fire" on the ground, it's also one of the least understood and more infrequently talked about challenges, likely because it is such a complex topic. With that in mind, learning more about those challenges and how people are working to solve them is critical to having a full understanding of prescribed fire and its usage (or lack thereof).

Thankfully, our guest this week—Daniel Godwin of the Ember Alliance—agreed to guide us on this journey into all the behind-the-scenes liability and insurance business that needs to happen before any driptorches are lit. Daniel—who is the director of programs and partnerships at the Ember Alliance in Colorado—brings an obvious passion and long-honed wit to how he talks about wildfire, and our conversation covered the gamut from how these policies affect our current fire reality, why they're impacting prescribed fire initiatives and what is being done to make it better.

If you're more the reading type, Daniel just published a piece over on the Ember Alliance's blog about this same topic. You can check it out here. 

On this episode, guest Nick Nauslar—a fire meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center—explains what contributed to the so-called "Labor Day Firestorm," that devastated the Northwest and Northern California on the week of September 6. Nick discussed all the factors that made this conflagration so historic, and also discussed how climate change—which took a lot of the blame in national media—played only a small part in what became one of the worst weeks of fire in US history.

After a bit of a fire-season-chaos break, we're back with an episode on probably our most requested topic—how wildfires impact animals. For this episode, we brought on Kendall Calhoun, who is pursuing a PhD at US Berkeley and does a majority of his research on how shifting fire regimes in California are impacting native wildlife species. Kendall studies how certain species like deer and coyotes have adapted to wildfire and how they continue to adapt to fires that burn more severely and more frequently than historical norms. His field work is done primarily in Northern California, and he has a particular love of/interest in the oak woodland ecosystems in the region. Above that, Kendall has a clear passion for this work which is reflected in his energy while talking about it. Check out our social media channels for nerdy wildfire content as well as insights from fire practitioners, fire organizations and scientists in the wildfire space: Life with Fire Twitter: https://twitter.com/lwf_pod Life with Fire Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifewithfirepod/ To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon and consider donating if you're able: https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod Thanks as always for listening, sharing, subscribing and reviewing the podcast! We greatly appreciate your support.

This week's guest Amanda Rau has worked for nearly every fire-adjacent agency or organization that exists in the state of Oregon. From the Forest Service to a contract crew to the Nature Conservancy and a current role with the Oregon Department of Lands, Amanda has had a hand in just about every side of the Oregon fire world that you can get.

Naturally, that means she has a lot of fantastic perspective on what she has gleaned from each job, as well as the lessons she's brought from the suppression world to her work as a prescribed fire advocate and current chair of the Oregon Prescribed Fire Council.

This conversation was recorded back in September in Eugene, Oregon, as fire crews prepped to burn a unit nearby. This conversation is also broken up into two parts—part two will be released next week. 

 

In this episode, we explore one of the topics that is most requested by Life with Fire listeners—cultural burning. We spoke with Karuk tribal member Bill Tripp about his early experiences of cultural burning, and how those experiences reflect in his current work as Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe. We spoke at length about California's Senate Bill 332 (which was signed into law by Gavin Newsom just after Bill and I spoke back in September) and how it would benefit cultural burning practices, as well as how the Karuk Tribe is engaging its youth to return to traditional tribal practices like burning. Information about California Senate Bill 332 and what it means for cultural burners can be found here: https://www.siskiyoudaily.com/story/news/2021/09/16/these-two-new-california-bills-help-tribes-complete-prescribed-burn-projects/8363483002/ For those interested in donating to the podcast, the Life with Fire Patreon can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

How will the infrastructure bill impact wildland firefighting and our overall fire resilience? We spoke with Riva Duncan—who is the executive secretary of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighter Coalition—about the bill and its implications for the wildland fire workforce. In addition to providing some greater understanding of the bill and its provisions, Riva also answers a few of the most common questions she's been getting about the legislation. 

More information about the Grassroots Wildland Firefighter Coalition as well as how to help can be found on their website.

