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If you&#8217;ve found yourself wondering &#8220;where the heck is the aircraft?&#8221; while watching a fire burn near you, this is the episode for you.



Guest Matt Lynde—a helicopter operations specialist for the Forest Service&#8217;s Regional Office in California—gave us a run-down on why some fires have huge airshows and others have almost none, and even tackled a few common misconceptions about the use of aircraft in fighting wildfires. Among these misconceptions is the idea that aircraft put fires out and that if you don&#8217;t see aircraft on a fire, that means it&#8217;s not a high priority for fire managers. As Matt explains in this episode, there&#8217;s a ton that goes into the decisions on where aircraft goes and when, and noted how challenging it is to prioritize certain fires over others during big fire seasons when resources are limited.



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



This episode of Life with Fire was created in conjunction with Region Five of the Forest Service, for a project that explores some of the common public misconceptions about aerial firefighting. The full Storymap can be found&nbsp;<a href="https://storymaps.com/stories/866bbfb203ca45f6b09623d87b7d45aa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.&nbsp;



Timestamps:&nbsp;



00:00 &#8211; Episode Introduction



05:07 &#8211; Matt&#8217;s Introduction And Background&nbsp;



06:51 &#8211; Helicopter Coordinator Position Details



08:38 &#8211; Matt&#8217;s Initial Interest In Aviation&nbsp;



10:22 &#8211; Changes In Air Attack&nbsp;



12:19 &#8211; &nbsp;Safety Procedures And Risk Factors of Aerial Firefighting



14:45 &#8211; Misconceptions About Aircraft Firefighting



17:36 &#8211; Benefits Of Helicopter Coordination



18:53 &#8211; Fire Retardant Use—Benefits and Limitations



20:14 &#8211; How Aircraft Supports Firefighters On The Ground&nbsp;



23:32 &#8211; Other Limitations To Fighting Fire With Aircraft&nbsp;



25:06 &#8211; What Factors Inform Availability of Aerial Support&nbsp;



28:02 &#8211; Lack Of Resources Problem&nbsp;



30:03 &#8211; Outro&nbsp;

Pros, Cons and Misconceptions of Aerial Firefighting with Matt Lynde

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



We spoke to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.watchduty.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Watch Duty</a>&nbsp;CEO John Mills about the Watch Duty app as well as fire technology more broadly, and gave him a chance to respond to some listener questions from PIOs, wildland firefighters, community resilience experts and others in the Life with Fire community. His responses are about as no-BS as they come, and he provided an honest assessment of where the app is currently and where he&#8217;d like it to be in the near and far-off future. A few things they&#8217;re adding in the near future include a version of the app just for first responders, which John speaks to in the episode, while in the longer term he&#8217;s looking forward to exploring how Watch Duty can provide more opportunities for community education about wildfire and wildfire resilience.&nbsp;



Timestamps:&nbsp;



07:33 &#8211; Interview starts, John explains his background in Silicon Valley



10:10 &#8211; The Beginnings Of Watch Duty&nbsp;



12:12 &#8211; John&#8217;s experiences of the Walbridge Fire&nbsp;



13:21 &#8211; Watch Duty&#8217;s Functionality&nbsp;



16:20 &#8211; How they find reporters/contributors for Watch Duty&nbsp;



18:06 &#8211; Concerns and Questions from PIOs/PAOs&nbsp;



21:07 &#8211; Gaining Trust And Users&nbsp;



22:25 &#8211; The Future of The App



25:01 &#8211; Upcoming Watch Duty Features &nbsp;&nbsp;



26:48 &#8211; Public Education Features&nbsp;



29:40 &#8211; Watch Duty&#8217;s Role In The Fire Tech Space&nbsp;



34:48 &#8211; John&#8217;s Thoughts On the Fire Tech Industry&nbsp;



42:39 &#8211; Watch Duty&#8217;s Main Benefit Is Efficiency&nbsp;



47:16 &#8211; How People Use Watch Duty&nbsp;



49:50 &#8211; The Reason They Don&#8217;t Allow Comments on Watch Duty



50:49 &#8211; Outro&nbsp;

Fire Tech and Improving Access to Wildfire Information, with Watch Duty Founder John Clarke Mills

Welcome to episode four of our Fire in the Southwest Series, supported by the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.swfireconsortium.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Southwest Fire Science Consortium</a>&nbsp;as well as the&nbsp;<a href="https://azwildfire.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arizona Wildfire Initiative</a>! Today&#8217;s guest, Zander Evans, is the executive director of the&nbsp;<a href="https://foreststewardsguild.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forest Stewards Guild</a>, which has a mission of promoting ecologically-, economically-, and socially-responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems and the human communities dependent upon them. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Guild&#8217;s team—including Zander, who has worked there for over 17 years—has seen the first-hand impacts of some of the most destructive wildfires of the last two decades, including the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire.



