Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Fire Matters, the podcast that covers all aspects of wildland fire management for the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. We talk with the people who help manage and protect our public lands, many dedicating their lives to the profession. Today, Jennifer and I are talking with.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Michelle Christ, ecologist for the Bureau of.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Land Management, Fire Planning and Fuels management program. Welcome, Michelle.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Welcome, Michelle.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Thank you. Glad to be here.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: The 25th episode. That is so exciting.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: The 25th episode, and sadly to say, my last. Yes, Jennifer's last with us.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: It is my last, yes. But it's been a great ride. So glad I've been a part of it. And your co host, I'm glad you.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Were able to make it to this one.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Me too.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Me too. Yeah.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: So first off, Michelle, tell us a little about yourself and how you became an ecologist for BLM Fire.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Okay. So, well, starting at a young age, I was just really drawn to ecology and wildlife, especially birds. And so I went to the University of Georgia for my undergraduate degree in biology with a focus on wildlife, and then moved out to Durango, Colorado, and worked for the Forest Service. So for them, I implemented spotted owl surveys, old growth forest surveys, and archaeological surveys. And eventually I just fell into fire ecology.
I met and started working for an ecologist whose name was Bill Rami. He was well known for discovering that very large stand replacing fires were natural in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and could occur on average anywhere from like 150 to 300 years.
And this research was his PhD work, and he discovered this right before the 1988 fires occurred in Yellowstone National park.
Eventually, Bill Rami expanded his research to southwest Colorado, where I just happened to be. And he was interested in determining the natural fire regimes for the San Juan National Forest. So I collected fire data out in the field, in the wilderness to determine what the fire regimes were for the different forest types in the area. So really just figuring out the fire extent, frequency, and severity of fires that could range from stand replacing, mixed severity and low severity.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: And that's basically what a regime is then kind of the mix of.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. The severity of the fires, the frequency of the fires, and the extent of those fires. So all of this work turned into an opportunity to go to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts in the discipline of landscape ecology. And the San Juan National Forest funded my research. So we used the fire data and information that we gathered in the field to create a large scale wildfire and forest recovery simulation model where we could simulate these fire regimes over a long time period of like 800 years or more.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: Holy cow.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: I know.
Simulation there a lot of simulation. Yes.
So we use this model to quantify what's called a range of variation in forest and landscape change over time just due to these natural wildfire disturbance processes. And so for my particular project, I took the simulation model further and analyzed how wildlife habitat for four species changed over time. And those species were elk, pine, martin, three toed woodpeckers, and olive sided fly catchers. So, basically, I analyzed how habitat would shift and be dynamic over long time periods due to wildfire and forest recovery succession. So after graduate school, I started working for the Wilderness Society here in Boise, Idaho, as a research ecologist. I developed research that provided support for designating wilderness or for different federal land management policies, such as implementation of the roadless rule and the development of the new forest Service planning rule at that time. In addition, I worked on four what they call formal collaborative processes that were comprised of different stakeholders to develop watershed and national forest level restoration strategies for different national forests across Idaho and Montana. Then I moved on to the US Geological Survey, where I worked on a western statewide greater sagegrouse habitat model and mapped potential habitat connectivity, and then identified where the most important habitat hubs were for sustaining greater sage grouse populations across the west. And so this research was used in the listing decision process for the greater sage grouse in 2015. And then I met many in the wildland fire community here in Boise and learned about a landscape ecologist position at Nipsey with BLM fire and aviation. And so this position was right at my alley. And so I applied and was offered the job. And I've been in this position for eight years now.
That's great.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: That's a lot. Nice job.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, nice job.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Lots of research. That's great.
[00:05:58] Speaker C: The interesting part was where you went to school. Massachusetts, Georgia. And so you can see that some of this training, these courses are across the US, doesn't have to be here in the west. So that just was the kind of the interesting piece that those are the colleges that you went to that had those programs for you?
