🎙️The Conundrum of Wildland Fire: Balancing Ecological Benefits and Community Safety, with Steve Markason
🌎 Designing Nature’s Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast
Steve Markason, Founder/Principle at Teton Wildfire Mitigation Team, LLC, discusses the increasing extent and severity of wildland fires and the need to build resilient landscapes that increasingly includes communities.
Featured Discussions:
Understanding Large-Scale Wildfires: Steve shares insights on how large-scale wildfires have evolved over time and what that means for designing resilient landscapes.
Wildland-Urban Interface Challenges: As communities expand into forested areas, the risks increase—highlighting the need for fire-adapted community planning.
Ecological Benefits vs Risks of Fire: The dual nature of fire as both beneficial and destructive is explored, emphasizing its ecological role when occurring at optimal times and places.
Climate Crisis Impact on Fire Patterns: Data indicating an increase in area burned since the 1980s points to a correlation between higher temperatures and more extensive wildfires.
National Cohesive Strategy Overview: A look at how this strategy guides nationwide coordinated efforts in wildfire management through three tenets:
Safe & Effective Wildfire Response
Creating Fire-Adapted Communities
Restoring & Maintaining Fire Resilient Landscapes
Restoration Efforts & Prescribed Burns: This is a discussion around prescribed burns as tools for maintaining healthy ecosystems while managing public safety concerns.
Community Responsibility & Planning: Steve emphasizes homeowner involvement in building within wildfire-prone areas as part of creating adaptive strategies against wildfires.
Resources:
Fire-Adapted Communities (USDA Forest Service)
National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (USDA Forest Service)
Resilient Landscape Video (USDA)
Credits:
Research / Writing / Editing / Production by Rob Campellone & Tom Miewald;
Cover Art / Logo by Lucas Ghilardi;
Intro / Outro Voiceover by Tom Askin;
Music Composed & Performed by Aleksey Chistilin via Pixabay
Transcription:
[00:03] Intro / Outro: Mind Matter Media presents Designing Nature’s Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast, where discussions center around the most current and innovative approaches to landscape conservation and design. This is the show for stakeholders who want to adapt to the climate crisis, halt biodiversity loss, and change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes through collaborative conservation action.
[00:33] Rob: Hey, everyone, welcome to episode four of Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast. I'm your co-host, Rob Campellone.
[00:43] Tom: And hi there, I'm your other co-host, Tom Miewald. Rob so who do we have on deck this week?
[00:49] Rob: We have a really exciting episode ahead, Tom. Steve Markason, the founder and director of the Teton Wildfire Mitigation Team out of Jackson, Wyoming, is joining us to talk about large scale wildland fire, how we got here, and where do we go from here in our efforts to build resilient landscapes that increasingly include communities that are built in the wildland urban interface? It's a real challenge.
[01:22] Tom: Yeah, right. And we've kind of learned a lot about wildland fire over the decades, and we know that it can be both a friend and we know that it can be a foe. I think that's the way most people think of it. But the environmental benefits are many. Having it at the right place at the right time can induce all sorts of ecological benefits, and we've learned that. But at the wrong place at the wrong time. Wildfires can wreak havoc in communities, threaten lives, homes, and natural and cultural resources.
[01:53] Rob: Our listeners might recall that the podcast first episode was devoted to the climate crisis as a major landscape change agent, particularly within the realm of the natural environment. And our second episode was devoted to the topic of adaptation, things that we could do to help the natural and human communities adapt and become more resilient to change. Today's episode is devoted to a specific aspect of adaptation, learning to live with wildland fire, specifically the conundrum of trying to sustain fire as an ecological process while designing communities and structures that are.
