Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the 35th episode of Wildfire Matters, the podcast that covers all aspects of wildland fire management for the bearer of land management, or blm. We talk with the people who help manage and protect our public lands, many who dedicate their lives to the profession. Co hosting with me today is Caleb Ashby from BLM Fire External Affairs. Caleb, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Just started with BLM Public affairs over at the National Energy Issue Fire center this last January, but not new to the BLM. Started about in 2001 and worked in some various functions starting in fire and post fire rehabilitation and some fuels work which we're going to talk about and just a myriad of things. But happy to be over at the National Energy Fire Center.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Thanks Caleb. It's good to have you on. Thanks for joining. Today we're interviewing TJ Clifford, Deputy Division Chief of the Division of Fire Planning and Fuels Management. Diane Mastin Dixon, she's with us virtually. She's from blm, Colorado State Fuels Program Manager. And Casey Chesbrough, BLM Wyoming High Plains District Fuels Program Manager. And we also have Lance Okeson, he's recently retired from blm Idaho Boise District. He was the fuels program manager. So they're joining us today to share perspectives from different levels of management about what fields management is, how it's done and how crucial it is to reducing the severity of wildfires. So welcome TJ Casey, Diane and Lance, thanks for coming on today.
Okay, so first off, tell us a little bit more about yourselves. What led to your current positions. And TJ we'll start with you. How did you end up in your current role?
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Thanks, Piper.
[00:01:56] Speaker D: Well, I actually started as a hydrologist from the University of Arizona and I've been in Idaho and done about 31 years total career. But lately this last job that the deputy division chief, it's been about a year actually here in April and it's my entire career has either been in fire or doing fire fire suppression, post fire programs, but from the perspective of a hydrologist until this last year. And I just want to go into a little bit of story why I'm in this position and why I'm so passionate about it today. I guess I feel like there's a story needed in 2020. I was part of a triage. We had a huge season. It was actually six and a half million acres of almost 11 million acres in California, Oregon and Washington. And so the post fire program put me and a few others in place as a small team to triage all those fires and decide which ones we would do an assessment on for post fire flooding or post fire emergencies. And for the most part, the job was normal. Until I, until we had to travel through thousands of burned homes, homes that were totally burned to the ground. The only thing still standing was in most cases, the propane tanks, which is weird. And I remember asking that, why are those propane tanks the only thing standing? And to see that many homes so close up to up right against our natural resources was an eye opener. It was an emotional eye opener for me, and I think that was tough. And knowing that my entire career was spent on post fire programs and that we, we know what could prevent or reduce these fires. So that eye opener kind of put me into a very passionate style or a passionate moment of, hey, let's see if we can take care of this. And so I feel like I'm in the position that I can help out and guide and see where we can go as an agency. And that's why we can do better by active management of vegetation.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: That's awesome. I'm excited that you're going to get to share with us just how important this work is. So next we'll move on to Casey. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you ended up in your current role?
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. I, you know, for me, kind of the. The traditional operations, fire operations route into fuels, I guess, pretty much started as a wildland firefighter while I was going to college. I did finish my degree, but pretty much went straight from there into working on a hotshot crew for quite a few years there. And then when I left the hotshot crew and worked on an engine, became an engine boss. And all this was with the Forest Service initially. So most of my career was actually with the Forest Service, moved up into an AFMO role and an FMO role for a little while with the Forest Service. And that was at a time, at least on the forest that I was on, where we didn't separate operations and fuels. So the AFMO just did both. You know, we kind of focused on fire suppression fire management during that fire season time frame. And then in the winter months or the off season, we tried to fit in as much fuels treatment type work that we could. So kind of developed that passion for fuels work. Through that, I worked on really small Forest Service districts and so really got used to that interdisciplinary work, even as a fire employee working with the range staff, the foresters, the wildlife biologists, the hydrologists, to, to get that work done. And that was something I really, really enjoyed. I think outside of, outside the fire operation side of things, you know, simultaneously with all that, like a lot of fire folks got really heavily involved with incident management teams. Currently work as an incident commander on a complex incident management team here in the Rocky Mountain area.
I think for me, really that that side of things really cemented the, the passion for fuels. You know, when you're out on the ground, whether it's on a hotshot crew or as a division supervisor making decisions, ongoing wildfires and trying to strategize, really seeing the effects of not having effective fuels management projects on the ground is really, really drove home the importance of fuels work to me and the job that we do. So came over to the blm, gosh, about five years ago in a primary, primarily a fuels role at the field office level, and then moved up to the district level a couple years ago. So.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Thanks, Casey. Okay, Diane, how about you?
[00:06:30] Speaker E: Hey, Piper. So my intro into the fuels program was probably a little different path than I think is probably typical. I came up through the resources side of blm, so I got my bachelor's degree in environmental science. I got my master's degree in rangeland ecology and management and have worn a lot of different hats for the blm. I've been range tech, an AIM crew lead. I spent a lot of time at working on sagebrush and sage grouse conservation. And through that I did oil and gas, I did range. I did a lot of different habitat projects focusing on sagebrush ecosystems. And a big part of that is fuels mitigation in part to, you know, support those habitats so that they we can hopefully avoid wildfire coming into some of those sensitive habitats, but then also to restore different habitat types to bring prescribed fire fuels reduction into the ecosystem, because fire really is part of the ecosystem. And how can we do that in a way that's a little bit more controlled, where we can adjust for some of the variables that we might otherwise be concerned about.
So kind of came into it from that perspective in that direction. So since I've been in this role, I've. I'm pretty new to my position. I've only been here for coming up on a year, but it's just been a really awesome part of my BLM journey, bringing in some of my other natural resources background into the fire program and really trying to balance out some of our needs to manage fuels, but also our needs to be land managers at the Bureau of Land Management and manage for all these other multiple resources that we care about.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Thanks, Diane. Excited to hear about Your perspective on restoration, how that comes into play later. Okay. And Lance, tell us a bit about yourself.
[00:08:38] Speaker F: Thank you. Yeah. Lance Okason was recently just retired from the job here in the Boise district BLM as Fields program lead manager, whatever you want to call us. I was there for 18 years. Before that I was in Lakeview. I was a range con there for four years, which again, back to what Diane was saying. And I really identify with what she was saying in regards to that resource fuels connection and being able to work on that side, figure out a lot of those early logistics of all that side so that you could be more effective on the fuels, designing treatments, getting authorization, which is everything. If you don't have authorization, you have nothing before that. I was in burns for a long time in the fire. I was the Falls there in French Glen and then in Burns, Oregon for years. And then I was the first fuels person they hired there when they started hiring fuels people for their blm. And I did a lot of landscape prescribed fire. That's been kind of my. One of my passions of my career is reintroducing fire to these landscapes. And I was able to do a lot of that here in Boise. And that was one of the primary reasons I came to Boise, was that they wanted to start using fire at a landscape level in the Oahis and needed somebody to do that. So that was one of the reasons I came here, one of the primary reasons. Yeah. And let's see, before that, I started my career like Casey and everybody else did, working summers while I was going to college. I never intended to be in fire. I used to make fun of people that were in fire for a living because I was like, couldn't you do anything better with your life?