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah, they had the programs and basically they give you the skill set and all the tools, everything that you need to be able, it can be applied anywhere across the world. And so that was the advantage of landscape ecology and that I could go to school there, but all of my research was actually in Colorado, in the San Juan's. And so I really enjoyed that aspect of being able to be connected to the west still.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And just the diversity of the career itself, just the different places you've worked, different programs or different agencies and things you've worked, I think.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And the different research and the different research.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: I have all kinds of questions.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: This is what happens.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: Like, things come out and you're like, oh, I could go on for like.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Two more hours because I just saw something about how fire is affecting animals and their evolution too. So that came out recently. And so I was wondering if that was kind of what you were looking at as well.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yes, definitely. I would say that these just natural processes of fire that have been occurring over, what, millennia, I mean, forever, that the world has been, you know, it does, it strongly affects the evolution of animals and plants, even us going out. Yes, exactly.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Yeah. I worked with Michelle last week for national invasive species awareness Week. And so it's one of those things too. Like, yeah, fire hits all aspects and so what causes fires and what comes after it? And so, like, the invasive species that come after a fire and those impacts. So, yeah, it's just interesting, the different aspects of that.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it is definitely.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: So big question is, what is landscape ecology? Because you think of landscapers, right. I know your nice trees and shrubs.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Around your house, nice and groomed grasses.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: So it sounds kind of funny. Landscape ecology, how does the work you do relate to wildland fire management?
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Not to be confused with landscape architecture, two different things.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: So in a nutshell, landscape ecology is the study of the causes and consequences of spatial pattern in nature over multiple spatial scales over time. So, like, for example, in a wildland fire context, a landscape ecologist can analyze how fire naturally causes a mosaic of different landscape conditions at large scales and the consequences of fire and those recovery processes that follow. Fire provide different habitats for many wildlife species. And this is just constantly changing over time. So in my position in wildland fire management, I use landscape ecology and GIs to map where fire may likely occur more often than not, and develop fire probability risk assessments at national scales. And so this information can be used to identify potential consequences of fire and highlight where fuel treatments or restoration is needed to protect communities, as well as help provide those habitat conditions for wildlife species.
In addition, I'll use what's called spatial or landscape metrics to quantify how fire extent and frequency may be increasing in certain areas of the US compared to others. And so this information just is really helpful for informing different management strategies for wildland fire suppression operations, fire prevention and planning, fields management and community outreach and engagement to help reduce human ignitions.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: It's very important to have that science behind back what you're doing, back what.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: We'Re doing yeah, people always ask, like, where'd you get that from? Well, from science, and this is where we're getting it from, especially when you're talking about fire prevention, education, community engagement. A lot of those questions do come up when we have community meetings or public meetings.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. They come up a lot, and the public is very interested in learning the science behind it, and it provides them a lot of the context and the information that they need so that they themselves can do different things within their communities to protect their communities from fire, too.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I know you've talked about some of the research that you did kind of coming to this point, but what type of research have you done recently?
Here we go. There's another list.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: She's a busy lady.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: I've conducted quite a bit of research lately, especially with my USGs and forest service colleagues. And so this research ranges from analyzing the effectiveness and strategical placement of fieldbreak networks to the use of the concepts of resilience and resistance in sagebrush management, to what's called the sagebrush conservation design.
And also, I've been really interested in the role of invasive non native grasses promoting uncharacteristic wildfire. But there is one research project that stands out for me. I mean, I have to say. And in this project, I summarized and compared area burned for forested ecosystems with non forested ecosystems such as sage, bush, shrublands, and desert ecosystems. And I did this for the past 20 years, and I found that more area burned in our non forested ecosystems than in forested ecosystems. And this was the case across the western us as well as the entire us. And in this research, I identified why these non forested ecosystems were burning more than the forested, which is due to the large expansion of these invasive non native grasses across the west.
And in addition, I also identified where non forest and forested areas were burning more frequently than they used to historically. I also summarized the area burned by agency jurisdictions and found for the Department of Interior that 74% of area burned occurred in non forested ecosystems.
And for the BLM, it was even higher. It was approximately 80% of area burned was in non forested ecosystems. In addition, I used landscape metrics to quantify how fire extent and that spatial pattern of fire in non forested ecosystems has increased and changed substantially across the.