If you're digging these conversations, you can donate to Life with Fire through our  Patreon. 

 

Today's episode is a special one. We collaborated with the Montana Media Lab—a program of the University of Montana's School of Journalism—to help support their winter "Youth Voices" workshop, which empowers young rural and Indigenous storytellers to learn more about audio storytelling while sharing stories from their communities. This episode features five stories from high school students in Browning and Florence, Montana, all of which are centered around wildfire's presence in their communities.

Story one (timestamp: 6:32) centers on the experiences of volunteer wildland firefighters on the Blackfeet (Niitsitapi) Reservation, as well as on the history of Indigenous burning on Blackfeet Nation ancestral lands. Created by: Trysten Hannon, Callie Wood and Chloe Croff. 

Story two (12:29) is a profile of a student's grandfather, who spoke about his experiences as a Chief Mountain hotshot back in the 70s and 80s. Created by: Amanda Andersen-Marxer and Ariel McFadyean. 

Episode three (16:34) focuses on the experiences of a few modern day members of the Chief Mountain Hotshots. Created by: Sierra Freedenburg and Danaia Moreno. 

Story four (19:49) highlights how wildfires impact wildlife, and provided an opportunity for students to speak with employees at their reservation's fish and wildlife office. Created by: Rihanna ManyWhiteHorses, Shy'lee Kittson and Bailey Gobert. 

Finally, story five (24:11) shows the unexpected impacts of having an incident command post pop up at your high school during a major wildfire in your area. Created by: Lily Crawford, Reese Briney and Shiloh Williams. 

We owe a huge thank you to the students and teachers who worked hard to make this episode possible, as well as to Mary Auld of the Montana Media Lab, who pitched and coordinated this initiative. We'd also like to thank the instructors for this project—Kathleen Shannon, Elinor Smith and JoVonne Wagner. 

This episode was made possible with support from the American Wildfire Experience and Mystery Ranch Backpacks. 

For updates on the American Wildfire Experience's 2024 Digital Storytelling Micro Grants Program, follow them on Instagram at @wildfire.experience and @thesmokeygeneration. 

 

In this episode, we explore the new Forest Service directive requiring all new fire starts to be suppressed immediately. Fire scientist Matt Hurteau is our guide on this journey, as he discusses the directive itself, as well as the precedent it sets and its widespread criticism. He and dozens of other fire scientists voiced these criticisms in a letter to Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, which can be found here: http://www.hurteaulab.org/.../chief_moore_letter... To follow Life with Fire, check out our Instagram (@lifewithfirepod) or our Twitter (@lwf_pod). To support our Patreon, please visit www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod.

In our second episode with Oregon Prescribed Fire Council found Amanda Rau, we discuss how she has connected the dots between her philosophy degree and her fire career, what other agencies and jobs she is interested in pursuing, the Oregon Certified Burn Manager Course and her vision for getting fire in the hands of more people in Oregon and beyond. 

Learn more about the Oregon Prescribed Fire Council: https://www.oregonrxfire.org/

This episode is sponsored by Mystery Ranch Backpacks. Whether you need the toughest load-bearing backpack on the market or a bag for your laptop, Mystery Ranch has what you're looking for. Check out their fire packs (specifically their women's fire packs!) here: https://www.avantlink.com/click.php?tt=pl&ti=4703&pw=348921&mi=13570&pt=3&pri=603

 

President Biden recently rolled out a plan to treat 50 million acres of land with fire over the next 10 years. The question is—is 50 million acres actually realistic with the system we have in place right now? We spoke with environmental law and policy expert Michael Wara about the logistics of actually putting that much fire on the ground to reduce risk in vulnerable communities, how we may not be in a place to scale it to that level yet, and what we can do to get to the necessary level of fuels reduction and fire resilience. We also talked a bit about Michael's job as the Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford, and what he and his students are doing in the environmental and wildland fire spaces to help fire practitioners and build fire resilience into law and policy. This is our episode one of two with Michael, with the next publishing in two weeks.