[02:42] Tom: Resilient to, you know. I recall that conversation with Doug Parsons that we had last know. He's the host of a really great podcast, America adapts. And I'm sure-fire touches upon aspects of what he's talked about. And one of the things that he talked about was the fifth national climate assessment. He has a whole podcast devoted to that. And learning about that for today's discussion with Steve is that the EPA created more than 50 different climate change indicators. One of those indicators was Wildland Fire, and the EPA's Climate Change Indicators website provides a great summary of information and data that they've compiled on wildland fire since all the way back to 1983. We'll drop a link to that site in the pod notes, but I think we really thought that that was a useful data set that people could look and understand the history of a fire in their know.
[03:39] Rob: We don't want to devote the entire episode to data, but I think providing a few fun facts, or not so fun facts, really, as a foundation for our discussion with Steve might be helpful. So, bear with me for a moment, Tom. I know not everyone is into data, but I think there's an important story to be told. Know first that forests, shrublands and grasslands cover more than half of the land area in the United States. So, I think it could be interpreted to mean that there's a lot of potential fuel out there. Second, since 1983, the National Interagency Fire center has documented an average of approximately 70,000 wildfires per year. Which sounds like a lot of fire on the landscape, but you really have to consider the extent of acres burned more so than the number of fires.
[04:40] Tom: Right.
[04:41] Rob: Third, the extent of area burned each year has increased since the 1980s. And of the ten years with the largest acreage burned, all have occurred since 2004, and they coincide with many of the warmest years on record. And lastly, the peak of the US fire season typically occurred in August, but more recently is now peaking in July. I think the take home message is there's a lot of fuel on the landscape, there's a lot of fire on the landscape. There seems to be a correlation between temperature and extent of area burned, and the peak fire season is occurring earlier in the season, July versus August. If all that is true, and I'm sure Steve will speak to it, the question in my mind is, what are we going to do to combat it? What's our plan? You and I, Tom, are planners. We're design landscape designers. We need a plan. So hopefully Steve will help us with.
[05:54] Tom: Want to help? We want this information to help us plan for resilient landscapes. It's kind of what us as landscape conservation design experts want to those. I think that's the appropriate question there, Rob, and I'm sure that Steve has some thoughts on this. And so, should I go ahead and introduce Steve?
[06:13] Rob: Yeah, you bet.
[06:15] Tom: Right. So, our guest, Steve Margson from the Teton Wildfire mitigation team consulting, formed that group after working for the US Forest Service for 27 years. He retired as the North Zone Fire management officer of the Bridger Teton National Forest in 2020 and had several fire management positions during his tenure with the Forest Service as a forest management officer, he designed and implemented landscape level hazardous fuel mitigation projects throughout Teton county and the Bridger Teton Forest. As TWMT, an LLC principal, Steve carried his experience forward working with homeowners, hoes, guest ranches and fire departments. He's an independent contractor with coalitions and collaborators teaching community wildfire mitigation best practices courses nationwide. Steve values his relationships with community stakeholders, homeowners, natural resource managers, and government cooperators at all levels. Did I miss anything from your bio, Steve, is there anything you'd like to add or highlight from that?
[07:18] Steve Markason: Tom, you captured it all. It's great to be with you and Rob today. Really appreciate you guys having me here.
[07:24] Rob: We're really glad to have you here. Steve, let's talk large scale fire.
[07:30] Steve Markason: Yeah, it sounds good. I tell you what, you guys nailed the know, the fact that we have increased fuel loads on the landscape, the extent of fire seasons and severity is something that I have witnessed in my 30-year career working with the fire service and beyond. And yeah, it's a conundrum. And there's some things we can do to plan. And I'm a planner, too, guys, and I'm still planning on different scales right now. So, I want to talk about those different scales where I've been working the last 30 years.
[08:04] Rob: Before we do, though, Steve, do you have any perspective on the summary that I provided of the EPA's climate change indicators? That there's a lot of fuel in the landscape and a lot of fire on the landscape, and the correlation between temperature and extent burned and peak fire season occurring earlier in the season? Just any general thoughts about that? Know some of the drivers or whatever, I just leave it wide open for you. We'll get down into the details throughout the course of our discussion today, but I thought that'd be a nice opening for you.
