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Speaker 2: car that's scratched. It's not your favorite, but it's better
Speaker 2: than nothing. In a pinch, Ali ward back with a
Speaker 2: piping hot episode of ologies. It's top of mind for
Speaker 2: a lot of us out here up here in the
Speaker 2: Northern Hemisphere, especially toward the west of the continent. Wildfires,
Speaker 2: fire ecology, blazing infernos, apocalyptic nightmares. This ologist so special
Speaker 2: got his bachelor's in zoology, a master's in wildlife ecology,
Speaker 2: and a PhD. In Wildlife ecology statistics, all from the
Speaker 2: University of Wisconsin and Madison. He is currently a Wildlife
Speaker 2: and Terrestrial Ecosystems research ecologist. Such a mouthful. He's a
Speaker 2: research scientist at the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service,
Speaker 2: also an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico.
Speaker 2: He has been published on papers about fire refuges for wildlife,
Speaker 2: where they hide out, megafires, habitat loss. He's also just
Speaker 2: casually the editor at the Association of Fire Ecology, so
Speaker 2: I have been following him online for a while. I
Speaker 2: reached out to casually ask him about pyrology versus fire ecology,
Speaker 2: and before I knew it, I was begging him to
Speaker 2: talk to me. So we hopped onto chat while fires
Speaker 2: were raging in the West this week and I was
Speaker 2: in a muggy Florida hotel room for work and it
Speaker 2: smelled like a turtle tank. But before we dive into
Speaker 2: the conversation, I want to thank everyone at patreon dot
Speaker 2: com slashology. It costs a dollar a month to join
Speaker 2: and then you can submit questions to theologists. Thank you
Speaker 2: to everyone listening and making us the number one podcast
Speaker 2: in the science category on Spotify, and thank you for
Speaker 2: leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts to get us seen by
Speaker 2: other people. I truly read them all because I desperately
Speaker 2: want to make a show that does not suck, and
Speaker 2: to prove it, I'm going to read you a still
Speaker 2: glowing coal of assessment from Bert Lancaster, who wrote ologies
Speaker 2: is your cynicism antidote? I simultaneously feel beautifully tiny and
Speaker 2: so expansive that I could burst after listening. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: just have to stand there and laugh to myself for
Speaker 2: a while. Sometimes I cry. Emotions are weird. Love you dad, word,
Speaker 2: Bert Lancaster, get a hanky because your internet dad right
Speaker 2: here loves you right back. Okay, everyone who left to review,
Speaker 2: I read it. I love you also, Okay, all right,
Speaker 2: let's fire off some questions. Yeah, okay, open your ears
Speaker 2: for info on what fire is, how hot it burns,
Speaker 2: fire trends, tinderboxes, lots and lots of forest fire, flim flam,
Speaker 2: tolerant wombats, Angelina Joe Lee, movies, Cunning pine Cones, thick Bark, Tragic,
Speaker 2: Koala's Indigenous fire Stewardship, and more with researcher Scientists of
Speaker 2: the Woods, Desert dweller, awl cuddler, forest service employee, optimist,
Speaker 2: and fire ecologist Doctor Gavin Jones.
Speaker 3: Yes, Gavin Jones, and my pronouns are he him.
Speaker 4: Got it? And you are currently in New Mexico.
Speaker 3: That's right in the great city of Albuquerque.
Speaker 2: Do you guys have trees there?
Speaker 3: You know we do?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, it's pretty much desert out here, so when the
Speaker 3: trees grow, they don't grow very tall.
Speaker 2: And now tell me how a fire ecologist from Wisconsin
Speaker 2: and Florida and now New Mexico. Yes, how did your
Speaker 2: life path lead to fire ecology?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: My goodness, it was really an accident. I do consider
Speaker 3: myself a fire ecologist, but I was really trained and
Speaker 3: I did my graduate work and all my studies in
Speaker 3: wildlife ecology. And when I was in grad school, I
Speaker 3: was doing some research out in the Sierra Nevada in
Speaker 3: California on the cutest cuddliest creature there is, the California
Speaker 3: spot at owl. And yeah, like pretty much anybody who
Speaker 3: spends enough time doing science out in fire prone lands
Speaker 3: like the Sierra Nevada, you eventually become a fire ecologist
Speaker 3: because of fire happens, and then you have to try
Speaker 3: to figure out what to do with it. So that's
Speaker 3: exactly what happened. I was doing my master's degree. I
Speaker 3: was at the University of Wisconsin with my supervisor, Zach Peery,
Speaker 3: and we were doing a study out in California on
Speaker 3: spotted owls, trying to figure out what kind of forests
Speaker 3: they used, how they would respond to climate change. And
Speaker 3: just as I was finishing my master's degree, like just
Speaker 3: a month or two before I had defended my degree,
Speaker 3: a big fire burned through our study area.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And at the time, to be honest with you,
Speaker 3: I was I was pretty devastated. I was like, man, like,
Speaker 3: what does this mean for the work that I've been doing?