And then I realized after so many years, you're like, man, I've got a lot of time invested in this. And, and, and then they, they, you know, we're offering, you know, permanent jobs, holy cow. Something that we never even thought of back then in the 80s. Anyways, that's how I ended up in that it was kind of. It just kept following me around and I kept going back to it as a, as a need be, but only for a temporary time until I got, you know, to the. Where I wanted to be. And pretty soon I was. That's where, you know, And I think so many people done that. Their careers are just like, man, I never intended to be here. But I started on the Ochko National Forest there. I went to high school in Prineville. And let's see 84 is when I started that. And really I started out in the fall, not the actual summer. So fall we started out burning clear cuts for the Forest Service. And man, you talk about going from nothing to out there. Yeah. Doing everything from all the aspects of actual, you know, light and then holding and all that stuff. And anyways, it's been, I guess I was hooked from, from the day one on that. So I've always. But for me the big thing is, is again, you know, the fuels programs just is so integral to so many different programs. Whether it's the range program, there's tons of stuff the fuels program does with the range program to the point that I've, I've counseled my people in my program. I mean I've just flat said if you can't understand and learn how to work with the grazing community, then, then you're in the wrong agency because that is one of our major programs and it's also one of the user groups on the landscape. And if you can't figure out how to fit them into your program and use them to your advantage, then you're in the wrong, you're in the wrong outfit. You need to go find maybe some other part, you know, would be. But it ain't the blm. Anyways, I'll stop with that.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Lance. I know you're out enjoying your retirement, but it's great to have you back on. So thanks for coming. All right, to get started. Tj, can you give us an overview of the BLM fire planning and fuels management program? So you work at nifc, which is headquarters for BLM fire management. So you just want to give us like a top down explanation of how it works?
[00:12:37] Speaker D: Yeah, but now that Lance said all this, I have to go back a little bit. So I also started as a hotshot, but I put myself into school for watershed management. And so I was a hydrologist and thought I would just go right to hydrologist. But now I'm realizing that I started as a in fire and now I'm ending in fire because I'm not more than a couple years or behind Lance on that.
And now what I'm going to say about NIFSY and what we do for fuels management, I'm stealing from Lance. He taught me as we were working out in the weight room. Literally taught me as we were working.
[00:13:13] Speaker F: We've had a lot of conversations there.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:13:16] Speaker D: 0600 Lance's tough telling me how I should be managing the resources. But it comes down to three things. For Fuels management. And it's to summarize community protection, safe firefighter response and fire resilient landscapes. To explain a little bit or get in a more detail what we do or what we need to do. The reason I want, I'm in this and, and thinking about 2020 in those houses is we need to threaten, reduce that threat to wildfire or threat of wildfire to communities and the infrastructure serving those communities. We need to provide a defensible line of defense so that the firefighters are safe, but they can also be successful because they have a place to go to, to back up to and then last just reduce or you know, in Miami. It's kind of weird, but I want to reduce or eliminate the damage caused by wildfires because we're working with them. There is no, there's. The post fire program is lessened because we're doing such a good job of thinking ahead and how to reduce those wildfire, the damage from wildfires. That's my summary, I guess.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Okay, very good. And so, Diane, you have the perspective of a state lead. So do you want to explain what the goal is for a state like Colorado with their fuels program just so we can get a better understanding of how things piece apart?
[00:14:45] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. So with what TJ laid out, you know, those are kind of our main bins for how we look at the program in general. But then when we come into Colorado, we look at the types of fuels that we have around and the types of communities and resources that we have around. And also, you know, we try to learn from some of the fires that we've had in our state. So for Colorado, we have a really broad different types of vegetation because we have so much topography. We have big elevation changes, we've got different mountain ranges, river corridors that, that create a ton of variability on our landscape. So we have a ton of different systems that we're managing for. So with that, we have different fuel types. We have a lot of big timber trees, we have a lot of woodlands, we have a bunch of shrublands and some grasslands too. So all of those different fuel types give you a different fire behavior. And with that, we have a bunch of communities that are interspersed throughout that. So, you know, we have cities and towns, but also a ton of exurban development or people that are living in this wildland urban interface. And along with that, people that live there. We have to look at all of our infrastructure that's out there. Colorado has a lot of oil and gas infrastructure that is also something that we consider to be in WUI So once we kind of think about the different fuels, we have community types, we also look at fire history. You know, what do we normally get? We had a lot of lightning starts, but then we also know that human causes are a real thing. We have a lot of outdoor recreation in Colorado. So we try to understand where we've been so that we can plan ahead with our fuels program. So it, there's a lot of different things that we do since we do have so much variability. But that's kind of how we take a step down approach at the state level. And then looking into the district level, I'll let Casey touch on that.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: Yeah, the district level, I view myself, my role at that district program lead, program manager level was really that conduit truly from the ground. You know, I've got three field offices in our district and at each of those field offices we've got a couple employees that work in fuels, a fuels technician and then a fuel specialist or a fire management specialist. And so to me, those are, those are the folks with that really, truly on the ground, really specific knowledge. Diane mentioned the variability across these landscapes. You know, we've got a third of the state of Wyoming in our district and, and everything. She said that the elevation, we go from gosh, 3,000ft to 8,000ft, so grasslands up to, you know, higher elevation, lodge pole type forests. And so it really takes that field, field office level perspective, I think, to come up with effective treatments. They know the communities, they know the values that are threatened or the values that could be threatened by wildfire in those communities. And so it's really, I view the district job is really to support that field level. They're out there, they're looking at projects, they're coming up with ideas. So then how do I, you know, how can I help them get the funding that they need, make sure that the, the planning, the nepa, the authorization, any authorizations they need to do that work are in place. How can we develop effective relationships with our, our state partners, our county partners? And so that's where I focus a lot of my energy, it seems like really is in that agreements realm, trying to work with folks to make sure we're using the funds to leverage really good treatments that aren't just on BLM land, but how can we work with our partners to treat adjacent land as well, whether it's private land or state land or things like that, forest service land, some of our areas where we border. And so that's really kind of where I view that district role. Obviously then we're always communicating with that state office level about the funding funds that are available. If we need more money, if we're going to have funds that are left over, how can we make sure they still get used in Wyoming for good treatments?
A lot of coordination back and forth on things like that. But really just the district level, I really, I love it. You know, it's kind of that mix of true program management, still being able to look at a large area, a large amount of acres from that strategic level, but also really still be plugged in at the ground level to be out on the ground for a lot of these treatments. Helping when we do prescribed burns, going out and seeing the work that's happening out there. So really an enjoyable spot within the BLM for me, for me to work, I think.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Good.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: I imagine it's really helpful to have people from that field perspective that know the land and know what the most effective way to go about these projects is.
Okay, for sure. And Lance, you're also at the district level right here around Boise, which is. Is also challenging because it's. We have that wild land urban interface, particularly in the foothills.