[08:43] Steve Markason: Yes, Rob, I couldn't agree more with the data points you brought up from the EPA study. I mean, overall, there's numerous studies out there that show changes with climate. Flash, drought and drought indexes are the main driver of not only increased fire weather, but just the extent of fire season on the landscape, the severity of fires that we witness now, and the duration of fire season, like you said, now stemming from starting in full fledge in July and running towards August and even later in some areas. So those data points are correct. And there's a lot of studies out there to support that data and my personal experience and my counterparts who I fight fire with for years, we see the same thing on the landscape. It's pretty incredible how long fire season goes now. And, yeah, we need to start thinking about what are the strategies? How are we going to plan for this as land managers, but not only communities and Homeowners? And I believe really strongly that the responsibility is on everyone, not just land managers, but homeowners who build in the wildland urban interface and the folks that want to live in forested areas. So, yeah, there's a lot of responsibility and a lot of work that needs to be done from a lot of folks.
[10:10] Tom: Right. Yeah. Talking about kind of the shifting of the fire seasons, I think that's really interesting. Does that mean that the duration of the peak season is getting longer, it's shifted a month earlier, and the overall duration is the same? I've noticed that many of the climate models indicate that weather seasons are generally shifting now and then into the future. Do you predict that that is going to shift with fire seasons, too?
[10:37] Steve Markason: No, I think in the short term, definitely. Tom, if you look at long term fire on the landscape, I mean, it's been cyclical for hundreds of years. But really, the biggest conundrum now is that we're building so much in the wildland urban interface, and communities are extending now into areas that are forested and have significant fuel load. So that's really posing much more of a challenge, even with the longer duration and the data that supports that climate as a main driver. Severity and duration of fire, really, it comes down to now, is it's critical that we design communities that are adapted. And really, you mentioned it. Also, I listened to your podcast with Doug Parsons, and he was great. He made reference to fire resilient communities and adaptation. And that's really what my work is focusing on now with communities and homeowners. But I do want to talk about the work I did with the forest service restoring and maintaining fire resilient landscapes as well.
[11:43] Rob: Well, let me give you an opportunity to speak to that, Steve. As you know, our podcast is about landscape conservation, and we've devoted the first three episodes to the climate crisis, including this one, the climate crisis. As a multifaceted change agent on the landscape. We've been trying to build a case that the complexity of the climate crisis combined with the increasing rate of biodiversity loss together constitute a wicked problem. And that's a technical term in our field. But that that wicked problem requires a new approach to planning. And within our realm of landscape design, I'm wondering if that's also applicable to your realm as well. I know that the fire community is now working under the auspices of the national cohesive strategy precisely because the fire community realized that fires were getting bigger and hotter and stronger and faster and occurring more often, and that and a national coordinated approach was needed. That's very similar to what Tom and I are saying about our profession as conservation planners and landscape designers, that the problems we're encountering, whether they be social, ecological, economic, or all those things combined, are getting more complex and intertwined. And as a result, we need a new strategy. That strategy is often thought of in our field as landscape conservation. And this idea of diverse stakeholders coming together in some identified landscape. And you could define that landscape any way you want, ecosystem, eco region, watershed, whatever. And that those stakeholders work collaboratively to develop strategies to further landscape sustainability. And by sustainability, I mean an overall condition of low vulnerability and high resilience. That's kind of the standard that I use. A common problem that landscapes stakeholders are having in our field is when and where they do come together as a collaborative, is that they lack a holistic, systems thinking, science-based approach that helps them develop a game plan for advancing sustainability in their landscapes. And I think that's where the cohesive strategy could help. As a real-life example of a nationwide, coordinated approach to address a wicked problem. Can you introduce our listeners to the cohesive strategy? Maybe within the context of what I've provided in this admittedly long-winded windup.