Timestamps:
7:55 — Wildfire risk to utilities.
15:30 — Biden's plan to burn 50 million acres in 10 years.
21:35 — Limitations of Forest Service resources in achieving those acreage goals.
26:00 — Thinking radically about the future of fire policy.

In this episode we spoke with Will Harling about his work with the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council, as well as his experiences of growing up in Northern California on the banks of the Salmon and Klamath Rivers. Will had some fantastic insights on how prescribed fires are burdened with immense liability, restrictions and permitting, while wildfires are not treated the same—despite that modern wildfires are more severe because of human behaviors like full suppression firefighting and climate change. Will argues that modern wildfires are no longer an act of God, and that things like managing wildfires for prescriptive purposes could be a good step towards meeting forest management objectives. For more information on the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council—which Will is the executive director of—check out their website: http://www.mkwc.org/

Have you seen that C̶o̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶ Hotshot shirt from Hotshot Brewery (you can look at it here if you're unfamiliar)? This episode's guest Harrison Raine walks us through doing both of those things at once—and shares why he thinks more firefighters should pursue fire-adjacent degrees and careers that can make use of that invaluable, on-the-ground fire experience. 

During his undergrad, Harrison scored a fellowship that allowed him to travel the world to explore fire management practices in places like South Africa, Greece and Australia, among others. The result of that work (which can be found here) provided a profound framework for his continued work in academia, which has largely been funded by his work as a wildland firefighter through the summers. 

Harrison encourages firefighters to lean in to the unique experiences they've had if they leave fire, especially as so many agencies, organizations and businesses are trying to find solutions in the wildfire space. We also spoke about his fellowship experiences, as well as what he is researching as a grad student at UC Berkeley, working primarily in the wildland urban interface realm. 

A few things that Harrison mentioned that we wanted to link to: 

The Mountain Legacy Project

The Pau Costa Foundation

 

As always, we owe a massive thanks to MYSTERY RANCH for sponsoring this episode of Life with Fire, as well as a number of previous episodes. MYSTERY RANCH is proud to be the first pack company to provide women’s specific harnessing in their HOTSHOT Line as well as their HOT SPEED pack in our engine/IA category. To see their entire line of fire packs—including their women's packs and packs for international firefighters who don't use fire shelters—check out their website here. 

Finally, if you'd like to support Life with Fire with a monthly donation, please check out our Patreon for tier options—Patrons who donate at the $7 tier and above will get some Life with Fire and Mystery Ranch swag! 

In the second half of their conversation, Michael Wara and Amanda briefly dive into the nitty gritty of liability regimes as they relate to both wildland and prescribed fires, how smoke will continue to impact communities across the West and finally, how the current suppression workforce structure is not a practical means of moving into a more fire-adapted future.
Of course, a suppression workforce will always be important, but Michael considers the abysmal work-life balance of the current wildland fire suppression structure and how that contributes to low retention of skilled employees. Eventually this brings him to consider how women are pushed out of the suppression/operational fire world by way of wanting a family or children, and how this has long-standing implications for the sustainability of the workforce and its objectives.

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfire

Life with Fire Website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Notes:

3:15—Wildfire liability/responsibility regimes

8:45—Air quality impacts on communities

12:30—Prescribed fire liabilities, California's "claims fund"

21:55—Sustainability of suppression workforce; retention and having a family; the engrained misogyny of wildland firefighter work-life balance

23:30—Could community fire stewards be the future of sustainable employment in the wildfire/prescribed fire spaces?

26:55—The desperate need to build a bigger, skilled workforce to meet our management objectives

In this episode, we spoke with Dr. Jessica McCarty—the branch chief for the Biospheric Sciences branch at NASA's Ames Research Center—about her career, her work on fire in boreal and arctic ecosystems (within the context of the Canadian wildfires last summer), her perspectives on fire technology (spoiler: she's a big fan of predictive modeling) and so many other topics that we couldn't possibly list them all here. 