You know, and these results were really important for the Department of Interior because our current congressional legislation is mainly focused on forest fires, and it doesn't often address the unique aspects of fire for non forested ecosystems, such as an increase in fire frequency due to these invasive grasses.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Right. I can definitely see the importance of that. And I know when I worked on the district, it was obvious that we were burning more sage brush than forested areas. We didn't have a lot of forested areas that wouldn't normally burn unless you had lightning up in some of those higher country, it seems like. But you get those massive wildfires that rip through the desert areas and rangelands, and they move fast. And then. Yeah, the invasives come in.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, those are kind of those large wind driven fires that burn fast. Like the Martin fire that burned in, what, four to five days? And it traveled 56 miles and burned like 450,000 acres.
Absolutely amazing fire.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: And then usually you have the forest fires, which burn longer, but maybe not as large, but still very devastating.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: But it's still very devastating.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: And they kind of have a mosaic, too, the forested ones. The forested areas too. Right. So depending on the topography and how ever hurts. So they kind of have more of a mosaic, whereas the rangelands is more of kind of just takes it out.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: It does, it takes it out. And in a lot of areas, it doesn't recover very well. The sagebrush just doesn't recover very well after fire.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: And then you have those too, like the invasive, the cheat grass comes in. So then you have repeated fire where the fire cycle is not what it's normally. So it's more often.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. I mean, we're seeing reburns now in some of these areas that can range from, like, seven to 15 years, where a lot of these, the sagebrush ecosystems just historically burned maybe once in 150 to 300 years. They just didn't really burn that much, especially those sagebrush ecosystems at the lower elevations, where it's hotter and drier.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Interesting. So you mentioned the sagebrush conservation design. What is that?
[00:15:31] Speaker B: So the Sagebrush conservation design is an interagency research project that I'm involved with, and it provides a relatively new concept in addressing threats in the management of sagebrush ecosystems. So this concept is based on, like, first, mapping where sagebrush ecosystems are currently intact.
That is, they are still ecologically functioning as they should. And we call these intact areas core areas.
And then next we map areas that are called growth areas, and these are the areas where ecosystem restoration is warranted just due to threats such as the invasive non native grass expansion, human development and use, and conifer expansion as well. And then lastly, we map degraded areas where restoration is not feasible and mitigation can be used to protect those neighboring core and growth areas from becoming degraded. And so the overall goal of the sagebrush conservation design is to focus management actions on keeping the core areas intact and then restore the growth areas, especially those that are adjacent to those core areas, to create these larger, intact sagebrush areas, thus increasing sagebrush connectivity just across the west. So that's the overall goal, is to kind of be able to grow and start. Yeah.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: And that's actually something like kind of jolie was talking about in the second episode that we did a couple years ago about trying to protect those core areas. What was it?
[00:17:20] Speaker C: I think it's defend the core.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Defend the core is what she said.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's basically a very similar concept, kind of expanded to incorporate all the different threats that are occurring across the sage bush biome.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: And the core would be mainly made up of the natives and just more of a healthy, natural, I guess, ecosystem in and of itself. So it doesn't really have the invasives and issues.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah. It's a very low cover of invasives or no invasives presence at all. And it has a lot of our natives, perennials and forbes. Perennial grasses and forbes. And just a high sagebrush cover kind of intermixed with the perennial grasses and forbes. So, yeah, much more intact, functioning ecosystem. And then once the invasives get in there up to a certain level, to a threshold, that's where in those restoration areas, we still have an opportunity to recover those areas. But once the invasive cover does pass a certain threshold, it's really difficult to restore a lot of those areas that are more highly degraded.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you give an example of a degraded area?
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Like, what does that look like a monoculture of dried brown grass, sage brush monoculture?
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Pretty much, yeah, that's it. Because it's not going to be. Since the cheek grass is so established or Medusaid or something so established, you just can't get it back.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: You just can't get it back. Yeah. It outcompetes all the natives, and really it does this because after disturbance, such as fire, all the seeds, they just move right on in and they recover very quickly. They get established very quickly. And sprout looks nice in the spring.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: When it's all green.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then a lot of our other natives, they can't compete with that, and they don't recover well after fire because they're not fire adapted, so they're just outcompeted from the get go. It would take a long time for those native species to move in and be able to reestablish.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Is there research being done on looking at ways to maybe try to recover degraded areas?