[00:19:49] Speaker F: So we just have a lot of it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The. The 800 pound gorilla. I called it the Boise front. Yeah, yeah. A lot of, lot of risk. And again, we talk about the fuels program is basically a program that manages risk, tries to mitigate risk, whether that's to communities. But it's all about modifying fire behavior in and around those communities, like TJ was saying, and giving the fire community a place to work from. You know, I always told people the goal on let's just take the Boise front here, just to simplify it, was to say that, you know, my goal to be for the fuels program is that a fire on the Boise front is just another fire in Idaho. Meaning that if we do our job in regards to fuels management and mitigating risk around those communities, something that went from high risk, you know, big, everybody spun up is just another fire in Idaho. Yeah, we got a boy fire on the front. Well, everything's taken care of up there because our communities are well protected and everything's fine. So it's just another fire in Idaho. We're not there. By the way, it was a goal though, and I think that's a good way to explain to people, especially working around a community, is that here's what success looks like. And that means when we have a fire, it's just another fire. Because. Because your house is taken care of. Right. You have all the Defensible space. You have the fuel break, you have that. So it's just another fire. So when the fire community shows up on the fire, they engage the fire. Instead of going to the houses and protecting them, they're already done. We're moving and that's where we're losing. That's we're showing up and we're already behind the curve on these communities and we're having to put all our resources on the structures and on the infrastructure while the fire gets bigger. Happens to us all the time.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a good segue into this. Next question that we have here is like the fuels program and the fire program, they're very much mixed together and do a lot of the same stuff. But I don't think a lot of people quite understand like what a fuels crew actually does. I know when I was coming up through the program, they said, hey, there's fuels work to do this fall. I'm like, I don't even know what fuels work is. So, you know, the question here is like, what kind of crews do this work and what does that work look like in the field? So I think. Let's start with you, Lance, because you were just talking about the Boise front and some of the stuff done in the. Yes. And just. It's a very broad scope of work.
[00:22:03] Speaker F: It is.
To categorize it just. It can be broken into. It's either mechanical, chemical, or prescribed fire. Basically you can break it into those three things. Mechanical, you can also. Or there's a fourth, really. And that's grazing, where we're doing a lot of grazing and fuel breaks here on the Oahee field office. And we always struggled with where to put that. It wasn't chemical, it wasn't. Wasn't really mechanical. It wasn't really. What the heck is it, you know. Right. But anyways, we always threw it, I think mechanical anyway.
[00:22:35] Speaker D: Right.
[00:22:35] Speaker F: But yeah, it depends on the kind of work. So if it's chemical, you know, you're looking at usually some kind of company that has the equipment, whether it's ground based or aerial, and just a few people usually. But if you're looking at, you know, cutting and hand piling, you're usually into where there's crews, 20 to 60 or 80 people that are out there, fallen hand pile. And unless it's a machine pile deal. And then you're back to just somebody that might be a contractor that's a real small operator, one or two people, but they have three or four pieces of equipment. So it really depends on the scale of what you're doing and then what the treatment is. And of course rxfire, we've pretty much now we have the means to contract that out and I'm sure they might agree with me, but we haven't as an agency really done much of that. We have done a little bit of contracting out with some pile burning, really straightforward stuff, pretty much foolproof. But the broadcast burning and stuff like that, the agency takes that and rightfully so. It's very risky and you need to have a lot of equipment and you need to have a lot of expertise. And there isn't anybody in the private sector that has that, that I know of that I've ever ran into. So did that help answer the question?
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to tag onto that. Like Casey or Diane, do you guys have any experience with as far as like this contract burning or like what does the fuels cruise like look like in your areas? Because you know, obviously we're dealing with different fuel types in your guys places. Like what do they look like there?
[00:24:06] Speaker E: I'll let Casey take this first.
[00:24:08] Speaker C: Okay, yeah. Jump the I. Yeah. As far as that first part of the question, you know, contracting out some of our prescribed burning, we. We haven't done that at all that I know of in Wyoming. Certainly haven't done it on the High Plains district. And really for all the reasons that that Lance mentioned, you know, the risk that's involved, the comfort level really that you need with the agency administrators that are signing those go no go documents before we put fire on the ground that really want the professionalism, the expertise and the experience from our primary fire folks on, on those types of projects. But yeah, then looking in, you know, the different fuel types, for sure we, you know, mentioned earlier the elevation changes, the difference that we have just within our district. So we. One of the things I'm, I'm really proud of of our district is we were really integrated with our forestry programs. We've got some of the, you know, people think of the Black Hills as being in South Dakota, but the western part of the Black Hills is, is largely in Wyoming. And so we've got a lot of BLM land in that really good timber ground. And so the foresters are interested in that. And good, good forestry treatment is good fuel treatments. We work with our foresters pretty closely on projects up there. Anywhere from, you know, a traditional timber sale where we're going out to bid to folks that want to purchase that timber and come in and log it.
We've done different Projects where maybe we pay up front for a contractor to come in, use their equipment. Essentially mirror a timber sale. If the sale didn't sell on the front end. And then we'll deck the logs and then sell the lock deck later on. And then after that really we, we don't have much of a fuels crew on the High Plains district. We lean on our fire crews to do that. And we've got a really. For the land mass, we've got a pretty small fire organization. And so it's Wyoming. So when the weather turns and gets nice enough for people to want to go out and do field work, we're in fire season, so their availability is pretty limited. So a lot of our projects are contracted out. Like I said, not the burning, but the cutting, the piling. We lean pretty heavily on the contract crews that are out there. Certainly anything with the heavy equipment we found we've had good success so far with the contract side of that. So we haven't on our district anyway really invested heavily in our own equipment. It's been more efficient to us to just contract that work out. We haven't had any situations where we didn't get bids or couldn't get a quality contractor on the ground for that work. And so right now we're doing a fair bit of mastication and mulching in a couple areas near some communities and northeastern Wyoming that's somewhat new to us. And so trying to. On top of the other types of treatment that were mentioned, that's something else that we're really looking at here. And then I'll just throw in on that, that herbicide piece, that spraying, you know, we, that's where we work really heavily with our county cooperators and our, our state agencies to do that work. Because the, the Game and Fish does a lot of it in Wyoming. And so it's more effective or more efficient for us to get some of our funds into like a good Neighbor Authority type of an agreement where we can move the funds over to the Game and Fish and just leverage the work that they're already doing. They're already contracting a helicopter, purchasing the chemical to spray. And so then we can make sure that they get the BLM acres and lump that in with any private land or state land that they're treating.
Obviously from an invasive species standpoint that the cheatgrass or the invasive species don't know where the fence lines are, the boundaries are. And so that cross boundary treatment is super important to us to just make sure that those treatments are as effective as possible, that Diane. What?
