Benefits and Best Practices of Controlled Fire With Heather Heward

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of Timber Talks, Expert Forestry Insights, Mindy is joined by Heather Heward, the founder and chair of the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council. Heather shares her expertise on the role of prescribed fire in maintaining forest health, the evolution and mission of the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council, and the benefits and challenges of using prescribed fire as a forest management tool.

Lessons You’ll Learn

Listeners will gain valuable insights into the concept and application of prescribed fire as a forest management tool. Heather explains how prescribed burns can reduce fuel loads, decrease wildfire risks, and improve forest health by mimicking natural processes. The episode also covers the formation and operation of Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs), highlighting their role in fostering collaboration among landowners. Additionally, Heather discusses the importance of understanding the legal framework and liability issues surrounding prescribed fire, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of both the benefits and challenges of this practice.

About Our Guest

Heather Heward is a renowned expert in fire management and the founder and chair of the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council. With over 20 years of experience in the field, Heather has dedicated her career to promoting the safe and effective use of prescribed fire as an ecological tool. She currently serves as a senior instructor at the University of Idaho, where she teaches wildland fire classes and works closely with students majoring in fire ecology and management. Heather’s passion for fire management and her extensive knowledge make her a leading voice in the effort to integrate prescribed fire into forest management practices.

Topics Covered

Heather Heward discusses the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council’s mission to promote safe and effective prescribed fire use. She highlights its ecological benefits, including risk reduction and forest health improvement, and shares examples of recent projects. Heather also explains the development and impact of Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs), the legal and liability issues in Idaho, and the role of land grant colleges in fire management education. Emerging trends like drone use and certified burn manager programs are explored. Heather emphasizes the importance of community involvement and collaboration for successful prescribed fire practices.

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About the Guest: Advancing Fire Management Education: The Expertise of Heather Heward

Episode Transcript

Mindy: Welcome to Timber talks expert forestry insights I’m Mindy, your source for cutting edge trends and insights in the forestry industry. Today we are joined by Heather Heward, founder and chair of the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council. Heather brings a deep understanding of fire management and the importance of prescribed fire and practices to maintain forest health.so, Heather, could you give us a little bit background of what the Idaho prescribed Fire Council does, how it how the birth of it occurred?

Heather Heward: Yeah, absolutely.so prescribed fire councils are something that started, years ago now, more than 20 years ago in the southeast United States as a means to bring together people from diverse employment or ownership, or just people in general that are interested in advancing the use of prescribed fire as an ecological,  and restorative tool.  and prescribed fire councils typically occur at the state level. There are some states that have multiple prescribed fire councils. Some states that call them prescribed fire networks or different things. So the intent of them is generally pretty similar, which is, collaborative effort across interests to come together about prescribed fire in Idaho. We formed in around 2000, and it’s an effort that had started several years prior,  and started to lay the groundwork for that, but didn’t come together completely until,  the well, officially, we started in in March of 2020, and our mission is to serve as a for to advance the safe and effective use of prescribed fire across Idaho. And that word for is really important because this isn’t necessarily an action group, the group that’s intended to be performing the work on the ground. Instead, we’re intended to be a group that facilitates the action that can be taken by the various interests in Idaho.

Heather Heward: So others prescribed for councils,serve as a means to receive funding for different projects. Another common activity with prescribed for councils is to. Do a thorough analysis of the legal framework in a state and identify ways that the liability around prescribed fire can be more conducive to using prescribed fire and those are things that Idaho would like to engage in as well. Our prescribed fire council is relatively new,in comparison and compared to others. But, a lot of the prescribed fire councils are run by people who are doing it as complete volunteers or they’re given some type of permission from their job to be able to perform in,in those roles for a portion of their time. So it not very many of them have dedicatedemployees that do this work, which makes it sometimes slow to get things accomplished because you just get the, you know, the little leftover bits of your energy at the end of the day. But it’s something that the majority of, you know, I would say everybody that’s involved in prescribed for councils were passionate about it. And so that’s what keeps things moving forward.

Mindy: Okay. Could you define what prescribed fire. I know what prescribed fire is, but could you define it and the role how it benefits. And it should be part of forest management.