[00:19:51] Speaker B: There is a lot of research going on in that it's not necessarily so much of the heavily. Where there used to be. There used to be a lot of research going on in the heavily degraded areas. They have been trying stuff like prescribed burning as well as a lot of herbicide treatments and things of that nature. There was the black fingers of death biocontrol.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: I was thinking there's some kind of microorganism that doesn't that kill cheat grass or something.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: And there are these kind of natural die offs of cheat grass, too, where this large patch will just die off and you will see some of the natives that come back in. So it's something we don't fully understand yet. There has been some research done, but I think there's a lot of opportunity to continue to do more. And that's sort of the advantage of the sage bush conservation design, is that you can start. It's almost like working backwards, trying to work backwards to control it so that it doesn't move into the areas that you really care about, and then just to try to beat it back slowly.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: So what are your goals for research?
[00:21:05] Speaker A: In other words, what do you hope to discover, learn from it? And how would that affect fuels management and fire planning?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Big question there.
My goal.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Three questions.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Three questions.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Yeah, three pronged question.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Love those three prong questions.
My goal has always been to conduct research where science and information is lacking, and it's needed to really help with management decisions at multiple scales. So where information is needed nationally, where it's needed regionally, and also where it's needed locally on the ground.
So, for example, I've been working with the USGS to develop a number of research projects that analyze the effectiveness of field breaks where they've worked successfully, as well as identify potential impacts they may have on ecosystems, and then use this information to design different fuel brake network configurations to see which fuel brake design may work best in promoting the control of wildfire for our firefighters, while at the same time reducing potential negative impacts on surrounding communities and ecosystems.
And so this information to me can really help inform where it is strategic to place fuel break networks that will help increase firefighting effectiveness.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: That kind of plays into what we talked about last week with emergency stabilization and rehabilitation and the seed program as well.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: But the national seed strategy.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
So the work you do is large scale, big pictures type stuff. Based on your research, what do you see as the challenges we face in the future for fire planning and fuels management?
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Even bigger question.
[00:23:03] Speaker C: Well, we're going big scale.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: We're going big.
In my mind, there's quite a few challenges that we face in the future. The first is climate change and the likelihood that wildfire frequency and extent will increase under the predicted hotter and drier conditions out west and in other areas.
Yeah, exactly.
In the south, in the northeast, even.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Where it's starting to get really dry and they're having issues with it being so dry.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Right.
In addition, climate change is a large driver in the expansion of non native invasive grasses that are promoting more frequent, uncharacteristic fire across the know, especially in our sagebrushublin and desert ecosystems. And these are the areas that really experienced fire pretty infrequently and they just don't recover afterwards. Like the Sonoran desert, for instance. There's a lot of invasive grasses that have been moving in and they have been seeing more and more fire, especially in Suaro National park.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Right. Was that last year?
[00:24:17] Speaker C: Last year, the year before last, I think, yeah.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Losing the big cactus.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah. That's sad.
In my mind, in thinking about climate change and some of the challenges we have with it is a lot of our federal agency management paradigm has largely focused on restoring well researched historical fire regimes as a prevention technique for uncharacteristic fire.
And so we will really need to kind of develop a new skill set of managing within uncertainty and the unknown in the future, as well as managing changing landscapes where wildlife species and ecosystems may need to move to new niches in response to climate change in order to survive. And then in this process, they're going to be out competing other species as well. So we're going to be seeing a lot of changes. So I think for me, that's one of the big challenges that we have as federal agencies is how do we manage that, accept it, direct it, kind of try to respond back to it, restrict it.
So there's a lot of questions there for sure. And another big challenge is the expanding human footprint and landscape fragmentation in the wildland urban interface. And thus it just increases the potential for more human ignitions and higher fuel loads. And this just produces more challenges in managing wildfire. Right. Especially where that fire risk is high to moderate. So there's a lot of challenges there of just trying to manage fire within that fragmented wildland urban interface.
And then lastly, as I'm going on, lastly, a major challenge is funding, having the proper amount of funding to implement a successful wildland fire management program. I think that has always been challenging.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: It has been because you have some slow years where we kind of base our budgeting off of, and then we have a really bad fire season. And I think with bill funding, and they've addressed that. I mean, they're looking at this more seriously. Obviously, Congress is taking it more seriously and looking at that. But, yeah, it seems like we never, just never have enough money or enough people or enough time to handle some of these things.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true. And it's hard to predict. It's hard to totally plan for it because we do have such varying conditions. Some years. Yeah, low fire, and then we rely on that, and then we'll get a big fire year.