Here's her NASA bio, which explains her background better than we ever possibly could: Dr. McCarty has more than 15 years’ experience in applications of Earth observations and geospatial and data science to accurately quantify wildland and human-caused fire management and emissions, agriculture and food security, climate change impacts and adaptation, and land-cover/land-use change. 

Quick note that this episode was recorded in August 2023, so there are a few things we spoke about that are maybe not exactly timely right now, but are nonetheless relevant to the ongoing conversation about wildfire resilience (for example, the tragedy in Lahaina and the, at that time, still ongoing fire season in Canada).

To learn more about Dr. McCarty's background and research, check out her full NASA bio page. 

07:42 - Wildfire and Different Plant Species

09:05 - What Satellites Can and Cannot Tell Us

10:49 - The Lahaina Tragedy—Response, Fire/Management History on Maui

13:41 - Preparing To Deal With Fire and Building Resilience At Scale

17:06 - Invest In Being Good Neighbors

19:22 - Landscaping Choices as They Relate To Wildfire

20:43 - How We Can Thrive With Fire

22:41 - Why We Need More Prescribed Fire

24:49 - The Energy Grid As A Fire Risk

25:44 - New Emergency Notification System/Emergency Management Perspectives

27:59 - Agency Scientists Are Underutilized

30:12 - Emergency Management/Response and How It Can Save Lives

31:45 - Fire: Everybody's Problem, Everybody's Solution

33:08 - Fire Regimes in Boreal Forests

36:33 - Extreme Fire Year In Canada

38:28 -The Realities of Wildfire Evacuations

40:25 - The Arctic Council

44:43 - Closing

If you’ve ever worked in fire, there’s a good chance a few of Stephen Pyne’s fire books were laying around the station or office where you worked. Pyne is without a doubt the foremost expert of fire history in the US—in this episode we spoke about his concept of a “pyrocene,” about the evolution of fire management in the US since the Big Burns of 1910, and about how we can prepare to live in landscapes where fires—not humans—set the terms.

Welcome to episode four of our Fire in the Southwest Series, supported by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium as well as the Arizona Wildfire Initiative! Today's guest, Zander Evans, is the executive director of the Forest Stewards Guild, which has a mission of promoting ecologically-, economically-, and socially-responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems and the human communities dependent upon them. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Guild's team—including Zander, who has worked there for over 17 years—has seen the first-hand impacts of some of the most destructive wildfires of the last two decades, including the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire.

Zander and Amanda spoke about the role of the Forest Stewards Guild in helping provide more capacity for often resource-strapped agencies, as well as how their roles are shifting with the legacy and rise in megafires like the CC/HP Fire. We discussed the Guild's objective to connect work on the ground to policy, while creating a network of land stewards that can learn from each other and share resources, lessons learned and other critical information that can help others dealing with similar issues across the country. 

We covered a lot in this episode, and in classic form, Amanda asked many difficult-to-answer questions that Zander did a great job of tackling—including questions about trauma-informed community engagement, how to continue to get good work done within a legacy of escaped prescribed fires and how communities can more effectively prepare for the "post-fire" piece of the resilience equation. 

Things mentioned in the episode:

Santa Fe Fireshed

GoFundMe for Smokey Bear Hotshots. Many of the crew's members tragically lost their homes in the fires near Ruidoso, NM last week. They were responding to the fire when this happened. Please support if you're able!

 

Timestamps: 

07:56 - The Guild's Intersection With Wildfire Management

13:38 - Engagement Practices Since Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak

15:38 - Keeping Agency Folks In Same Roles/Locations Would Help Collaborative Efforts

16:44 - Guild Partnership With The Forest Service

19:27 - Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire Aftermath And Community Perception of Prescribed Fire

23:57 - Zander's Recommendations For Other Fire Prone Communities

26:12 - Santa Clara Pueblo Takeaways

28:00 - Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) Should Include Post Fire Element

30:20 - Preplanning For Post Fire Impacts and Things To Consider In Pre Planning

37:14 - Encouraging People To Go Back Outside After Experiencing Fire Trauma

39:05 - The Santa Fe Fireshed and Using Watershed Concerns to Frame Management Practices

44:24 - Implementation Takes Community Engagement!

