WYOMING — A national organization dedicated to restoring the relationships between people and fires has launched a new project highlighting how communities can work to live better with fire, especially wildfire.
Fire Networks’ newest initiative, the Many Paths Project, shares the experiences of communities in three frequent fire landscapes: Northern California, Southern Blue Ridge and Greater Yellowstone. On Wednesday, Fire Networks released a series of videos that discuss the importance of prescribed burns, community wildfire mitigation and smoke tolerance. Fire Networks partners with place-based leaders, agencies and institutions to develop healthy fire cultures and build resilient networks. The organization spotlights the stories, cultures and traditions of communities who have forged pathways toward recognizing wildfires as a natural part of the landscape.
“The Greater Yellowstone area is characterized by iconic public lands, tourism, ranching, fast-growing towns, and infrequent but often intense wildfires,” reads Fire Networks’ website. “Here, an adaptable prescribed fire workforce is getting beneficial fire on lands that need it, while communities are working together to mitigate wildfire impacts and prepare for inevitable smoke from any source.”
The videos include interviews with local ranchers; firefighting team members with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS); a fuels specialist with the Caribou-Targhee National Forest; a wildland fire chief from Big Sky, Montana; the superintendent of Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) and members of Fire Networks’ Greater Yellowstone Fire Action Network (GYFAN). According to the videos, GTNP became the first smoke-ready national park in the country through working with GYFAN, which means it was the first park to have a smoke-ready plan. A smoke-ready plan includes messaging, air quality updates, smoke maps and potential changes to operations.
“The fact is that fire, wildfire, has been a part of this landscape for thousands and thousands of years,” said GTNP Superintendent Chip Jenkins in one video. “When we had smoke from the Pack [Trail] Fire, there were days, or times of day, when the Tetons were largely obscured. We provided information to folks so they could make different choices, and we changed park operations where we closed the entrance gates. People could still come in but we did not have people working in the entrance gates because the air quality was just too poor.”
Fire Networks began as a collaboration effort between the Nature Conservancy, the USFS and the Department of the Interior in 2002, after a severe wildfire season in 2000. The organization has formed initiatives that focus on wildfire education, prescribed fire training, fire-resilient communities and an Indigenous peoples burning network. Learn more about the project here, and view all of the videos here.