Sometimes it's not a fire season, it's a fire year where you're seeing fires burn everywhere. And we have to manage those fires for that long of a time period.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Well, in places you don't historically see them or that kind of thing, too.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Like Canada last year.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Explain that, Michelle.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: The one fire that happens every 150 to 300 years.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Well, I tried to explain that. Well, just talking to people, they should do more logging or all this stuff happen because they're not doing enough. Well, Canada is big and they have an expanse of land. Like, if you ever fly over Alaska, which I had the opportunity to do last year, and you just see this vast landscape of these boreal forests, and there's just thick and like matchsticks. It's just waiting to go and takes the right conditions. And kind of like the big burn in 1910, where you have that stand replacing 100 year fire, where it's just kind of part, part of the ecosystem, unfortunately.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And it creates, I mean, we need fire on the landscape. We can't just get rid of fire. We do need it. And a lot of our forest types are more of that stand replacing, mixed severity fire type.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: We're just seeing it more often, which is not.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: We're starting to see it more often. But we also had a period where we didn't see it. And that's kind of how all the research has really shown is you'll have these time periods where you are seeing a lot of fire, and then you don't see as much fire. And it's due to climatic conditions, just happen to be like 100 years of more precipitation, maybe some cooler temperatures, and then you'll see a different climatic shift into a warmer temperature, drier conditions, and you'll start to see more fire. So this has happened over millennia. It just ebbs and flows and flows.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: It seems like, though, we're just seeing it more erratically lately over. I mean, just being in fire for the last 30 years, the last ten years is just hot then the temperature drops, and then you have all the snow or rain, and then it's really hot again.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: I've noticed that as well. I think that's where climate change and managing for climate change is going to be.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Well, and then tricky. How is that going to affect plants, right. Wildlife and us, because it's not just.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: A constant increase of temperature, there's a lot of variation. And so the plants that will be able to adapt and survive will be the ones that can really handle that variation in temperature and precipitation.
[00:30:07] Speaker C: And that's kind of the interesting thing, too. I work for the forest service and I came to the BLM, and you're like, oh, it's just sage brush out there or grass or something. But really, when you look at it, just what's in the sagebrush community and ecosystem. So you have the biochrust, you have the insects, you have the animals, you have the plants, you have the elk and deer that go through. So it's not me.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Rabbit, the pygmy rabbits.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: Yes, I love that, too. The Mormon crickets, all of those things. But that's one of the things, too. When I came to the BLM, you don't realize there's a lot to impact out there. And so when that fire does go through, all of those things are no more because their home has been taken away. And so that's when you look at us like, it's not just the sagebrush, it's not out there, it's public lands. I mean, there's a lot out there that you don't realize that Carrie did a paper on biochrust when we did a fireworks trunk thing. And so I'm like, oh, the biocrust. You never think of just walking out there? Yeah, like walking out there where you're stepping and the impact of your step, what that can do. So that's the thing for folks. If you're listening, just be cognizant. There's so much out there that you don't see that the impacts to those human cause fires, what they do.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that is so very true in the biocrust. I mean, I'm so glad you brought that up, because such an important component of these sagebrush ecosystems, and when they're crushed in the soil, it just opens up and creates that opportunity for those invasive grasses to move right on in.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Thinking about what? I had another question.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: I told you this would happen. No, that's great. I hope I'm answering them. Okay.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: I did have a question, and I've heard different things it seems like cheat grass was originally like in the lower elevations and now we're seeing it starting to move up and it seems like it was never really above like 5000ft in elevation. And now just here locally you can see the cheekgrass kind of starting to encroach. What causes that? Is it just this climate change?