[00:27:42] Speaker E: Yeah. So back to kind of the first part of that. With contracting any type of prescribed fire, we typically don't do that. We keep a lot of that in house, at least to have the lead burn boss be in house. But then where we've seen a lot of success is bringing in crews from some of our partner agencies. We recently did some cooperative work with Fish and Wildlife Service. We've had Forest Service crews come in to assist, but we maintain that lead role. And then another thing I wanted to add on herbicide treatments is we get a ton of benefit from our youth core agreements for weed treatments. We especially up in our sagebrush country where cheatgrass is kind of more of the concern, we do a ton of treatments there. That's kind of a reduction of some fine fuels. But then also if you do get a fire that thinking about that post fire response so that you're hopefully limiting some of the invasive species that are coming in after the fact. So that's a huge part of our program in Colorado. And then I actually want to bring up a secret fifth bin of treatment types. And this is wet meadow restoration.
So we really try to pay attention to our, our music areas. You know, these are like sponges on the landscape. So they really serve as kind of a fuel break if you do get fire on the ground. You know, typically water doesn't burn, right? So typically. So if you can take advantage of these features on the landscape, you're giving yourself a fuel break. But then also these are hotbeds for seed production. So you get a lot better post fire response in these areas after the fact. And they're just tremendously valuable for wildlife habitat. So we lean into trying to build off of those. We do river corridor work, which also makes for a lot better fishing. So there's a lot more to fuels than just prescribed fire than just cutting down trees. If it burns, it's a fuel. So we get to manipulate that a lot.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Diane, have you done any work with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps?
[00:30:00] Speaker E: Yes, we do a lot with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: They're excellent. I was a crew lead on a youth crew with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps and we did a species introduction in Colorado where I think it was some type of weevil to combat invasive species. And we also pulled invasive weeds and things like that. So it's very cool how they're little projects like that that get the community involved. And I think that's an amazing thing that the BLM partners with AmeriCorps programs like that. I know that was really cool to be a part of and to share that with high schoolers as well.
[00:30:35] Speaker E: Absolutely. And that's a great program. We've in turn gotten a few full time employees that have come through that program. So it's great to get young people involved and have them learn about what BLM does, you know, whether it's fuels work or any of the other important resource management work that we do, that's an excellent resource for us.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, it's what set me on the path to be part of the blm, so I'm also very thankful for it. Okay, Diane, so we've kind of covered how we use equipment and tools and prescribed fires to. To do fuels work. But can you expand more on like seeding and helping ecosystems recover after fires?
[00:31:16] Speaker E: Yeah, you bet. So it's even before the fires happened, we still use seeding as a tool. So a lot of times, especially if we're using any type of heavy equipment or if we're doing like pile burning, either of those strategies have some chance of disturbing your soils. And you know, depending on your soil type, they might be more or less fragile and might just need a little bit of help, even if it's just a fuels treatment. So a lot of times we're incorporating seeding. We really try to use native species to the area that have, you know, a combination of perennial grasses and forbs, maybe shrub component, depending, depending what you have in your system that you're managing. But when you bring that into your fuels treatment, it helps respond to any of that soil disturbance that's happening. And then also after, if you do get a fire, you hopefully have a little bit more in your seed bank ready to go. And then post fire seeding is a big part of what we do, especially trying to get perennial bunch grasses. That is really important for securing your soil after the fact. Soil loss is a big, big concern for us after a fire comes through. So depending how big your fire is, it's going to kind of change the technique that you use. If it's a small fire, you might be able to drill seed it. So, you know, you can put a drill seeder on the back of a UTV or whatever type of small equipment you might have. But if it's a big fire, a lot of times we will aerially seed. There's some different strategies there, some different effectiveness there. Where we've seen a lot of success in Colorado is aerially seeding actually on top of snow, because then over the winter that snow kind of works those seeds into the soil and A little bit of snow cover also keeps critters from getting to it so you end up with more of your seed sticking around. Seeding is a big tool for us and again we really try to focus on native species to that area.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: It's pretty incredible to hear about how many different pieces come at pieces come into fields management. And I know that, T.J. we were talking earlier that we really want to stress that you cannot separate land management and fire management. Land management is fire management and they, they're so closely tied that you need both. They're one and the same.
[00:33:49] Speaker D: Absolutely. I was going to go there a little bit. The. So fields management, we're using it a lot and I want to define that real quick. Simple terms. It's actively managing vegetation, changing vegetation so that we can be more resilient. We're matching more. The landscape is used to suppressing fire, only without that fuels treatment and working on the vegetation, it makes for a different frequency. And so one of the things you guys kind of got into was like invasive grasses. And a lot of us hear cheatgrass all the time. Well, cheatgrass is a fire frequency. Fires occur a heck of a lot more often in cheatgrass than any other. So cheatgrass wasn't normally there. If we can go back to more of a sagebrush kind of landscape or more natural vegetation than our fire frequency, we will have less fires. And they, when they come, they're going to be less damaging. And so I think, you know, a stat for me that stood out is BLM over the last five years at least has been, has treated almost 400,000 a year. Average 400,000 acres a year. That's a lot of land. So anyway, the other thing I wanted to mention that I heard over the last couple of minutes is hydrology. I love that we brought the water. So fire and water is coming together again. Those corridors, those along streams, rivers, lakes, those places, they respond well for fire, but they're also a defensible space for fire. So they can kind of, they can help you. They provide wire water to fight the fire, but they also provide a place where we can kind of move back to. So going back to that restoration and making sure that we do have that natural vegetation that supports water is really important. And then the other thing that was mentioned real quick was cross boundary work. BLM is amazing at cross boundary work. Probably one of the best in doi. Well, in interior and agriculture BLM has some programs that can work across on non federal land easier than anybody else. And I love that, that we can do That I can get into those details later if we want. But yeah, I love those programs that we can bring in some of that help out our neighbors and do the same thing on, on that other land that we were doing on blm.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: So.
[00:36:07] Speaker F: Well.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that plays perfectly into the next question. The fuels programs, you know, they're doing stuff all summer long, but a vast majority of their work actually happens in the fall and the winter and the spring. So maybe you can talk about some of the work that's being done, you know, through this year and then like, what are some of the success stories you've had this year or that are coming up? It's really a. I guess we look at it as like a fuels treatment isn't like a one and done type thing. Usually it's a portfolio of multiple applications and a lot of different stuff. So maybe just talk about some of these things just beginning to end and what a success story actually looks like for the fuels program.