Heather Heward: Absolutely.so the word prescribed is something that we have most familiarity with when we go to the doctor. So we go to the doctor. You’ve got some type of a injury to your leg, let’s say, and the doctor prescribes you perhaps some medicine, perhaps some exercise, perhaps some things to do and some things to avoid. And that prescription, that X is a symbol that we see above drugstores or the doctor’s office. So RX prescription. And that prescription comes from an expert who’s able to do an evaluation and to be able to to give some instructions on how you can achieve the results that you’d like, in this case, in your physical body. Prescribed fire is any use of fire that is intentionally ignited and planned and ignited to achieve a specific outcome. Prescribed fire can be burning piles, and it can be burning what’s maybe sometimes termed understory burning or broadcast burning, where those understory and broadcast those refer to fire that moves across a landscape. And so but all of that’s included in prescribed fire. It’s again a fire that is planned and that is,has a some type of an objective. Sometimes those objectives are I will I will simplify into two categories. One of them is risk reduction and one of them is health. And, you know, health improvement.

Heather Heward: So risk reduction might be when you’re burning piles to reduce the,the fuel that’s there, because if a wildfire came through, those piles would be, you know, very hot or even without piling there. Maybe the slosh if you did a harvesting and the slash was down on the ground, it would be a lot of fuel on the ground. And the more fuel that’s there, the hotter the fire is, the more difficult it will be to control. So that’s one main objective is to reduce the risk. You might also be using prescribed fire in an area. Let’s say if you’re if you’re doing broadcast burning or understory burning,you might be using it around an area that,  if you knew a fire was a potential wildfire is a potential for you doing broadcast burning when conditions are cooler and less windy. Those would it would reduce the fuel there. So when a wildfire came during the hotter, drier, windier portions of the smer, the fire behavior from the wildfire would be less. The other objective for prescribed fire is health improvement.fire is a integral part of most ecosystems in our world. Fire is a is. As long as there’s been oxygen in the air and fuel on the ground, there’s been fire that has been a part of that.

Heather Heward: And a lot of plant species have evolved ways to respond to fire.and when we have removed fire, because it doesn’t work super good with people nearby, you know, fires,makes air quality lower fire.has the potential of burning the things that we care about, like trees and homes and structures and whatnot. So anyway, when we’ve removed that,we have taken something from our ecosystems that they grew up with and they were used to having they were used to having the thinning that occurred from fire. So it kept the forests maybe a little more open in some places.they were used to the char that was produced when, when fire came through and produced this,charcoal material that helps nutrients,stay in the soil.and so there’s, there’s a lot of,and then there’s, there’s some seeds, for example, that are activated by the materials that come from combustion after after fire. So those are ways that by prescribed fire can be added,to improve health. And so and a lot of times when we’re using prescribed fire, we’re looking for both. We’re looking for the decreased,risk of wildfire. And we’re also looking for the increased stand health.so both balancing those things out in a, in a planned environment.

 Mindy: All right. Could you,just give us an example of a recent project that the council’s been involved with, that,  improved forest health,and reduced wildfire risks and stuff like that?

Heather Heward: Yeah.so again, the prescribed for council them ourselves isn’t the, the action group that’s going to be performing these things. But I’ll tell you about how we are going to facilitate that,  result within our counsel.the main activity that we’ve taken part in so far has been information delivery and workshops.primarily with,monitoring, encouraging people to form clear objectives about what they’re doing and giving them some tools to be able to know what type of condition they have on their site so that they can make a plan for how they might want to adjust it.also putting together informational pieces about burning intelligently, like, let’s say, common sense burning. Let’s like adding some of those things that are best. Just a good idea to do within either both the things making sure people are aware of, the things that are they’re required to do before they burn and while they burn, but also informing them of the things that are really a good idea. That might not be requirements about monitoring the weather and about, you know, how how to watch their their burn after after they’ve,  the majority of the, the, the half of the fires decreased. So different, different things like that to keep people using the best practices when burning and then the project that we’re taking place,that we’re working on right now is really understanding the liability framework of prescribed fire in Idaho.