Speaker 3: Like does this even mean anything anymore? It, you know,
Speaker 3: changed the game a little bit, but it provided an
Speaker 3: incredible opportunity to learn about how these animals, this owl
Speaker 3: that I was studying, responded to fire. It was basically
Speaker 3: a natural experiment. This fire or burned through our study
Speaker 3: area in twenty fourteen, and it burned through about half
Speaker 3: of it. And so, you know, in ecology, when we're
Speaker 3: doing these field studies, we rarely get the chance to
Speaker 3: do experiments. Like almost everything we do is observational. We
Speaker 3: go out and we see what we see, and we
Speaker 3: record it and we try to make sense of it.
Speaker 3: We rarely get to do experiments like you know other
Speaker 3: folks get to do in the lab who are doing
Speaker 3: chemistry or their molecular things. But this was really a
Speaker 3: natural experiment to see how this species of owl responded
Speaker 3: to fire. And that's what launched me into, i guess,
Speaker 3: being a real sucker for fire and for learning about
Speaker 3: how it works in some of these systems, why it happens,
Speaker 3: how it happens, what its consequences are, and I'm totally hooked.
Speaker 2: Now, Ah, how many of your owls were latered? How
Speaker 2: many of the owls survived that? Like, what percentage of
Speaker 2: the impacted area half of your study area?
Speaker 3: So some of them didn't make it, some of them dispersed,
Speaker 3: some of them left the fire they were able to
Speaker 3: get out of the way. And then there's large parts
Speaker 3: of the fire that didn't burn so severely, that burned
Speaker 3: at lower severity where basically a lot of the trees
Speaker 3: that the big trees in the canopy they kind of
Speaker 3: you know, they survived, and some of the understory burned
Speaker 3: a little bit more of a what we call quote
Speaker 3: unquote good fire in some of these areas, which I'd
Speaker 3: love to talk more about, but you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of those birds did great and are still persisting in
Speaker 3: some of those areas that experienced lower severity fire, those
Speaker 3: lower severity effects to the.
Speaker 2: Forest, but predictably many bit the proverbial dust and returned
Speaker 2: to the earth. As Ash Gavin told me that one
Speaker 2: of his colleagues was servying the charred land and found
Speaker 2: a little aluminum owl leg band that they used for tagging,
Speaker 2: and it encased a little crispy owl leg. Did not
Speaker 2: go well for that one.
Speaker 4: And how did that wildfire start?
Speaker 3: Well, So that particular wildfire that was a huge started fire,
Speaker 3: and it's actually a kind of a sad story. Is
Speaker 3: some guy, I'm trying to remember the details. You should
Speaker 3: look this up ally, but some guy was I think
Speaker 3: taking a video for his ex girlfriend or something and
Speaker 3: like lit some house on fire and then that started
Speaker 3: this gigantic it was like, at the time, one of
Speaker 3: the largest fires that had burned in the state of California.
Speaker 2: Okay, buckle up, here's a story. So this was twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen's King Fire, and it started in Pollock Pines and
Speaker 2: the Sierra Nevadas. And I already knew of this fire
Speaker 2: because my parents lived in Pollock Pines in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: and my sisters and I had to plead with them
Speaker 2: to heed the emergency evacuation orders as pyrocumulus clouds billowed
Speaker 2: over their hill. We're like, please get to safety. I'm
Speaker 2: sweating a lot. Don't make me come up there.
Speaker 4: I can't. The roads are closed.
Speaker 2: So I booked my mom and dad a hotel in Reno,
Speaker 2: out of harm's way. And the hotel turned out to
Speaker 2: have a mirrored ceiling and a very thrifty but sensual vibe.
Speaker 2: They tell me. I get the feeling that there were
Speaker 2: also hourly rates available at this hotel.
Speaker 4: I got them.
Speaker 2: I didn't read the reviews. Okay, it was an emergency anyway.
Speaker 2: The Kingfire that reduced homes to ashes and dashed people's
Speaker 2: dreams at Flambayed Gavin's Owls. It was all started by
Speaker 2: a guy named Wayne Huntsman, who was not a Huntsman
Speaker 2: but an arsonist, a formerly incarcerated firefighter actually, who that
Speaker 2: sweltering September day had set several fires to impress a paramore.
Speaker 2: He took video for her standing between two small smoldering
Speaker 2: blazes that were just starting to take off. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how their relationship turned out, but as proof that
Speaker 2: we're living in a simulation the burn area, the burn
Speaker 2: scar is absolutely shaped like a perfect ninety seven thousand
Speaker 2: acre dick in balls, all ablaze in one of the
Speaker 2: state's most infamous literal thirst traps. Okay, so how much
Speaker 2: is our horny, greedy species to blame?