Zander and Amanda spoke about the role of the Forest Stewards Guild in helping provide more capacity for often resource-strapped agencies, as well as how their roles are shifting with the legacy and rise in megafires like the CC/HP Fire. We discussed the Guild&#8217;s objective to connect work on the ground to policy, while creating a network of land stewards that can learn from each other and share resources, lessons learned and other critical information that can help others dealing with similar issues across the country.&nbsp;



We covered a lot in this episode, and in classic form, Amanda asked many difficult-to-answer questions that Zander did a great job of tackling—including questions about trauma-informed community engagement, how to continue to get good work done within a legacy of escaped prescribed fires and how communities can more effectively prepare for the &#8220;post-fire&#8221; piece of the resilience equation.&nbsp;



Things mentioned in the episode:



<a href="https://www.santafefireshed.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Santa Fe Fireshed</a>



<a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebuild-lives-of-smokey-bear-hotshots" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GoFundMe for Smokey Bear Hotshots</a>. Many of the crew&#8217;s members tragically lost their homes in the fires near Ruidoso, NM last week. They were responding to the fire when this happened. Please support if you&#8217;re able!



Timestamps:&nbsp;



07:56 &#8211; The Guild&#8217;s Intersection With Wildfire Management



13:38 &#8211; Engagement Practices Since Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak



15:38 &#8211; Keeping Agency Folks In Same Roles/Locations Would Help Collaborative Efforts



16:44 &#8211; Guild Partnership With The Forest Service



19:27 &#8211; Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire Aftermath And Community Perception of Prescribed Fire



23:57 &#8211; Zander&#8217;s Recommendations For Other Fire Prone Communities



26:12 &#8211; Santa Clara Pueblo Takeaways



28:00 &#8211; Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) Should Include Post Fire Element



30:20 &#8211; Preplanning For Post Fire Impacts and Things To Consider In Pre Planning



37:14 &#8211; Encouraging People To Go Back Outside After Experiencing Fire Trauma



39:05 &#8211; The Santa Fe Fireshed and Using Watershed Concerns to Frame Management Practices



44:24 &#8211; Implementation Takes Community Engagement!

Fire in the Southwest Ep. 4: The Shifting Role of the Forest Stewards Guild in an Era of Megafires, with Zander Evans

Welcome to our third episode of our Fire in the Southwest series! In this episode, we spoke with Jon Martin, who is the Director of Native American Forest and Rangeland Management Programming at the&nbsp;<a href="https://eri.nau.edu/jonathan-martin-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ecological Restoration Institute</a>&nbsp;at Northern Arizona University. Jon spent three decades working in forestry before retiring, and now uses his extensive interagency background to find pathways that can help tribes achieve their management goals within a Western fire management framework.



This topic is especially prescient right now, as the <a href="https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/wfmmc-final-report-09-2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wildfire Commission Report</a> was explicit in its recommendations to incorporate more Indigenous knowledge into land management (see: recommendations 12, 15, 16). However, while this directive is a step in the right direction, actually accomplishing it will require overcoming significant workforce and budget constraints at the ground level, especially within tribal communities.



Jon and Amanda spoke about what this integration of different management practices can look like, how to overcome those barriers, the differences between cultural and agency fire, as well as the fundamental question of whether or not the differences between cultural and agency fire can be meaningfully reconciled. Jon also provided a great example of this integration working (the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/r3/fire-aviation/?cid=FSEPRD1163532" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">San Carlos Apache Tribe&#8217;s use of Crisis Strategy/Infrastructure Bill funding</a>). Finally, we wrapped the episode up with a discussion about the nature of federal land agency employment, which all but requires employees to move locations every 3-5 years to move up in their careers. Jon spoke about how the collaborative/shared stewardship pathway that is needed to meaningfully integrate Indigenous management into Western management requires a wholesale commitment to developing interagency relationships, and how this should be a major priority moving forward.&nbsp;



&#8220;It’s not about going out and managing forests, silvicultural prescription or even forest management,&#8221; Jon said in our conversation. &#8220;It’s become all about people management, almost a social science. I think people are starting to realize that. It’s a softer approach but it’s very real.”



This conversation and the rest of our Fire in the Southwest series is supported by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, as well as the Arizona Wildfire Initiative. We&#8217;re so grateful for their support!