[15:19] Steve Markason: That was great, Rob. Yeah, that was well said. And really know I understand your process in planning and landscape conservation, and it mirrors, and I believe it's really identical to what we do in wildland fire management and the national cohesive Fire Management strategy. So let me talk about that a bit. I'm glad you brought it up. So, the National Cohesive Fire Management strategy is an effort that was initiated in 2010. The initial strategy was finalized in 2014 and it's refreshed every five years. And it was a Department of Interior, US Department of Agricultural effort with Intergovernmental committee, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, and it provides the complete strategy for planning for wildland fire. And it really is the framework for everything that I've been doing the last 30 years and still to this day. But I've been shifting on some of the tenants. Now, let me share what those three tenants are, and we're going to kick one of them out of the door and we're going to focus on two of them. So, the three tenants are to improve safe and effective wildfire response. That one's easy. We have an incredible national infrastructure for responding to fires now longer duration fires, like we talked about, the challenges of community build out in forested areas and the heavy fuel loading. So that one we just have been dealing with for a long time and we do a good job, and we probably do too good of a job because we've been suppressing fires for a long time. And that has also resulted on the fuel build up on the landscape. So that one there, I'm not going to focus on our discussion today on safe and effective wildfire response. The other two tenets are to create fire adapted communities, communities that are prepared, communities that understand the role of fire on the landscape and living with fire, living with smoke, things that Doug mentioned in the last episode with you guys. And then the third tenant is to restore and maintain fire resilient landscapes. And it's pretty incredible the work that not only federal and state agencies, but communities and fire departments and across the country as a whole, all of these interagency agencies, but also non-governmental agencies and municipalities have adopted these strategies to move the process. So, at the greater level, on the national level, all of the stakeholders include tribes, park service, the DOI agencies, forest Service, but also that kind of bumps down to the local level where we have a lot of different collaboratives that work at the local level with the same identified stakeholders. So, for instance, in my area, we have the Teton Area Wildfire Protection Coalition that's been going for 20 years here, and that's the Wyoming State forestry, the local fire department, the fire managers like myself for years. And we design strategies for the landscape for the greater Yellowstone area where I work, that fall under the cohesive strategy. So that cohesive strategy gives us the context for making stakeholder decisions, and it drives the whole stakeholder process similar to what you guys are talking about.
[18:55] Tom: Great. Thanks for that overview. Now, you mentioned that a key component, one of the three key components is restored and maintain fire resilient landscapes. For folks that maybe don't quite understand what a fire resilient landscape looks like, could you kind of break that down a little bit and provide a little bit of color on what that might mean?
[19:15] Steve Markason: We're really fortunate here in the greater Yellowstone that we've had a lot of opportunities to restore and maintain fire resilient landscapes. And what does that mean? It basically means allowing fire to play its natural role on the landscape while still providing for public safety and the protection of resources. So, for example, as I was a fire management officer for many years, say we'd get a barrage of lightning that would come through the Bridger Teton Forest and we'd get ten or twelve starts a day on the forest and surrounding Jackson Hole. I would have to make decisions what we're going to do and how we're going to manage each one of those lightning strikes. And I don't do that in a vacuum. I would do that with my park service counterparts, the fire chief in Jackson, along with the emergency managers and Wyoming state forestry. So, for example, the fires that were close to communities, that's where the safe and effective wildfire response would come in. Those were just too much liability to allow to play the natural role in the landscape. We put those out, but other ones that are deeper into the wilderness, they might be designated wilderness areas or areas that's just continuous non wilderness, roadless areas. We would look at strategies and we already have plans in place on how we allow those fires to actually play out on the landscape. So, we're not suppressing them. We can allow thousands of acres to burn. And then when it gets to a trigger point, say a road that leads to a community, then that's our trigger point to kind of slow it down. So, we're actually allowing some fires to do their part on the landscape. That's the first part. The second part is introducing fire by prescribed burning on the landscape, which has been happening in North America for a long, long time with indigenous peoples. And still today we have a great partnership with agencies and the tribes to continue that native burning. So yeah, we have