The Mt. Adams Resource Stewards in Washington State is an excellent example of a hyper-local solution to community fire resilience. Started in 2004 by this week's guest, Jay McLaughlin, the organization now boasts a community forest, a 10-person stewardship crew, community development programs and fire adaptation resources for nearby communities.
Jay has a deep pool of experience in engaging rural (often former logging) communities in fire resilience and more progressive land management; in today's episode, we speak about the challenges of an organization like this, but also the myriad ways this work has been immensely rewarding for Jay and others in the community. He also offers some suggestions and bits of advice for others who hope to develop similar organizations in their own communities.

More information on the Mt. Adams Resource Stewards: https://mtadamsstewards.org/

Deer Humans Podcast Link: https://player.fm/series/deer-humans

Life with Fire website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Time stamps:

5:48 — Mt. Adams Resource Stewards background/creation; fuels program development

8:56 — Working forest creation and introduction of stewardship crew

15:00 — Is this type of organization scalable across other Western communities?

17:35 — Earning buy-in from resource-dependent communities; outreach insights in rural communities, hearing out detractors

20:14 — Original inspiration for starting the organization

22:09 — Funding sources.

24:20 — Building connections in resource-dependent areas

25:41 — Suggestions for other organizers interested in creating a community forest

We covered such a broad range of subjects with guest Phil Higuera in this episode that it was hard to nail down a title. Nonetheless, Phil's expansive research background lended well to a conversation that covered paleoecology, how lake sediment is used to determine events that happened 13,000 years ago, how forests are changing with a warming climate and how we humans can choose to respond to those changes. Our main objective with the conversation was to discuss Phil's research in Western Washington's San Juan Islands (host Amanda's backyard) while getting his Master's degree at the University of Washington; the work he did there is part of a limited pool of research on fire history in Western Washington, and we wanted to see if Phil might have some perspective on the risk of a large, high-severity conflagration in this area, particularly with the 2020 Labor Day Fires as a pertinent reminder of what can happen in these ecosystems.

 

As always, we appreciate you listening and sharing and engaging with Life with Fire. If you'd like to support us financially you can do so in a variety of ways on our website's "Donate" page: www.lifewithfirepod.com/donate. 

As indicated by the title of this episode, we covered some SERIOUS ground in our conversation with Dr. Natasha Stavros, Director of the Earth Lab at CU Boulder. Natasha's background in the academic realm combined with personal experiences with wildfire (being evacuated from one of California's first megafires back in the early 2000s, and most recently seeing the impacts of the Marshall Fire on the Boulder community) gives her a strong understanding of fire from both the academic and the community/human perspective. As such, our conversation touched on everything from how the right technology can help build fire resilience if paired with strong policy, the impacts of smoke on vulnerable populations and her own reckoning with the psychological impacts and trauma of wildfire.

Learn more about Natasha and the work she is doing at the Earth Lab: https://earthlab.colorado.edu/our-team/natasha-stavros

Contribute to the work we're doing here at Life with Fire by becoming a patron!  

Need a pack? Our sponsor Mystery Ranch probably has something for ya, whether you're looking for a backpacking setup for the summer or new fire packs for your crew. Check out their selection here: https://bit.ly/410LZ85

If you've found yourself wondering "where the heck is the aircraft?" while watching a fire burn near you, this is the episode for you.

Guest Matt Lynde—a helicopter operations specialist for the Forest Service's Regional Office in California—gave us a run-down on why some fires have huge airshows and others have almost none, and even tackled a few common misconceptions about the use of aircraft in fighting wildfires. Among these misconceptions is the idea that aircraft put fires out and that if you don't see aircraft on a fire, that means it's not a high priority for fire managers. As Matt explains in this episode, there's a ton that goes into the decisions on where aircraft goes and when, and noted how challenging it is to prioritize certain fires over others during big fire seasons when resources are limited.