Time stamps:&nbsp;



06:23 &#8211; Jon&#8217;s Background and Navajo Upbringing&nbsp;



09:42 &#8211; Northern Arizona University And Its Programs&nbsp;



11:51 &#8211; Native American Forest And Rangeland Management Program&nbsp;



13:00 &#8211; San Carlos Apache Tribe



14:12 &#8211; Western Land Management Agencies Working With Tribes&nbsp;



15:38 &#8211; Opportunities And Funding Becoming Available To Bolster Tribal Management



18:45 &#8211; Fire History and Research in the Piñon Juniper Ecosystems of the Southwest



20:38 &#8211; Indigenous Fire History In Piñon Juniper Ecosystems&nbsp;



22:41 &#8211; Culturally Informed Management In Higher Elevation Forests&nbsp;



25:56 &#8211; Increasing Acknowledgement Of Cultural Burning&nbsp;



26:33 &#8211; Wildland Fire Management And Mitigation Report Directives for Indigenous Burning



28:10 &#8211; San Carlos Apache Tribe—Wildfire Crisis Strategy Funding Leading to Tribal Management Success Story



29:34 &#8211; Collaborative Efforts Require Long-Term Commitments and Relationship Building



33:50 &#8211; Tribal Management Is Inherently Collaborative&nbsp;



34:20 &#8211; Jon&#8217;s Career Wins&nbsp;



37:32 &#8211; End&nbsp;

Fire in the Southwest Series, Ep. 3: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Western Fire Management with Jon Martin

What is it like to watch vegetation type-conversion in real time? How are invasive grasses changing the ecology of the desert and broader Southwest? What&#8217;s being done to protect and restore Southwest ponderosa pine forests?&nbsp;



This episode with Tonto National Forest fire ecologist Mary Lata dives into the fire regimes of the Southwest, how they&#8217;re changing by the year, how invasive grasses are influencing those changes, and particularly how she&#8217;s beginning to see more fire in the Sonoran Desert, which historically did not burn very often. We also spoke about her work within the <a href="https://4fri.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Four Forest Restoration Project,</a> which aims to restore and protect the significant ponderosa pine forests within the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab and Tonto national forests.&nbsp;



Mary was preparing for a public meeting the day of our conversation and had a few great slides that she showed me during our conversation, so I&#8217;ve uploaded the full video of our conversation <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm_Bdqj6YF0&amp;t=3566s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">to Youtube</a> for folks who would like some more context for the topics we discussed in the podcast.&nbsp;



This episode and our entire series on Fire in the Southwest was made possible with support from <a href="https://www.swfireconsortium.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Southwest Fire Science Consortium </a> and the <a href="https://azwildfire.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arizona Wildfire Initiative.</a>



Photo above courtesy of Frankie Lopez. 



Timstamps:&nbsp;



01:11 &#8211; Introduction



05:42 &#8211; Mary&#8217;s Background and Career



10:04 &#8211; Four Forest Restoration Initiative



13:05 &#8211; Growing up Near Badlands National Park



15:33 &#8211; Different Ecosystems and Fire Regimes of the Southwest



17:19 &#8211; The Sonoran Desert



19:39 &#8211; Witnessing Desert Conversion Over Time



20:14 &#8211; Should Human-Caused Ignitions Be Part Of A Fire Regime?



22:05 &#8211; Lightning Caused Fires Versus Human Caused Fire



23:52 &#8211; Mary&#8217;s Love of Nebraska



27:01 &#8211; Grasslands In The Great Plains



30:36 &#8211; Current Restoration Work and Climate Change Impacts on Southwest Fire Regimes



34:11 &#8211; What is Assisted Migration and Can It Help The Southwest?



38:04 &#8211; The Changing Role Of Disturbance In Grassland Systems



39:24 &#8211; Grassification of the Sonoran Desert.&nbsp;



45:13 &#8211; Outro

Fire in the Southwest Series, Ep.2: The Grassification of the Sonoran Desert with Ecologist Mary Lata

Life with Fire Podcast

Life with Fire Podcast

Episodes

Ep. 69—Pros, Cons and Misconceptions of Aerial Firefighting with Matt Lynde

Ep. 68—Fire Tech and Improving Access to Wildfire Information, with Watch Duty Founder John Clarke Mills

Ep. 67—Fire in the Southwest Ep. 4: The Shifting Role of the Forest Stewards Guild in an Era of Megafires, with Zander Evans

Ep. 66—Fire in the Southwest Series, Ep. 3: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Western Fire Management with Jon Martin

Ep. 65—Fire in the Southwest Series, Ep.2: The Grassification of the Sonoran Desert with Ecologist Mary Lata

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