a really robust prescribed burn program in Teton interagency fire to the fact that we don't just have our suppression crews that put fire on the ground and prescribe burning, but we also have ecological fire crews that go out, they collect data and fire science on fire effects after we implement prescribed burn project. It's really incredible. We've got the opportunity to do that here because we have so much forested area and so much kind of non-roadless area and it's not all built out. So that's great here. But if you're looking at areas surrounding Salt Lake City or southern California, the challenge to put fire on the ground and restore resilient landscapes, it's a lot more challenging. And then lastly, just the fire resilient part means that when fires come through and they burn, depending on any severity that they burn and any duration, that that landscape can bounce back and recover in a healthy way and just reestablish as a healthy ecosystem. And I'll give one more case in point is you look at the 88 fires at Yellowstone and in the early 90s we'd drive through there and take visitors through there, and everyone would say, oh, this area just looks decimated. It just burns so hot. And that's the kind of fire regime that greater Yellowstone, that Yellowstone is. But you drive through there now, 30 plus years later, and it looks fantastic. And it's a fire. Resilient landscape. Fire is part of the ecosystem. It's bounced back and it's handling whatever problems that's thrown at it in a healthy way. So that's what that means. Tom hopefully that's clarification enough for the listeners.
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[24:35] Tom: When I think about things, practices like thinning force thinning to reduce potentially catastrophic wildfires, would that fit into the fire resilient landscape? Or is that where, where else does that fit into the strategy?
[24:48] Steve Markason: Yeah, that's a great question. It does. But I'll tell you what, I've implemented thousands and thousands of acres of thinning on the forest to kind of prepare communities for fire. But we're not going to cut our way out of this conundrum. And here's an example. It's really helpful if we can put like a fuel break by thinning small diameter trees and thinning the lower limbs around communities and then take actions within the community that might help slow the fire front down if it's coming to that community. But that will only be successful if the treatment has been maintained, if firefighters are on scene and ready to accept the flame front as it lowers from the crowns of the trees to the ground. And then resources can take advantage of that fuel break. So, boy, there are some incredible grants out there right now, and I really want to just highlight the Biden administration for the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction act. They've got some incredible grant opportunities right now through the USDA Forest Service, the Department of Energy, and through FEMA that allow for a great deal of landscape treatments. And that would be either thinning, like we just talked about, supporting large landscape level prescribed burning, which really promotes fire resilient landscapes, and then also for planning those grants through the infrastructure legislation, provide for renewing community wildfire protection plans in counties and communities throughout the whole United States. So, there's some incredible work being done. So, thinning can help. I would say more prescribed burning is the part that restores resilient landscapes and gets fire back on the landscape. And thinning can help, but we're not going to cut our way out of this fire problem. And that would shift me next to talking about fire adapted communities and the responsibility of homeowners. That'd be a next one to kind of pivot to.
[27:06] Tom: Before we go there, can I ask one more question? Do you think that the prescribed fire practice is being more accepted? Are there limitations to what we can do with that right now? Or my sense that it hasn't quite hit the major lease yet in terms of a practice, or maybe I'm completely wrong. I'm interested on your take on that.
[27:28] Steve Markason: It's getting there, but there's always setbacks. You look at the hermit peak fire. I forgot the name of the other one, the hermits peak down east of Santa Fe last year, that was just so devastating. It was a prescribed burn that sets back the prescribed burn program. But I do think throughout the country there is a great deal more of prescribed burning happening, and there is a great deal of successes, but it's those unfortunates, like 1% that get lost that really tarnish the program. I will say, too, if you look at, like, southeastern United States culturally, they've been burning for a long, long time, and just based on their fuel type and pockets in and the type of vegetation, they have to burn every three to five years because they've been burning for so long, culturally, in the southeast, it's really accepted. So, the risk appetite in the southeast is much greater, and it's much more accepted throughout that area. There are parts in the United States, like, say, the northern Rockies, where we have a lot more territory and people are used to smoke. Yes, prescribed burning is more acceptable, but then you look at areas maybe in the northwest or California that are more populated and the risk acceptance is a little less. So, there's challenges, for sure.