[00:36:44] Speaker D: I'll talk about it from a, a huge national perspective and what, what I see as why we're doing such a great job, why we were so successful. And then I'll let others get into the details of what specific treatments, kind of defining some of those treatments a little bit. But a few years ago, I think everybody heard we got the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act, probably heard it as bipartisan infrastructure Law. We've heard a different bunch of different terms, but essentially that's the acronym there is iija. So Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act that really facilitated a substantial increase in the area that we treat for reducing wildfire risk. That's been huge for us. Just to give you a kind of synopsis of what that looks like. So average acres treated in the last 20 years, about 807,000 acres. So 807,000 acres is our average. Once we started getting that funding out of ija, our increase went to our average is like last year, almost one and a half million acres. In the last five years, it's about 1.3 million acres. That's a lot of acres. That's like driving from here to Salt Lake and looking both sides of the road and everything that you see was treated so really, really impressive. What I talked about a minute ago, the tools that I really appreciate in getting that job done is yes, I'm talking just BLM Lakers, but we're helping through community assistance or DOI assist to complete project work off blm. So if we have something that we're treating on and there's a private landowner right next to Us, we're going to try to help out that landowner as well. I think that's amazing that we're actually doing that kind of stuff.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. Lance, we're talking about some of this cross boundary work and you brought that up a little bit before. But like, what are some of the success stories that you've seen, especially in that kind of cross boundary work that you've been able to accomplish? I know like the Bosch project was huge just south of Boise here and multiple other projects, but maybe you could talk about some of the successes of those.
[00:38:51] Speaker F: Well, the one that comes to mind again that I think all of us have do some treatments of and that is fuel breaks. You know, for fuel bricks to be effective, they've got to be at the landscape level. And anytime you're working at the landscape level, you're talking about multiple ownerships, multiple agencies. And those, of course, those fuel breaks need to be consistent across those different ownerships. And so here, east of town on the Paradigm project, real fractured landscape in regards to ownership. I mean, you've got county, state, you've got, you've even got some forest service, barely. You've got birds of prey in there, which is a different beast in itself. And then you got the district. So all five of those, the fuel breaks, you got to go across them. And of course, each landowner, there's so many different landowners. Not like they're just one big landowner out there. There's a lot of different landowners. So those agreements have really facilitated us putting in consistently those fuel breaks across private and BLM where they're linked up and they've done a fantastic job. Once we finally started getting enough of them on the landscape, the fires have been running into them and the fire community has been starting to now get comfortable with them, starting to believe in them, starting to understand their role and how their operation works. They're starting to use them more and more and I just see them getting better and better as we go, more effective. It's kind of neat to see.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's from my experience seeing like the stark difference on what a fuels break looks like and able to see it consistently across. Yeah, it's pretty impressive work. Casey, do you have something like the kind of tack on with that as far as like what goes on in Wyoming? I'm sure you guys also have partners that you work with regularly and able to implement these works just across different borders and landscapes.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. You know, probably our biggest partners with what we do here in Wyoming is really the state Agencies, whether it's Wyoming State Forestry, you know, in some of our timbered areas, we do a lot of work across boundaries with state forestry folks. And then, and really everywhere in the district, we always reach out to the game and fish partners as well because, you know, good fuels management is, is almost always pretty good wildlife habitat management too. You know, we're protecting those, those critical habitats. We're, you know, whether it's protecting it from fire or just really improving the wildlife forage in those areas and some of the species diversity, it's. They're generally pretty interested in the projects that we're doing. So we work with game and fish quite a bit, especially in that cross boundary work. They've got a lot of really good relationships with the landowners in the areas that we're working. And so we'll reach out to them, we'll try to. Again, I mentioned earlier, using some of our agreement authorities that we have to take some of the BLM money, give it over to those state agencies and then work back and forth across the boundaries in those areas. So that's been really effective for us. I think our district here. A lot of Wyoming's pretty rural obviously and so a lot of times BLM land doesn't come right up to the communities. You know, we don't have a Boise front like Lance has talked about. We've got like Newcastle being one of our communities where we've got some BLM land right up against town. And we've been doing very similar treatments to what Lance described. Our fire defense zone there around the community of Newcastle has been a really big success. Kind of a mix of forestry range, state forestry, you know, a lot of people at the table. The county has been at the table on that project as well. So that's been really effective. And then we're just, just getting into kind of an interesting situation we've got in Wyoming with Bureau of Reclamation. We've got a lot of our urban interface, if you'll call it that, is these cabin groups or these recreational residences around the reservoir system here in Wyoming. The, the North Platte River. And so it's actually BOR land. Well, BOR doesn't, you know, they don't have a fuels crew, they don't have a fire crew. And so BLM actually in Wyoming has fire suppression authority on Bureau of Reclamation land. So we've started to look at that as, although it's not BLM land, it's. We've kind of started to view it as our problem. It's going to be BLM firefighters that are asked to go into these, these areas, a lot of one way in, one way out cabin groups, so, so hazardous, you guys mentioned earlier, fuels treatment for the sake of improving firefighter safety. And so we've actually looked at some of those as really just a very hazardous situation if we were to get a fire in that area. And, and really hazardous to BLM firefighters now that it's our responsibility. And so we've taken lead on a couple of those projects as well. We haven't got to the implementation phase, but you know, working with Bureau of Reclamation again, cross boundary. How can we treat the, the BOR land? How can we treat the BLM land? How can we bring our expertise to the table and leverage the funds back and forth between the agencies to get that work done? And so really excited about that Alcova, if anybody's been through central Wyoming, you've probably seen that reservoir. But that's one that we've really just started to work on, that we're really excited about. I think it's going to be a really good success once we get the work going on the ground on that. But you guys hit on all the steps that go into it. It's a multi year process sometimes on these projects to really get the right people at the table, get the right kind of concept framed up to where you can even go to the public with a coherent plan to start that public scoping piece that's so important with, with the NEPA process to get that buy in from, from the public to go out and do that and then, and then working through the interdisciplinary teams, you know, those NEPA groups that we work with of all those specialists and I know every, every state, every district, every field office kind of has their own thing that pulls time and energy away from folks. Wyoming, it's, it's oil and gas. We're a big oil and gas district here and so that's a big priority and it's a big priority with this administration. So getting the wildlife biologist to put aside oil and gas permitting and focus on our fuels projects, that's kind of a battle that we just, we constantly fight, you know, and they're really good about it. They're super busy and they're pretty bought into what we do, luckily, but it just takes time, you know, so that's just part of something that we have to factory into, really getting to the point where we're even starting up a chainsaw or getting out there with some equipment or drip torch, whatever the method might be.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think early in your conversation, Kasey, you brought up, when there's smoke in the air, the public really doesn't care about whose jurisdiction the land falls under. I think that's one of the fantastic things about BLM and across things is like you're doing that work beforehand, you're getting those things addressed. Those partnerships are getting built way before there is smoke in the air, so that there is that defendable space, there's that ability to suppress those fires much easier. And those relationships are already built way before we have fire season. And as far as, Diane, like in your area, you were talking about the conservation groups that you've been working with. Can you talk about some of the success stories that you've had in your area?
[00:45:36] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. So we have very mixed ownership in a lot of our areas. So we have been really looking for opportunities to work across land ownerships for all the reasons that, that folks have mentioned. You know, fire doesn't obey property lines. Right. So our fuels treatments similarly should. Should look at an all lands approach. And some of what we have done recently is leaned really heavily into our Good Neighbor Authority agreements. So we have a gna, a Good Neighbor Authority agreement with the Colorado State Forest Service that is a state of Colorado's forestry arm. But they're knowledgeable in so much more, and they're excellent leveraging partnerships and getting some more work across land ownerships across the landscape. So we've worked very closely with them in a lot of different places throughout the state and are going to continue to do so.