Matt also spoke about his career as a helicopter coordinator, and how he climbed the ranks from being on engines and helitack for the Forest Service early in his career to finding an interest in aerial supervision and coordination later in his career. If you have an interest in working on the aerial side of things within the Forest Service, this is a good episode for you.

This episode of Life with Fire was created in conjunction with Region Five of the Forest Service, for a project that explores some of the common public misconceptions about aerial firefighting. The full Storymap can be found here. 

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Episode Introduction

05:07 - Matt's Introduction And Background 

06:51 - Helicopter Coordinator Position Details

08:38 - Matt's Initial Interest In Aviation 

10:22 - Changes In Air Attack 

12:19 -  Safety Procedures And Risk Factors of Aerial Firefighting

14:45 - Misconceptions About Aircraft Firefighting

17:36 - Benefits Of Helicopter Coordination

18:53 - Fire Retardant Use—Benefits and Limitations

20:14 - How Aircraft Supports Firefighters On The Ground 

23:32 - Other Limitations To Fighting Fire With Aircraft 

25:06 - What Factors Inform Availability of Aerial Support 

28:02 - Lack Of Resources Problem 

30:03 - Outro 

In this episode, we spoke with wildfire research extraordinaire Crystal Kolden, who is an assistant professor at UC-Merced. Crystal has a breadth of interests and areas of expertise, and is probably one of our favorite follows on "Wildfire" Twitter. We discussed her humanities background and what led her to an interest in wildfire, the wildfire misconceptions that most irk her and how we can better talk about wildfire impacts and wildfire topics in general. For more information on Crystal and her research, check out her Twitter @pyrogeog or her website, www.pyrogeographer.com. Life with Fire Podcast can be found on Twitter at @lifewithfirepod or on Instagram at @lifewithfirepod. To support Life with Fire Podcast, check out our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod.

In our final episode sponsored by Protect Our Winters, we explored the economics of wildfire (both it's suppression and it's community and recreational impacts) with Jude Bayham, an environmental and resource economist at Colorado State University.

Jude told us about some of his upcoming research, which he's hoping will utilize Strava data to determine where people continue to recreate in the aftermath of wildfires, in addition to lots of other cool stuff he has in the works. We also explored the proliferation of Lyme disease as a result of fire exclusion, a problem that is most pronounced in the Northeast, and how that's inordinately impacting the outdoor community in certain regions.  

Learn more about Jude's breadth of wildfire and economics research here. 

You can learn more our sponsor, Protect our Winters, and their Stoke the Vote campaign—which encourages the outdoor community to do their research, register to vote and make their voices heard ahead of this fall's midterms. Learn more about the campaign and POW's other work here. 

To support Life with Fire, follow us on Instagram and  Twitter; you can also support us/help pay the bills (and our host's burgeoning addiction to iced lattes) by donating to our Patreon. 

Song featured in POW ad: The Times They Are A Changin' by Goth Babe

 

In our second episode of the Women in Wildfire series, we brought on Banff National Park Fire and Vegetation Management Specialist Jane Park, who on top of being a profound presence in the wildfire and prescribed fire management space is also, quite simply, really frickin cool (and very fun to chat with). Jane is a Korean-Canadian woman and a type one incident commander; she has also played a huge role in building more diversity within the Canada Parks system, and has notable on-the-ground achievements in bringing more progressive fire management to Banff National Park. We broke this conversation up in to two parts, with the first focusing on fire ecology/regimes in and around Banff, as well as some of the prescribed fire initiatives Jane has led in the park (and a whole lot more).

Stay tuned for the second half of our conversation with Jane, which will be published later next week. 