[28:50] Rob: Yeah. So, Steve, sounds like you're leaning towards prescribed burns as kind of the way to manage catastrophic fire and less so thinning and cutting. I imagine that the technique used for prescribed burn is potentially alarming to communities, either within the community or on the outskirts of the community. If that assumption is correct, Steve, how do you work around that, if that is the desired approach, and it's becoming increasingly harder to get the correct conditions to use that approach. Plus, you have the community pushing back on you, how do you still do it?
[29:45] Steve Markason: Yeah, that's the great planning challenge, right? You've got to get everyone involved. We get ranchers involved. We have a lot of the community members, the hoes, the rural community leaders, the Wyoming state forestry, the tribe representatives, all of these folks come on board for whatever collaborative process that you've initiated for those projects. It could be part of the NEPA process if it's laid out in an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement and those stakeholders are brought in or through the community wildfire protection plan that I spoke of, where you're bringing all those stakeholders in at the initial stage. And really, I've learned you can't just tell folks what you're going to do. You've got to work with them, get them on board, get them to work within your strategy and even with implementation, and get people out on the ground and looking at units and seeing what you're doing and why. I'll give you an example again. I worked on this large fuel’s reduction project just west of Jackson Hole on the Wilson front, the little town of Wilson. And in that NEPA document, we planned out not only thinning close to homes, but then tied into that adjacent would-be larger landscape level prescribed burning. And we brought numerous community leaders into Teton area wildfire protection coalition during that process, not just with public meetings, but workshops where they're seeing what we're planning and then we help, or we use their perspective and we use their information to validate our data for their communities and really get them involved in the process, and then the implementation is that much easier. Now, with that being said, we've been implementing that project for the last seven years, ten years now. You can also build on those. If we're doing something on the federal side of the fence, there's numerous state grants that are available for communities to do actions on their lands that are adjacent. On the other side of the fence, we use either the good neighbor authority or community’s assistant to forest adjacent lands, and that's another grant opportunity. So, we have an incredible grant. That's two grants that were right next to our federal projects that are now they're doing thinning. They're not doing prescribed burning, but they're doing thinning in their communities. And really, it builds a lot of momentum on both sides of the fence.
[32:28] Rob: You could understand that a community would be more willing and interested in doing thinning than prescribed burn. Is it actually the strategy to do thinning closer to the communities and prescribed burning farther out?
[32:46] Steve Markason: Yeah, it is, Rob. You can actually do small diameter thinning and limbing up from below in the communities, and then pile all those piles in the summer and burn them in the fall. So, you're still burning. You're not even doing selective harvesting. You're just doing thinning from below type strategy in the community. And then as you work out from the community, you might do a little bit more selective tree thinning with smaller diameter and a little more of a fuel break. And then beyond that fuel break, larger and relatively speaking units of prescribed burning. So, if you have fire that's coming in from the hinterlands way deep into the wilderness, and it bumps up against the prescribed burning areas, it's like a speed bump, and it slows down, and then you've got some areas to fall back on right next to the community to take aggressive action if it's threatening the community past the fuel break.
[33:50] Rob: And if I heard you correctly, you were talking about actually bringing those stakeholders, bringing the community into the process of.