But, you know, one of the successes that we've really had with them is not just getting work across different ownerships and across the landscape, but doing it in a way that is more acceptable to our, to the public, to our communities that see these treatments. You know, I think there's still a lot of maybe misunderstanding about what something like a fuel break is. You know, I think a lot of people, especially in Colorado, they think of like, okay, I see these transmission lines that are going through the landscape, and it's just such a stark contract where there's trees on both sides, but then there's just nothing in the middle. And it's a really stark contrast. And I think people sometimes have that in mind for what a fuels break or fuels treatment is, but there's so many different ways that we can design these that it does look like it blends into the landscape, but it still serves a purpose and still allows us some defensible space. So, you know, with these works that we've been doing, With Colorado State Forest Service, we've been designing things in a way that that thin or clump or leave some opening spaces. Sometimes it's a higher thinning or a less intense thinning, but to where it's a still really functional fuels treatment. But just so it's not so jarring. I think we've all seen, you know, right after a fuels treatment comes through and it is a little bit different. Right. Sometimes I describe it as like, whoa, that's a jarring haircut. You know, it kind of shocks you a little bit at first, but then you kind of get used to it. You kind of start to understand it. But, you know, with these partnerships, they have those. Those concepts in mind. They understand the benefits of that for the fuel treatment, but also for the other resources that we manage for wildlife. And it just ends up being a much better project because we have partners involved.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Awesome. Okay.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that analogy. Yeah, I'm really glad that you shared that with us.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: We've all seen some bad haircuts.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: We have interesting haircuts. Say bad.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is a question that we ask all of our guests that come on Wildfire Matters. We ask them to say what the most challenging part of their jobs are. And then on the flip side, what is your favorite part of the job? So, T.J. we start with you.
[00:49:06] Speaker D: I was thinking about this question a little bit before we got here, but, you know, I think the most challenging part is probably that the Department of Interior has a national fire risk map. BLM manages 70% of that area.
That's a challenge. And so when you look at that from my perspective nationally, I think we're doing a heck of a job getting there. But it takes aligning resources, aligning the funding, everything that is essential to getting ahead of this wildfire, and doing the three things that we really want to do. But if we're. We're averaging 1.3 million acres a year, we're doing a pretty good job get aligning those resources and that funding and everything. So I guess that's also my satisfying. That's what I'm satisfied about is looking out there and know that we have the Casey Diane's, the retired Lances, the that have chipped away and have considered, continued to be so productive in getting those acres, that area done and done right. Whether it be a bad haircut for a little while or whatever. I think that's. It's just amazing to be part of that organization. And I'm grouping that up as I'm going to start with blm. But I think Interior is doing a pretty darn good job too, so pretty cool to see that. And when we talk about cross boundary, cross boundary includes those landowners that are stepping across. Forest service does a good job on the forested lands. When we all work together, that's actually when we accomplish some absolutely amazing work. And we're. And our first priority is that life and property and then the natural and cultural resources are second. But I think that's. We know what the job is and we're doing a good job. We know what the job is and we're really being successful getting there.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: That's a good way to sum it all up. Okay. Lance.
[00:50:57] Speaker F: Challenges most challenging for me during my career is communication with all the groups and with all the people in the agencies. And it's not like you only got to communicate with them once. There's a constant turnover of management, constant turnover from the political side, from administration and administration, and then, you know, people coming and going and taking better jobs doing things. And to try to be. To have any kind of consistent message in regards to here's what fuels management on this on the Boise district or the in Wyoming looks like, and here's what's been successful for us and here's where we're going with this. And then trying to always get that buy in from the new manager, the person that's actually going to be authorized and the thing that you've been working on for 10 years and now that manager left and now the other one's coming in and. And they're really uncomfortable with prescribed fire. It scares me and I don't want to do this. And you're like, yeah, we're going to do this because this is. Yeah, this is the train that's rolling.
[00:52:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Speaker F: And yeah, we're not stopping. So that was challenging. But we were. I was able to be successful with most of that. In fact, I don't even with some real ornery ones that you're talking about me. Yeah, no, you were, you were good. Well, we've. I've had some honorary ones. That was the challenges. But again, on the other side of that, the most rewarding in the same thing and that is working with people on the ground to do landscape. And for me, pretty much a career of landscape burning put reintroduction of fire. And that means you work with a lot of people on the ground. You work with a lot of people that own property that are in the burn, adjacent to the burn, and being able to sit down and spend time with them and bounce around out there and talk about where you're going to put in a control line and why we should put one there and why we should put it over there, and figuring out all that logistics and then pulling it all off, that's probably the most rewarding stuff for me.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Communication is tricky, but when it comes together and it works well and you get that personal connection, you feel like you're making a difference, that feels really good. Okay. Diane, what about you?
[00:53:08] Speaker E: So difficult parts of the job. Well, let me put it this way. The book about the blm, it's called Opportunity and Challenge, a BLM story. Those two things go together in everything that we do. And this is beyond just fuels management. Land management is hard. It is challenging, but that's what makes it really fun. And we know that it's really important.
So there's challenges kind of at every turn. It's just whether you lean into it or you lean away from it. And I really like TJ's answer about when you look nationwide at the risk assessment, it is everywhere. And BLM is such a big part of managing landscapes that have not had fire on them, or that we have a lot more wildland urban interface, or we have more resource issues or more reasons to care. And then when you zoom into Colorado, there's a really interesting map. It's called a fire deficit map. And this is where we have not had enough fire on the landscape in the last 150 years. And it's where the landscape is asking for fire. And BLM manages a big part of that, and the Forest Service manages a big part of that. And there are partners. We work to support them, they work to support us. So how do we incorporate that in a safe and meaningful way for the people that live in our state, for the resources we manage? It's a big challenge, and we do have to prioritize. And getting people to prioritize similarly is really difficult because there are so many different things that we care about on this landscape. So I think that's a perpetual challenge. But if we can make a difference in one community to one homeowner, to a population of elk or mule deer, then that's a win. You know, it doesn't solve every problem, but that's still a win. And, you know, some of my favorite parts of this job, you know, whether it's fuels or. Or just BLM work in general, is working with the team that we have. We have really exceptional people working at the blm, working with our partners. And, you know, one of my favorite Things to do is when you're driving out to a project site, play roadside ecologist, play roadside specialist, talk about what you're seeing, think about, oh, what could you do here? What are some of the challenges here? What are some of the opportunities here? And you know, one of my favorite questions that I always ask people when we're playing roadside ecologist is, what's your favorite tree? And I rarely get the same answer twice. So it's cool to see people's different backgrounds and just learn to appreciate the landscape through another person's eyes.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: That's really cool. Just the appreciation for the beautiful land that we're in charge of. That's always important to remember.
Casey, what about you?