Heather Heward: Idaho is a very unregulated state, which in some ways can be really,liberating. Say there’s like not as many,rules on the books. For what?what? And not as much case law for the use of prescribed fires. Specifically, what happens if a prescribed fire,destroys things that it didn’t intend to if it moves into an area that was not planned or,if it has a higher impact than was expected. And one of the things that makes it challenging in a, in a less with, with less established law, is that the way that law gets established is by somebody messing up. And when law is established based on mistakes, the concern is that it becomes more restrictive and restricting the use of prescribed fire might seem like a way to solve the problem of having things destroyed by fire, but in reality, prescribed fire is a tool that has been shown to reduce the impact of wildfire. And so if you restrict prescribed fire, you might actually end up increasing your potential damage from wildfire. The problem with that argent is that it’s not 100% like we cannot. There’s no way I’d ever be able to say that more prescribed fire will 100% reduce the smoke from wildfire, or the risk from wildfire. There’s just so much about how wildfire occurs that you can’t ever definitively say that.

Heather Heward: But what you can say is you can look at evidence from places that have used prescribed fire, where wildfires have come and they’ve been easier to control. They’ve been less, have had less impact. And that gives us a little bit more decision space when we’re talking about how to respond to a wildfire. So a well-managed landscape is one that gives you flexibility in the ways that you want to respond to it. Prescribed fire gives us more,more flexibility and in how we can respond to wildfires when those occur, which they will they, they that’s that’s a certainty. I can say. Right, right. 100% wildfire is going to continue to be a thing. We’re never going to be completely done with that as an activity.and so prescribed fire does increase our ability to,maintain forest health. When a wildfires do occur.so the activities, like I say, we were taking part in is understanding the, the framework of Idaho’s liability,situation. So what are the current laws that are on the books in Idaho related to prescribed fire? What are the case law that has that would inform maybe a future activity? Because when we’re talking about the use, like how do we how do we promote the safe and effective advance the safe and effective use of prescribed fire?the reason one of the, one of the ways we do that is first, by understanding why people are don’t use it.

Heather Heward: , and I will be the first to say that prescribed fire is not the tool for everything. There’s a variety of ways that you can manage your landscape. Prescribed fire is one of the tools in your tool belt, and it’s a tool that we would like to,make sure that we’re considering. And if we’re not considering it, then why is that? If it’s only because of liability, then let’s see if there’s something that we can do about that. If if everything else points to prescribed fire being the right tool for the job, for an area of land, and the reason it doesn’t get used is because we’re worried about litigation. Let’s see if there’s a space there that we can find to open up more opportunities to use that prescribed fire.so from the private land perspective, if we’ve got a private landowner that would like to use prescribed fire pile burning or broadcast burning,f they are not at all considering what would happen if it goes beyond their plan, then there if and if and if nothing happens, they’re lucky. That’s not skill, that’s luck. We always need to be able to be prepared for what to happen if it moves beyond our our planned area.

Heather Heward: Because weather is weird and fuels are weird. It’s man, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. It’s super hard to predict what’s going to what’s going to happen. So you need to have a plan of what to do. And that plan needs to include collaboration with the people in your area, especially for your fire protection groups, the people that are going to be responding to a fire if it does move beyond its planned area. And that’s where the prescribed fire council can come in and can start to form those relationships and,develop programs that give people more knowledge about how to use prescribed fire. So that decreases the likelihood that it’ll have unintended consequences.other states like California have done some pretty creative things. They just in in California, they’re recognizing the importance of prescribed fire in reducing the,damaging effects of wildfire. And so what they have recognized is that insurance companies are not willing to put their neck on the line and say, yeah, we’ll insure you. Oh, you’re going to burn someone else’s property? Sure. No problem. We’ll insure you. We’ll ensure, you know, they are getting hammered by different natural disasters, and they are becoming much more risk averse, which is their business. They make money off of people paying into a system and then not using it.

Heather Heward: But if we have a system on a like prescribed fire where not many people are paying into it, and the people that are tend to be using it, that’s not a good like money scheme for them. And so in order to make that more appealing for insurance companies to insure people that are burning and using prescribed fire in their properties, there have been collectives of funding where people can instead of pinging their insurance, they’re able to tap into,funding that is able to absorb some of the claims that could come from prescribed fire, which then makes it more likely that insurance companies would,take on clients that have access to that. So they’re not the insurance companies aren’t getting,drawn on as much.and then then the question, of course, that that,needs to be answered is like, can I be sued for this? And if I get sued, am I going, what’s going to happen? Am I going to go to jail? Like who? Who would I hire as a lawyer? And all those things, those are all really, really scary questions that,for a lot of us, myself included, you know, I love prescribed fire. I think it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing that does a lot of good. And I am not sure how I would use it, especially when I’m asked to do it on private property.