[34:00] Steve Markason: Implementation, is that we just. My company and I married up with another engineering firm in Jackson. We wrote the community wildfire protection plan for sublet county down in Pinedale, 2 hours south of Jackson, two years ago. And part of our stakeholder process was, one, we involved the Sublet County Forest collaborative, and that's a big stakeholder group of different entities and the public. And then when we held six public meetings at fire stations, we brought all the public in to validate a lot of the data that we had. We're proposing and collected kind of the baseline data for strategies for these communities in Sublet County. So, yeah, we're bringing everyone to the table. Rob and I really try to design public meetings like that, stakeholder meetings where we're not just getting up and saying, this is what we plan to do. We have different baseline data and our actions that kind of start the conversation, and everyone's involved in a workshop format to either add additional actions or validate their community data. And it gets them more feel really? That was a great success in Sublet County when we did that.
[35:23] Tom: Yeah, this sounds like such a great parallel to kind of how we think about landscape conservation design. But you're dealing with something that is definitely much higher risk and probably something that is timelier if you're looking at people's lives and things that might be very imminent. Biological conservation could take decades where you see those things. But I think this is a great kind of model for us to think about of how you get that feedback from the local levels. And then you talked about multiple scales, and so it sounds like the local level is a scale, and then you have scales of organization above that that are looking at broader spatial scales. Is that about, right?
[36:06] Steve Markason: Yeah, absolutely. There's kind of watershed wildfire crisis landscapes now that have been set up kind of a tier under the cohesive strategy in the last, I think it's been like seven years now. And these are greater kind of bioregional, watershed-based landscapes that are the high-risk areas. They've been identified through fire modeling, fire behavior modeling, and risk modeling. And those are kind of the high areas of focus right now that are not at the national level, more at the regional and kind of greater watershed area from my perspective in my career. So, I talked about these larger landscape level treatments, prescribed burning and some thinning closer to communities. But I've really switched in my current position now as a consultant working with homeowners. I'm really trying to get homeowners and communities to take responsibility for living in the forested environment. And that's really the third pillar of the cohesive strategy, which is creating fire adapted communities. It falls right in line with your guy’s efforts in design and process and kind of what Doug was talking about last podcast.
[37:26] Rob: Well, go ahead, follow up on that, Steve, it sounds like you have more.
[37:30] Steve Markason: To say to, I think, you know, kind of the wildland disasters that we're seeing, they're not really just a wildfire problem. Guys, wildfire is a natural process on the landscape. I've said that a couple of times. But really the challenge comes with the increased population, the increased buildout in a lot of western areas, but also in the southeast and the eastern seaboard. And we've got to design communities. We've got to design homes that are resilient to fire, that can withstand embers, being lofted one to 7 miles from a fire front, landing on your porch and catching the deck on fire or going through your vents. And that's really the focus now as I'm no longer a federal land manager I'm working at the community scale and trying to create and design actual fire adapted communities.
[38:35] Rob: And what does that look like? Steve, are you talking about new technologies that were used to build homes that are fire resistant or something other?