[00:56:13] Speaker C: Yeah, it's the beauty of going at the end. Everybody's already mentioned a lot of it, but I think that the challenge piece to me, and I think everybody's kind of mentioned it in one way or another, is that just the timeline that it takes? I think we're all, we're all doers by nature. We want, you know, we come up with an idea. We, we know it would be effective as far as fuels treatment. It's a great idea, it's a great concept. But we just to know that it's going to take two years potentially to get that project on the ground, you know, to get it to happen. And then the uncertainty, right. Seen a lot of uncertainty this, just this year, this fiscal year with funding, you know, do we have it, do we not? We spend it. That's hard for folks because we get really attached to these projects. You know, we know our on the ground expertise, that it's the right thing in the right place. And so just having the patience, having the wherewithal to see these things through to the end, I think is. Is really the most, the most challenging to me. We've been very fortunate on our district. Not a lot of turnover. We've got a great group of folks that I get to work with every day and supervise and it's. But that's not always the case, you know, I mean, just a couple times already here in the last few months, you know, we come up with an idea, hey, we really should look at this area, this community, we should look at these BLM lands and we start digging. And almost every time we come up, oh, hey, I found this thing in a folder, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, somebody, somebody else was looking at that, you know, and then there was some turnover. Somebody left, somebody just. It fizzled out. Lance mentioned some of those challenges with Agency administrators moving on, you know, and it just lost steam. And so the challenge really keep that momentum going, make sure these things get. Get to where they're a project on the ground. Set it up in a way that if. If somebody does leave, it's. It's kind of plug and play for the next person coming in that we can actually get them done and not spin our wheels, you know, doing the work and letting it sit idle for 10 years or 15 years to where we kind of have to redo everything. So. So I'd say that's the challenge that and the most rewarding part for me. And it's. It's not even like it doesn't even have to be a fuels treatment on our district or anything I had a part in. But mentioned earlier, you know, going out with incident management teams and going out as an ops chief or as an incident commander and pulling up to. To a really challenging incident, a really complex fire, but starting to, you know, those first couple days when that picture starts to come into focus, a little bit of what we're really dealing with, those times when we look, here's our critical values at risk here. Here are the risks to our firefighters that we're asking to go out and protect these critical values. But when a fuels treatment that's been done in the past kind of comes into focus, hey, look, there's already been something done over here. I don't care if it was Forest Service or the state or the BLM that did it. I mean, that's where the reward is to me, because now I don't have to ask a bunch of firefighters to go take an elevated level of risk to protect that critical value. We can let. Be careful with the terminology here, but we can maybe let that fire come out to that fuels treatment and have a benefit on the landscape as a wildfire.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: Right?
[00:59:09] Speaker C: It doesn't always have to be prescribed fire. You know, wildfires have some benefits on the landscape. And so when these treatments are. Are in the right place and it happens to intersect at the right time with the wildfire is just really, really rewarding to me, to our profession as a whole, to the work that we do. And like I said, that's kind of a. Doesn't always have to be in my backyard to feel that. That sense of pride. I think as fuels managers, we're kind of a big community. We.
The challenges that it is to get these projects done, and it just gives me a lot of pride to know that somebody somewhere went through all those steps to get it done. And then we get to come in and kind of reap the benefits of it. See those communities reap the benefits of those projects is really the reward to me. And what we do.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that has to feel so good from your standpoint in operations to see when it all pays off.
It has to be awesome. Yeah.
[01:00:01] Speaker B: So all you, all of our guests here have come into the fuels program through some pretty diverse backgrounds, whether on the resource side of things or hydrology or fire. What advice would you give folks that are want to get in involved with fuels work? And we'll start with you, Lance.
[01:00:17] Speaker F: Well, I, although would I counsel all the people that were in my program was or wanted to be in our program. The younger they were, the more I'd always tell them you got to get your fire experience because fire experience you got to be. Yeah, you got to have some level of fire suppression experience to work in the fuels realm. Because a lot of working in the fuels realm is being able to look at a fuel bed, to be able to look at something on the landscape and go, I know exactly how that's going to burn and I know where all the bad spots are and I know where you're going to catch it. I know where you're going to lose it if you don't have that. Those slides of those experiences of being on a crew and an engine and having a fire and being in difficult positions and losing a fire and catching a fire, you're going to struggle as you move into into fuels and the more you go up into fuels, at some point that's really going to start to affect your ability to be effective. If you don't have those slides, that's the number one thing is you've got to get some good fire experience. And we've actually had kids that come into our program that are just rock stars, but they didn't have the fire experience. And we've told them go spend three summers on an engine and then come back go. And we've actually had kids do that. We just had one recently do that, went and went on engines, went into the helitack, got all these quals and he just came back to us. It took him four years to make that trip and man is he set up. He's got, he now he has the quals. He now he can be anything right up to a burn boss one he can do. It's all set for them there in the quals, which is really hard to do once you get on the fuel side to try to cross back over and get that it's doable, but it's hard.
So huge, huge. Get as much fire experience as you can before you swap to fields. And then the other thing is, is you've got to be a good communicator and you got to have a lot of determination. Just the one guy that keeps showing up, the one person that keeps showing up and going, here's what we're doing today and here's where we're going. This is where we're going to be in one year, five years and 10 years.
That's huge. And that's something this agency needs, is people with consistency keep showing up and keep having the same message. Because fire doesn't change, only we change. So fire is always the same. Physics of fire never changes. We do. So anyways, those would be the two, the big things that I'd give some people advice on.
[01:02:39] Speaker B: That's excellent. T.J. what, what do you think?
[01:02:41] Speaker D: How in the world I can get better than that?
[01:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[01:02:46] Speaker A: That was pretty good.
[01:02:47] Speaker C: That was pretty good.
Seriously. Well.
[01:02:52] Speaker D: I agree wholeheartedly with Lance. I went to school for watershed management, fisheries management.
However, there is no way I could do the post fire program or even the fuels management without having a lot of fire experience. And the reason I say that is I'll go a couple things here.
That fire behavior and knowing what a fire did, in my opinion for post fire assessment, knowing that it's going to be hot over there because of the topography was built that way or the trees were aligned that way or the rocks kind of shielded that spot. So it's. The soil wasn't as affected in those shielded areas and it was pretty high severity in those unshielded areas. Knowing where those are on your landscape is really important for post fire. Diane said fire deficit, well, that's a big deal with flooding as well. So in those areas that have had fire, it's burned up. That, that duff, that buildup of material, soil material, et cetera, organics. That's usually where your largest debris flows are going to occur because the streams just build up, up and up over time. And if they haven't been disturbed in a long time, that's going to be the place that I'm worried most about because they have that buildup, they have the energy sitting there on the hill of debris, organic or soils or whatever that's going to go down first in that first rainfall. So just that little hydro snippet that I had to add in here. But back to Lance's point, go to school and anything that you want that you think is, whether it be ecology, hydrology, whatever. And if you come into land management, my tip is go get some fire experience, because that's going to give you a better perspective on what the ecosystem, what the lands really, how they operate. And after you've done that, you're ready to start doing land management.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: Very nice. That was pretty good.