Heather Heward: And so we just need to have better answers to what that situation looks like. It’s never going to be super clear. There’s always going to be some risk involved with using prescribed fire.but what will ultimately come to is do we want to absorb a little bit of risk now and have some positive impact on our ecosystems, or do we want to roll the dice and have the potential for a larger risk and impact later?and, and the reason that that, that we often choose like later is because if a wildfire comes and it destroys our property, at least it’s out of our control. We don’t feel so bad. It’s like not our fault. But if a prescribed fire, if we lit the prescribed fire and it has unintended consequences, that has a lot more weight. But again, like I would, I would rather be more forward thinking and do my best to plan and to collaborate. And all of the things that I’ll do to plan a prescribed fire and to work with other people around me, are going to decrease the likelihood that I’ll have negative impacts. And so what we are working toward as a prescribed fire council is to provide people, better resources for making good decisions on their land that, allow them to do the work they’d like to do.

 Mindy: Okay. Well, you know, the fire situation is is I mean, I can think of several examples that don’t have to do with fire, but like, people who build homes along, you know, the beach, you know, there’s a risk in that.so,  you know, having a either a farm or urban development or whatever near a forest because you, you know, you love that type of environment has risks involved, and it does need to be maintained so everybody can remain safe.so,do you see any emerging trends coming your way, like maybe the use of drones and prescribed farm management or some unique collaborative efforts that you see coming down the pike?

Heather Heward: Yeah. One that I really, am excited about is the development of what are called prescribed burn associations, or pbas.and PBAs are, I would say, the approach that are that’s going to be and has shown to be really beneficial when establishing burn.burn organizations on the private land side.so in places like Oklahoma and Kansas and like the, those central states there, PBA’s are burning an enormous amount, and they’re finding it to be a really collaborative effort where landowners, specifically ranchers that are trying to increase the quality of their forage for their animals, are able to communicate together and say, hey, I’m gonna say, looks like a good day to burn. All right, George, that’s a fire’s over to you, you know, pass it from between underneath the fence because fire doesn’t know boundaries, of course. So there’s some real production, productive efforts that are happening with prescriber and associations at all scales and across many states. And those prescriber associations are able to, . Access grants, you know, get funding from  different groups to, to provide resources, get training. And then the other part that’s coming up related to that are,something called certified burn managers, or there’s a variety of names for them. And within some states, the certified burn manager programs are,  are programs where people can take  approved training and then go and perform a burn under supervision and get certified as a certified burn manager.

Heather Heward: And in some states, what does that mean? What that means is that then they are have more protection from the state,or perhaps less risk from the state for,they just they’re showing that they have gone through,the effort of getting enough information to reduce or, I guess they’ll say, to increase their,their success rate.those are those are both pretty exciting. Those are both related more to the prescribe or the private land side.in Idaho, the majority of land is,  federal, federally owned and or. Yeah, federal and state,and tribal. So there’s,getting private land. That information about burning is super, super important. It’s like 1.7 million acres. So it’s a lot still a lot of area. Yeah.but then recognizing also that we have a lot that can be done on our agency side to improve training.I worked over the last couple of years to help redevelop the training from the federal perspective, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, or Nwcg. And,you know, I went into that project thinking, oh, yeah, I’ll be able to, like, make this awesome training and get all these people that need to take this.

Heather Heward: , and any, any agency that adheres to Nwcg training standards, which is the the group that provides training for wildland fire positions. Anybody that adheres to that needs to take this training to be a burn boss. And those burn bosses are the ones that are writing the plans, deciding when to burn, gathering the resources that need to needed to burn. And,those burn bosses, they deserve good information. And I  made this training. I was, you know, pretty proud of the training. I thought it was pretty good, but it’s only a a week, a week and a half of training. And so we need we have more that we need to do and, and sometimesso I’m, I think we absolutely need to invest quite a lot into providing resources to private landowners and getting them on board and informed. But I think it takes that, again, that collective effort of informing everybody that’s using burning and the practices that apply to a private landowner on on using burning are also going to apply to any to our, our agency partners. And so from a prescribed fire council,developing training that helps everybody.and that includesso I’m, I’m really into adult learning,and figuring out how to, how adults absorb information And what they certainly don’t absorb information well is just like a one off training.