We also want to give a big shout out to our new sponsor, Mystery Ranch Backpacks. To browse their seemingly endless catalog of backpacks for any activity you can think of, check out their website: www.mysteryranch.com

To see Mystery Ranch's new women-specific fire packs (!!), check out https://www.mysteryranch.com/Packs/Fire/New.  

To donate to Life with Fire, check out our Patreon—patrons who donate at the $15 level and up will recieve a Mystery Ranch swag pack, while those who donate at $20 and up will get a Life with Fire calendar: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Welcome to the first episode of our four-part series discussing the impacts of wildfire on recreation, sponsored by Protect Our Winters! For this episode, Jamie Ervin of the Outdoor Alliance walked us through the myriad ways that wildfires create barriers to recreation access and enjoying the outdoors. From air quality impacts to forest closures, Jamie talks about what recreationists can continue to expect from worsening wildfire seasons, while also talking about why it's important to remember fire's place in many of the landscapes we all love to recreate in. Jamie has a background in wildfire policy and currently works as a policy associate for the Outdoor Alliance—making him a perfect guest guide us through the growing relevance of how wildfires will continue to impact recreation and public lands access, as well as what we can do about it. 

 

Protect our Winters is a climate advocacy organization that engages the outdoor community in on-the-ground and legislative climate action. We encourage you to check out their website, where you can pledge to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, learn more about what they do as well as how to support them. 

 

You can learn more about the Outdoor Alliance here.

If you're feeling extra benevolent today, consider becoming a Patron and donating to the Life with Fire Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Music from Goth Babe. 

 

Hello again! After a hefty mid-winter break, Life with Fire is back with our first episode of 2023. This episode was recorded from the road last fall, with guest Christopher Adlam. 

Chris is the regional fire specialist for the Southwest Oregon region of Oregon State's Fire Extension, and had some great insights on community and individual fire resilience, OSU's fire extension programming and, finally, how we can better communicate with communities about both prescribed and managed fire. We chatted next to an old burn unit above Ashland, Oregon, in a popular recreation area—this being the case, the audio in this episode has a little more character than normal, thanks to wind, birds and mountain bikers. We also had a short visit from a local hiker, who shared some of his own thoughts on fire use in the area, smoke impacts of prescribed fire units and his perceptions of wildfire risk in Ashland. It was a fun side conversation and a great example of how engaged community members are in what's happening on the land in their backyards. 

 

To learn more about the OSU Fire Extension and stay up to date on its workshops, webinars and other programming, check out its website or Twitter.

To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon. 

 

How can First Nation and Indigenous communities regain power over their long-honed land stewardship and cultural burning practices? How can these practices be done without the influence of Westernized practices, which includes prescribed burning?

Today's guest Amy Cardinal Christianson, a Métis woman and Fire Social Scientist for the Canadian Forest Service, addressed these questions (and so, so many others) for us in today's episode. On top of advocating for greater authority for First Nation communities over their ancestral lands, Amy also has an extensive background in researching the connection between First Nation communities and wildfire. Her most recent research centers heavily on wildfire evacuations in First Nations communities in Canada; various overlapping factors (like remote locations and a lack of emergency response infrastructure) often result in disproportionate wildfire impacts to First Nations communities.

We owe a huge thank you to Amy for coming on the show to share her perspective; it was a privilege to learn about the work she's involved in, as well as how First Nations communities continue to reestablish control over their homelands—while touching on some of the roadblocks she's experienced along the way. To hear more from Amy, you can check out her absolutely stellar podcast, "Good Fire," here: https://yourforestpodcast.com/good-fire-podcast

Finally, this episode is sponsored by Mystery Ranch Backpacks, which recently came out with women's-specific sizing on their fire packs (!!!) which we are inordinately excited about. Whether you need something that can keep up on day after day of digging line or a bomber duffel bag for weekend trips, you can rest assured that Mystery Ranch packs come ready to be used hard and put away wet, no matter what. You can dig around on their website here: https://www.mysteryranch.com/womens-hotshot-tl-wildland-fire-pack