[01:04:54] Speaker E: It's.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: It's hard to beat Lance.
[01:04:55] Speaker D: I don't know.
[01:04:55] Speaker B: That's really.
[01:04:57] Speaker F: Well, yeah, I'll sign off on that.
[01:05:01] Speaker B: What about you, Diane? You came up kind of on the resource side of things. Well, too.
[01:05:06] Speaker E: Yeah. And, you know, with that, there are other avenues into the fire program. You can also look at resource advising. So if you do have an incident, you're helping the incident command team focus on what some of those values at risk are and how to potentially avoid or to make more informed decisions. So that's an opportunity. But, you know, when you kind of take a step back into just the broader picture, even if you're not a federal land or state firefighter or fuels manager, you can pay attention to fuels on your landscape and your home, around your home and your community. And even there's a lot of volunteer opportunities in the Grand Junction area where I'm located, you know, there's volunteer opportunities to do tamarisk thinning and Russian olive removal along the river corridors. You know, these are fuels and these are things that, that people can be a part of, even if that's not your career path. So it's. There's a lot of opportunities out there. So if it's something that you're interested in, it doesn't necessarily have to be through a federal land management route.
[01:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fantastic. I think when you're talking about, like, fuels is such a diverse program, and there's a lot of different treatments that can, like, directly just dovetail into fuels management work as well. So, Casey, what about you?
[01:06:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I love what everybody else has said already. I think that the one thing that I would add in there is we, we tend, I think, in fire, you know, in our fire programs to be a little bit insular. You know, we're the. I don't know. I mean, I can speak for our office. Like, we kind of have our own little area, right. There's multiple doors that a biologist has to walk through in a long hallway to get to the fire area. You know, and it's. There's reasons for all of that. There's a reason we're kind of isolated over there. You know, even Looking at really some of the recent legislation, now we have our own series, right? We have our own pay series, you know, the GW series. We're, we're not range technicians or forestry technicians anymore. And those are good things. They're wins for the fire program. But at the end of the day, we are still land managers. You know, we're not just firefighters. And if you're on an engine, you're not just a, you're not just a firefighter. You're not. Your job isn't just to show up and wait for the fire and go respond to that. It is to be proactive, to look at these issues that are out on the landscape. And so I, I encourage all of our folks, you know, a lot of folks come into the fuels through fire, but that's not going to happen if you just sit over here in the, in the engine bay and don't make an effort to go across those couple doors and go interact with the range staff or the wildlife biologist and the ecologists. They're 100 yards away. You know, why not go spend some time talking with those folks? Why not spend a couple days out in the field looking through their lens a little bit of how fire can impact their resources that they're tasked with worrying about. And you know that. Now pair that together with that fire experience, and you've got, in my mind, a great fuels person. You know, down the road, they're going to understand those different sides. They're going to understand why the NEPA process and interdisciplinary teams are so important to, to make sure that our projects are effective, but also as least impactful as possible, right. To those other resources that we're tasked with managing. And so that would be my advice. You know, I, I had the benefit of working, as I mentioned earlier, those really small Forest Service districts where you just did everything, you know, something needed to be done, whether it was planting or, or some trails work, whatever it was, it was just everybody in the office just went and did it. And I think that's where I kind of learned that interdisciplinary approach to things. And I just think it's a little bit harder now. We've become, as fire organizations, we become a little bit more isolated or a little bit more insular and just keep those barriers low. Those other disciplines in your offices, I think, you know, the other, the other big thing, the fire experience. Folks, folks hit on that. That's. That's still huge, right? You got to have that, that understanding of what fire behavior can do on the landscapes. I would just close Lance Hit on communication. That's probably the biggest thing that I see folks struggle with a little bit is you come up with this concept and this idea. You're not going to get it anywhere if you can't present it coherently and you can't present it from that interdisciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary team or to our cooperators or to the public. We've got to stand up and vouch for these projects in a number of different arenas. And so a communications piece is huge. You don't have to be the best public speaker in the world, but you're going to want some communication skills and some practice presenting these projects and concepts out to the different audiences that we need ultimately to buy off on them, to get it done. So that's what I would close with on that.
[01:09:48] Speaker B: Fantastic. Thank you.
[01:09:50] Speaker A: All right, so in closing, is there anything else that you would like to add?
[01:09:56] Speaker D: You know, I don't. I want to repeat. Fuels management is actively managing vegetation to reduce wildfire risk. But we have three major things we want to do. The community protection. We want to have a safe firefighter response, a successful response, but safe. And we want fire resilient landscapes. So we want to build or work with fire as a tool on those landscapes that we expect to use. And I want to. So that's one thing. I just want to repeat that. And I just want to bring in another story. Another example that I had the opportunity a little while ago, I think it was in January, to go out to Jim County Fire Department and talk to a pretty big group. I think there were 30, 40 people in the. In the room. We were just talking to them about how we could get involved, how we could work together, BLM and the Gem County Fire Department to not prevent a couple fires that happened last year. The paddock fire. Those fires are preventable. We can do a better job. You know, when they have the ideas, they can come back to Boise district and say, hey, this is what we think is a good idea. Let's try to move forward on this. And that's where we can get involved so that that Department of Interior assist, that community assistance, those kind of things are out there. And I think that it's important that all of us together can work on those three priorities for what we're saying is fuels management.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: Very nice. Okay, open it up. Anybody else have any last things that they'd like to add?
Rumble Is that a drum roll?
[01:11:33] Speaker D: Okay, who's up now?
[01:11:35] Speaker B: Well, set the st for something grand here.
[01:11:40] Speaker A: That was ominous.
Okay, we'll go ahead and close it out then.
Thank you all for joining us today for the 35th episode of wildfire Matters to tell us more about how some advanced planning goes a long way with protecting our public lands and communities. So this is actually my final episode hosting Wildfire Matters. Life is taking me in a different direction, so it's been great to host Wildfire Matters. I started with Carrie Bilbao about a year ago, been now by myself for a few episodes, and I'm passing the torch on to Caleb and he's going to do a great job. Yeah, thanks. It was a great way to spend my last episode. Thank you guys.
[01:12:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:12:26] Speaker B: And just want to thank you, Piper. It's been an interesting transition from seeing a role from Carrie to you and out to me. And I just thank you for leaving this podcast and my responsibility. It's just an honor to take it over from you and you've done such a fantastic job on it. And I just. I hope you're listening to it down the road, you know, we'll see.
[01:12:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[01:12:43] Speaker B: You go and critique me on it. So I appreciate that. But yeah. And closing out. If you have any questions or comments or even suggestions on different topics for our podcast, please email them to blm_fa_nifc underscore comments blm.gov and use wildfire Matters podcast in the subject line. To learn more about NIFC or the BLM, please visit our website nifcy.gov and for follow us at BLM Fire on Facebook, x and Instagram.
[01:13:10] Speaker A: Until till then, stay safe and be Wildfire Awareness.