Heather Heward: And then you never talk about it again, because this stuff is really complicated. It’s challenging to do this. It’s not like rocket science, but there’s just enough things to consider that you have to constantly be thinking about what that is. And so as a prescribed fire counsel, we’ve got the opportunity to respond to the people’s needs that are in our state doing burning. And that includes things like talking to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and saying, what are you finding people struggling with when they’re when they’re planning for their air? Air quality?because one of the ways that we could absolutely shoot ourselves in the foot with prescribed fire is if we have impacts on air quality enough that the EPA might come in and say, your air quality is too poor, you’re not going be able to allow these prescribed burns to happen. So we need to be working together to share our airspace. And Idaho DEQ is going to be the one that helps us do that. Idaho EQ has the knowledge about it. We might have the access to the people so we can put that together and we can say, let’s put on some training on how to how to best plan for and manage your,your smoke.

Heather Heward: And that includes. Yeah, from all levels.so the, the way that we have to the programs that we’ve got to be able to build are going to come hopefully in the next year or two. We have the the hope of having,somebody hired to help with some facilitation. As I mentioned, a lot of us do this with,kind of at the side of our, of our jobs. And so by getting somebody with a little bit more concentrated time and attention.we hope to be able to propel some of our action forward and make a, a more finalized strategic plan, identify the groups that are going to be working on those different elements so that we can get more accomplished.again, not like, you know, sticks moved, acres burned, accomplished. I’m talking about,information shared.  groups developed and supported  funding given to groups that are going to get stuff accomplished.and that takes a partnership with the various other groups within Idaho that are doing similar work, like Idaho Firewise, Idaho Department of Lands.and yeah, so there’s it takes a collaborative effort for sure to get this stuff done.

 Mindy: So have you all gone into,  the land grant college in Idaho?because most land grant colleges have forestry programs to or environmental education programs to kind of educate the youth also. So you have this double ended the older generation and the young generation.as to the importance of this practice.

Heather Heward: Yeah. So that’s where I work. I work at University of Idaho. I’m a senior instructor there. I teach wildland fire classes to the students majoring in fire ecology and management. And,it’s the classes I teach sometimes are required by the students majoring in forestry.we’ve also got an associate’s in wildland fuels and fire Technology, which is intended to meet the needs of people that are wanting to stay more field based in the work that they do, or maybe are not ready yet to go into something that’s more,academic, I suppose. Mhm.and a big part of that recruitment into the university is communicating withstudents of all ages. And some of that comes from our extension group. I think that this week Randy Brooks, who’s a forestry extension person, he’s down in southern Idaho or southeastern Idaho, have at a camp natural resources camp where fire is a part of that story. So it plays into a lot of the communication that we have around recruitment of our students.and, you know, I consider even I talk to a lot of students that are just thinking about college or may or may not have any interest in fire, but, you know, whether or not they’re interested in majoring in fire.

Heather Heward: Anytime I talk to somebody, it’s an opportunity to share with them about fire as a concept and to get them to thinking about fire more openly.I think it’s important to consider that fire is not good. Fire is not bad. Fire just is. And fire has an impact. And we get to decide whether the impact that it has is something we like or something we don’t like. And sometimes it’s something that I liked that you didn’t like or vice versa. And if we can start to get the value base off of fire, we can start to utilize it with more intention versus fear or love. Both of them can be dangerous. So when we approach fire and that includes like just the way that we see fire on the news, it’s the way that we see effects from fire that,we can start to break that barrier down of just an automatic assption about how fire is on the landscape, and then be more open to considering its potential benefits in some areas.

 Mindy: All right. Well, I think I was I’m trying to think what his name was, Smokey the Bear there, I think. Yeah, Smokey the Bear kind of colored our impression of the value of of fire because Smokey, you know, marketed that offers bad so and that’s not true you know well and.