[00:32:13] Speaker B: It is, yeah, definitely. It's just these warmer temperatures and drier conditions that we have been seeing that's really helping to promote the spread of these invasive grasses like cheat grass. And there was a study that came out, gosh, I think it was last year, last year or the year before. And it showed that just over the past 20 years there's been an 800% increase expansion of tea grass across the west. Moving into those higher elevations, moving into areas. Know, we really didn't think it would move into. It's starting to move into some of our forested.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Unfortunately. And that's. That's another thing like Jennifer mentioned to be cognizant of when you're out traveling and we don't want you to drive off trails, usually one because you could start a fire with your exhaust system. But just thinking about the spread of these invasive weeds and I know we have like weed washing stations and fire camps, so we're not taking some of.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: This stuff to other places.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: But yeah, I don't think people really think about that. And even on your shoes, right, or.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Your dog hitchhikes.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: It'S just like the.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Boats they have, the snails or whatever to watch out for in the summertime. You do need to watch out for the stuff that you're carrying under your undercarriage of your vehicles too, and on your feet.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
I know. I just attended that. There's a canadian workshop for managing invasive plants and wildfire. And yeah, they had some great ideas and were really heavily managing for invasive species in terms of like the fire camps, what they would do around the fire camps, and washing of the vehicles. So they are really trying to promote that too, as we are in the United States.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: So another reason just to wash your vehicle after you go out, wash your shoes.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, those are things. I mean, you see a burned area and people are going out and recreating and so that's not something they think of. So that's where a lot of those invasive species come in contact with those burned areas is off vehicles or UTVs or things like that that are coming from different areas. So that's why when we see signs or things that say stay on roadways and trails, that's kind of one of the purposes. Why?
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: So in closing, is there anything else you'd like to add, talk about?
[00:34:52] Speaker B: I don't think so. I can't think of anything offhand, but, yeah, I mean, if any questions or any more information is needed that I can provide. Yeah, please let me know. Please reach out. But definitely want to thank both of you for the opportunity to do this podcast. This was great. Really enjoyed it.
[00:35:12] Speaker C: It was great having you on. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. It was a lot. Again, we've had science the last three podcasts, and so.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Oh, great.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: It's been great to just learn different things, for sure.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: That's wonderful.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Another sister of science.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Another sister of science.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: We got to continue this theme.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for the 25th episode. Kind of a landmark episode.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yes. I feel lucky. Lucky to be on the 25th anniversary.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Here we go.
And discussing all the different research you do and how important it is to fire planning and our fire management program in general, because if we don't know what's really going on with the landscape after a burn, then we don't know how to help it.
And just learning a little bit more about the sagebrush conservation design is really interesting. And the fact that forested areas, there isn't a lot of research, like you said, maybe in policies more for the forested type fuels, but we need to pay attention to our rangeland type fuels as well.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: So appreciate you.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well, thank you very much diving into that.
[00:36:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Too. I think the other thing, too is we're so big into hiring and recruitment, and people are like, oh, going to BLM, we're going to be fighting fire and all that stuff. But this is just another example of what you went to school for and how it transitioned into a job with the BLM and helping fire management. So there's so many opportunities for folks to not be in fire if they don't want to necessarily, but also just support the fire program and provide that science background as some of the things that they need.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I have to say, I really do enjoy my job. That's awesome. I'd love to make a difference and love to be asking innovative questions and trying to think outside the box of maybe what it is that we can be doing differently in managing wildfire.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: That's what we think of trying to think of prevention and education. How can we get the word out better? How can we better prevent unwanted human cause fires?
It's very much a challenge. Yeah.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: So, yeah. Thank you for joining. We appreciate you being here today.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thank you.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: And keep up the good work.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: And if you have questions, comments, or even suggestions on different topics for our podcasts, please email them to BlMTs at BLM. Gov and use wildfire Matters podcast in the subject line. To learn more about Nipsey or the BLM, please visit our website at www. Nipsey. Gov and follow us at blmfire on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: And thank you all for listening. Please join us next time when we or I so sad.
[00:37:59] Speaker C: So sad.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: When I spark a conversation with a representative from the National Fire equipment program. At least I think I've got them talked into coming on next time.
[00:38:10] Speaker C: That'll be a great podcast. Those guys are awesome working with them and doing a lot of great things in the equipment shop.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: And I just want to thank Jennifer for the last couple years working on the podcast with me. She's been a good friend, too. We've worked on a lot of fires and a lot of events and programs together over the years and had a lot of fun. But you'll still be around, so we'll tap into you.
[00:38:32] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I'll cheer you on from the retirement land in our RV. Yes, I'll listen to your podcast, but thanks. No, it's been a pleasure, as always.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:41] Speaker C: Until then, stay safe and be wildfire aware. There's.