[38:46] Steve Markason: Exactly. New technologies. One of the first things is building codes. We have a wildland urban interface building code in Teton county that we adopted in 2005. There are other places throughout the west. California has a wildland urban interface building code. The northwest is just starting to adopt it at the state level. Colorado is adopting in Utah. So, these building codes require certain building materials that are science tested to be fire resistant, but also simple things like changing your roof from a cedar shake roof, which is highly flammable, to an asphalt shingle roof, or other types of materials that are non-combustible, like a metal roof or something like that. There's a lot of different techniques. One really simple one for homeowners is changing their eve vents, their gable vents, and their foundation ventilation from quarter inch screening to one eight or 130 2nd inch screening, which has been shown in science-based laboratories, fire science laboratories, to not accept embers. When you have that small of a screen size, that's one area that's a really affordable way for homeowners to convert their home to be a little more fire resilient. Another way is different decking materials that are noncombustible, or just cleaning out materials from underneath our decks, which we all like to store stuff. Moving firewood from against your foundation to 30ft out from your home, and then doing a lot of maintenance around the zero-to-five-foot zone, or the zero-to-30-foot zone around your home. That'd be vegetation management or other types of structure management. I'm big into disturbance ecology, and you take one thing away and nature is going to balance out, right? So, we suppress fire so much since the early 19 hundreds with a kind of full suppression policy that we've got unhealthy forests in so many places. And so other disturbances come in, I'll be skiing at the ski area, looking at just decimated white bark pine, and folks will talk to me and say, oh, isn't that horrible? Look at all the tree devastation from white bark pine. And I would just educate them that, yeah, we've suppressed fire for so long that now we've got a bark beetle epidemic. And the bark beetle that's come to the northern Rockies is endemic to the northern Rockies. It's not an invasive species. And so, you see these huge swaths of dead forests, dead standing forests, and really, it's disturbance ecology. It's another disturbance to put mosaic or a different patchwork on the landscape. And we're seeing a lot more of that, just the checks and balances of nature compensating for a lack of disturbance for the last 100 years on the landscape. The key is not just to educate people, but to motivate them to take action. And, yeah, my thought on that is just continue to build partnerships to work collaboratively across boundaries, across jurisdictions. That's what it's going to take. And like you guys said, it's the stakeholder process. And really, the process of dealing with the wildfire crisis is the same that you guys are promoting as far as biodiversity and conservation, landscape conservation and conservation biology. So, yeah, it's been really great talking with you guys. What a great opportunity. And kind of my parting thoughts would be for your listeners and for folks that live in fire prone areas to reach out. Reach out to local agencies, reach out to your local fire department. Reach out and get involved with any collaborative or stakeholder group in your community that's working towards fire adapted communities or building fire resilient landscapes or a prescribed burn association. There's a lot of them in the country now that are starting up and doing small scale prescribed burns. And so, yeah, I just recommend your listeners to reach out, get educated, and then take action to mitigate and be prepared and learn to live with fire and design your communities in that regard.
[43:43] Rob: That's a great suggestion. Steve. Thanks so much. Tom. Do you have anything, any parting thoughts to share?
[43:49] Tom: No, it was just great to hear the strategies that Steve is talking about. Like I said earlier, I think they align with generally how we think about biodiversity, although I think we have a slow-moving train wreck, maybe more so than fire across the landscape.
[44:05] Steve Markason: So, I think there's a lot that.
[44:05] Tom: We can learn and also a big part of any kind of natural resource conservation fire. We should be thinking about how to get outside of our silos and work with people in different sections of the natural resource world. Fire, water, biodiversity, and how to get out of those silos and do collaborative planning. So, I think this is a great conversation that builds towards that.
[44:32] Rob: Thanks again to our guest, Steve Markason. And thank you, our listeners, for tuning into Designing Nature’s Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast. I've been your co-host, Rob Campellone.
[44:46] Tom: And I've been your other co-host, Tom Miewald. Join us again every two weeks for another informative episode of Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast. Thank you.
[44:56] Intro / Outro: Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast is researched, written, edited and produced by Rob Campellone and Tom Miewald. Lucas Gallardi created the Designing nature's half cover art and logo design. Tom Askin is the voice behind the intro and outro, and the music was written and performed by composer Alexei Kislin via Pixabay. Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation podcast is a proud member of Mind Matter Media, a startup multimedia network whose mission is to change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes for people, planet and prosperity.
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Dr. Amanda Sesser, the Coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Partnership, discusses the need for inclusive design and decision-making processes that involve diverse stakeholders and empower communities. By bringing together various sectors of society, such as transportation, energy, and conservation, sustainable landscapes can be co-designed, created, and managed for people, planet, and prosperity. The episode emphasizes the need to balance human well-being and ecological integrity – a challenge that requires a new governance model that breaks down silos in traditional planning and decision-making. It addresses historic patterns of inequality and injustice to create a more inclusive and equitable society and highlights the concept of reciprocity and the importance of engaging indigenous and other disenfranchised people.