Heather Heward: Smokey Bear Smokey bear did a good job at what it needed to be done at the time.and what Smokey was promoting was the idea that unplanned, careless fire is not what we want. And that’s still true, right?I think that, you know, Smokey. Smokey just played into our han tendency toward villainizing things. It also came about at a time when we were building a lot of, well, in the war time area in after World War two and the the we were our like our nation’s response to war is to fight. And when the enemy of a physical warmoved, the the enemy became fire. And what fire was taking away were the resources that would grow our country. Timber specifically. So fire is an enemy to the growth of timber, and it is way easier to sell that message than it is to take it back. And it’s just it’s it’s very challenging to keep something out of the space of good or bad. It’s hard to have things in the middle. It takes a lot more mental power to keep it there.and but like I said, like fire isn’t necessarily the tool for everywhere. If people are managing their timber and they do not want any mortality in those trees, and they’re going to harvest it and keep it so that there’s not too much acculation, the trees have appropriate spacing so they’re healthy.

Heather Heward: There’s ways to manage that and keep it healthy and somewhat safe from fire and not use prescribed fire.when you use prescribed fire, there is inevitably going to be some tree mortality.but what I would promote is that within the tree mortality that you could get, you also have the potential to increase the growth and health of the trees that are there. So there’s always a trade, but it isn’t for everybody. And I, I’m doing my, my research this smer,on the on burning and smoke within private landowners and forest contractors in northern Idaho. And you know these people that have 1080 acres or whatever of of forest land and the the idea of them using prescribed fire is really challenging. It might not make a lot of sense for them to use that, but if you own 10,000 100,000 acres and you have the potential to use fire in places that maybe are not getting harvested,there’s there’s definitely some benefit to doing that.and that and that harvesting of trees is something that’s I mean, it’s a hot it’s a hot button issue, right? Like people will drive by a clearcut and they’ll be just right, nauseated. It’s just like so sick about it. And then other people drive by and they see, like, this is great.

Heather Heward: They drive by and they see a harvest from trees, and they see it as, as equivalent to seeing a mowed wheat field where the wheat has been harvested and gone over to make bread. In this case, the trees have been harvested. They’ve gone over to make, to make homes, to make wood and and so that all that just comes from different value bases.certainly there are ways to harvest that are,less shocking and,also less damaging to the landscape. We want to consider all of those things. But,you know, again, like within that management, our, our natural areas, they were not untouched before like Europeans arrived. There was a lot of management taking place from our native cultures that lived here. And we unfortunately, we we stopped,the practices, the the practices of a lot of native cultures before we wrote down what was what was happening. Yeah. And so how do we know what those,those areas needed or need?one of the ways we can know that is by asking the plants and you ask the you ask the plants by noticing their response to fire and saying, oh, wow, this this flower, when we burn here, it shows up. It must like this or something, right? So you you can ask the plants. And the other thing to recognize is that we are not necessarily we’re not ever going to go back to pre-settlement conditions.

Heather Heward: It’s just not it’s not going to happen. We have way more people than we did before. So fire will not be able to serve the same role that it served on our landscape in the past. People live within these,rural areas.so their, their livelihoods, their structures are there, they are breathing the air that’s there. And so we just it’s a much more complicated business.you know, it would be fantastic if all we needed to do was,light at the bottom of a hill on our in the fall as we, as we walked to our smer or our winter, homes and and then it just burned as it as it burned.and so without that, it takes a lot more planning around ownership, around,weather conditions.and I think we’re up to the task. It’s something that, again, takes effort, takes knowledge and skill. But like anything, like any craft, you hone it. You become in tune with,you know, the more experience you have, you’re able to see how the,how the fuels weather and topography, that fire behavior triangle, it’s called,how those things affect your fire behavior. And you’re able to make plans that work around the conditions. You’ve got to get the effects you like.

 Mindy: Well, I, you know, the older I get, the more I see,  what was old is new again type of thing from many aspects.medicine anddifferent, different sciences that were finding that what we thought was an old wives tale or wasn’t the smartest move were circling back around because science has caught up and now we see the why, we see the benefit. We understand that, you know, people in the past really knew what they were doing.they may not have been able to explain the why, but they knew what they were doing.do you see any type of go,  global influence as far as prescribed fire goes? Do you see that that is becoming a trend, or do you see that other countries are kind of backing off of that, that type of approach of managing forests.

Heather Heward: No, it’s absolutely it absolutely is becoming a trend.there are two organizations that I’m kind of coming to mind, the National Association or the interagency, sorry, International Association for Fire Ecology. Irf and the Association for Fire Ecology, or AFF. Both of those have a very large presence nationally and or not nationally, internationally. And and the work that’s happening in other countries is,similar to what we’ve got in the United States. Maybe there’s a bit more that we’re doing here.but the there’s a an activity called training exchange or treks and,those training exchanges are an instance of where people from a variety of different agencies can come together and they can,practice using prescribed fire to train personnel on on using it more. And so there have been some training exchanges in Portugal and in Spain.and so that use of, of prescribed fire is something that is,being recognized as a tool to reduce,those impacts from wildfire, regardless of the ecosystem. Now, one thing. There is a type of burning called land clearing that,it would be a form of prescribed fire. But as far as, like the objectives that it’s reaching would be, I guess maybe a third, a third objective one reduce hazard, one increased health, and the third to completely change the cover type. And that burning that occurs in some parts of the country to completely change the cover type, let’s say in the in the rainforest.those are going to have some pretty big impacts. And so those are, those are some uses of fire that,are not intended to keep things the same, but intended to completely change something. And that that’s pretty dangerous.so not like this. When considering how to use fire, we got to recognize two. There’s some instances when the use of fire in some parts of the world,could have global consequences.

 Mindy: If someone wanted to, in their community or their state wanted to start their own fire council, what would be some suggestions that you would have for them?

Heather Heward: Yeah.well, most states have prescribed fire councils.you can go on to the Coalition of Prescribed Care Councils web page. You can see the activity of the current or where the current prescribed for councils are taking place. Some of them are more active than others.and when I first started exploring the idea of a prescribed fire council, I asked that same question what were the circstances that allowed for the development of a prescribed fire council? And,you know, like,  interested in collaborative partners,state agency. That’s that that’s somewhat on board.but a part of that also was a spark plug,  a person that was, that had the time, the,interest and the expertise to be able to propel the development of the council forward. I found myself in the position to be that spark plug with the job that I had, the background that I have and prescribed fire.and it’s not going to be be be me all the time. You know, I’m going to transition into some somebody else at some point.but it does not to say that it like comes down to one person, but there’s got to be somebody that’s really invested in it. And ideally they’re surrounded by closely surrounded by supportive people from a variety of groups.

Heather Heward: , and so it just takes that it takes that effort to have some type of a,propel forward to make, to keep things going. It’s, it’s difficult to run any organization, especially if it’s not your primary thing, even if it is your primary thing, it’s it’s hard to create something new.but as far as, like what other people could do, again, like, they might not be making a prescribe for council, but I’m really excited to share more information with different groups about prescribed burn associations, which are something that are a little bit less lift to establish and form. It could be more like could be as small as, you know, a handful of people getting together to do burns together.but I feel like those are the those are the kind of the grassroots group,structures that are going to build,our, at least our private land burning system. But that has got to happen in conjunction with our fire protection groups, because if we’ve got a bunch of people that are out there getting all excited about using burning and it’s not happening alongside the people that are going to be responding to those as fires, we are, we’re in trouble. So it has to be a collaborative effort where we recognize that people would like to use burning more often, but let’s make sure that they have the proper skills to do so, and that they’re communicating appropriately with the people that are,that are going to be responding to those fires.

Heather Heward: And, and ideally, like it’s it’s happening together. Right. We don’t have to work separately all the time.of course, the challenge that comes there is then who’s paying them to do this work on private land and blah, blah, blah. So there’s definitely things to work through.but again, it,it we can’t put the cart before the horse and give people a whole bunch of,motivation to burn tools to burn without also supporting them with the way that we would protect them if things went outside of their planned area. Because if that happens, they are financially responsible for the impacts of that fire. And so we do not want to set people up for the potential for,being financially responsible for some outcomes that they had because they just didn’t know better at the time. So again, it’s we cannot avoid completely the, you know, unintended consequences from prescribed fire. We can sure do our best to make a plan of what to happen in case it does, and reduce the likelihood it will happen.

 Mindy: All right. Well, thank you so much, Heather.for talking. I just find it fascinating. I don’t know why. I just kind of envisioned prescribed burn, just, you know, individual type of thing. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been to Yellowstone and, you know, I’ve seen that kind of thing, but,I guess I live in Indiana, so I just don’t really see that type of thing.but I do see the need with how our environment’s changing and urban development and that, you know, more states need something like that to prepare.because everybody’s going to have a fire sometime. It’s just when and how much damage we’re willing to put up with, you know?

Heather Heward: And I mean, one one other piece that I, I think it’s important to, to note is that plants have evolved with fire, but so have people. And there is something really magical, I’ll call it magical. It’s just it’s my thing about being able, being a steward of the land with fire. And when I am out doing burning from any scale, maybe I’m burning my weeds in my driveway. Or maybe I’m, you know, having a barbecue and burning sticks or whatever. There is something just enthralling about fire itself. And it hits me in a deeper level that,this is something that I can do to to care for this world that does so much for me. And,when we involve more and more people and lots of different types of people in our burning, we share that experience. And to see these places in other states that are really getting their programs going from private burning and seeing the grandmas out there doing burning and the moms with babies doing burning and the and the, you know, the grandpa on their tractor and the and the little boy with his shovel and and the it doesn’t have to be the fittest, you know, like one type of person that that’s doing this work. When it’s a community effort, there’s a lot that can be said for the growth that can happen within a community when they come around an area to care for the land and using fire to do so.

 Mindy: Right. Well, I mean, if you think about if just in the smertime, some of the marketing things that you see, you see fire pits and that’s a place to gather. And so we we have this evolutionary connection to fire, whether we’re trying to to maintain our landscape or cooking or,you know, it’s it’s a gathering place around the fire pit to make some wars and stuff. And,we have, at least in my experience, we have so been removed from our natural environment and how it really works. And I really liked seeing how the pendul is swinging.in in what I consider a better direction, and trying to understand,  how to maintain our resources and how we are,all globally affected in this situation.it’s no longer, you know, I live in Indiana, and what I do in Indiana will have no effect on you at all, which is not the truth. So I like this. I don’t like all the urban development, but I do like the swing of the pendul into more of an environmental, responsible type of society than what we’ve had in the past.is there anything else you’d like to add, Heather?

Heather Heward: Oh, I think the last thing I’ll add is, . We say in the training that we do with within the fire world that be a student of fire. And what that means is to watch fire and to see what impacts it. And so I would just promote people to be a student of fire. And that means looking up resources that will inform of you of something of when you when you burn anything, watching it closely, watching how the wind, even small amounts of wind affect it. So just being a student of fire andnever thinking that you know it all.

Mindy: Because there’s no way to know.

 Mindy: Mother nature always sends a wrench. You know, she surprises us. So I’d like to encourage our listeners to explore the Idaho Prescribed Fire Council’s resources on their website to stay informed about best practices. Thank you, Heather, for your insights and listeners. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in to the next episode at Timber Talks Expert Forestry Insights. So do you have any questions for me, Heather?

Heather Heward: , no. I think that’s all.

 Mindy: Okay. All right. Like, how long have you. You said 20 years you’ve been doing this? Yeah.

Heather Heward: I mean, I’ve done this my whole career. I started when I was right out of high school.

 Mindy: Oh, great. Great, great. You think you’ll ever retire from it, or you think you’ll just. No no.

Heather Heward: That I mean, it’s just that’s what I love. So it’s I’ll I’ll be doing it till I’m dead.

 Mindy: So do you love the fire or do you like the forestry aspect or both. Fire. Fire.

Heather Heward: Yep. I mean obviously forestry is a bit of it, butI like the people and I like the fire.

 Mindy: Ah well it’s always wonderful if you like what you do.

Mindy: Yeah. Yes it is.

Heather Heward: I feel very fortunate.

 Mindy: Well, if you don’t have any questions for me, I’ll let you go. Okay. I know you’re a busy lady, and,   trying to keep us all safe.

Mindy: Yeah, we’re.

 Mindy: Trying to keep us from burning each other up alive.

Heather Heward: Ideally. So.

 Mindy: So, . Well, I will talk to you later. Okay.

Mindy: Thank you.

 Mindy: And thank you.

Mindy: Bye bye.