Speaker 5: Oh man?
Speaker 3: And that's another thing is a lot of the ignitions
Speaker 3: are human ignitions, you know, people accidentally starting fires, machinery
Speaker 3: getting too hot, people driving over dry grass, and things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: So Gavin says that eighty to ninety percent of all
Speaker 2: wildfires are human caused ignitions. Half of California's largest fires
Speaker 2: in the last century happened in the past five years.
Speaker 2: By the way, a complex fire means a cluster of
Speaker 2: related fires in one area. But what's the difference between
Speaker 2: a wildfire and a forest fire?
Speaker 3: We talk about wildfires. Typically when we're talking about wildfires,
Speaker 3: those are unplanned, so fires that we as people don't
Speaker 3: don't plan. So you can kind of juck to pose
Speaker 3: that with a prescribed fire or a cultural fire. So
Speaker 3: prescribed fire is often fire that is purposely set and
Speaker 3: then managed by teams to achieve some type of objective.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're trying to restore some area, restore fire. You know,
Speaker 3: you probably hear a lot about you know, people burning
Speaker 3: prairies and things like that. It's the same thing in forests,
Speaker 3: they go in and do prescribed burns. And then there's
Speaker 3: also a really important component of cultural burning, So indigenous
Speaker 3: communities using wildfire for their purposes, which until you know,
Speaker 3: about one hundred two hundred years ago, made up the
Speaker 3: overwhelming majority of the fire activity that was happening in
Speaker 3: a lot of these areas. For you know, the last
Speaker 3: ten thousand years or so, indigenous peoples have been using
Speaker 3: fire in a really important cultural way, and that has
Speaker 3: really changed in the past couple of centuries with colonization,
Speaker 3: but that is an increasingly important part of the solution
Speaker 3: to sort of this modern wildfire problem.
Speaker 2: And obviously indigenous cultures and just the planet at large
Speaker 2: saw the benefit of prescribed burns. So what good do
Speaker 2: fires do, either in prescribed burns or just in nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, fires are
Speaker 3: a critical piece of ecosystems around the world. Every square
Speaker 3: inch of land that has vegetation has some type of
Speaker 3: fire regime, It has some sort of natural fire cycle,
Speaker 3: and fire is kind of a restorative process. There's many
Speaker 3: benefits of fire from we can think about it from
Speaker 3: a human perspective, we can think about it from a
Speaker 3: sort of an ecosystem perspective, you know, from the human perspective.
Speaker 3: You know, fires create more resilient forests when they burn
Speaker 3: the right way. When we have sort of a natural
Speaker 3: kind of lower intensity fire in some systems, like in
Speaker 3: the Sierra Nevada, where I've spent a lot of my time,
Speaker 3: that reinforces is healthy water supplies, It reduces erosion.
Speaker 2: Side note, A fire regime sounds like Satan's cabinet members
Speaker 2: farting flames in a hades boardroom, but it's actually just
Speaker 2: a gentle term. A fire regime describes a pattern of fire,
Speaker 2: how frequent, how intense, what kind of fuel of gobbles
Speaker 2: And maybe me just calling it Satan's cabinet members farting
Speaker 2: in hades. Maybe that's part of the root of europeans
Speaker 2: fear of fire, and thus this historical fire suppression by colonists.
Speaker 2: I wondered this, and I begged myself not to google
Speaker 2: it because this aside would be like forty five minutes long.
Speaker 2: But snap, I found a twenty fifteen paper from the
Speaker 2: journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, be title Fire
Speaker 2: in the Mind, Changing Understandings of Fire in Western Civilization.
Speaker 2: What in which author Stephen J. Pirn writes you ready
Speaker 2: for this quote? The Old Testament is in fact a
Speaker 2: cauldron of stories, rights, and beliefs simmering over a mix
Speaker 2: of religious fires. He goes on to say the heartland
Speaker 2: of European forestry new fire only as a human artifact,
Speaker 2: not a natural process. Most new and colonized lands were
Speaker 2: burned lands naturally, but the agencies found themselves in a
Speaker 2: continuous firefight, so fire became a political as well as
Speaker 2: practical challenge. He continues, the upshot has generally been disastrous. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what does the land miss out on when natural
Speaker 2: fire is suppressed and indigenous populations are fined, imprisoned, or even,
Speaker 2: up until the nineteen thirties in the US shot for
Speaker 2: fire stewardship. Well, from an ecology standpoint, those fires can
Speaker 2: help the water supply by eliminating excess vegetation and thus
Speaker 2: increasing runoff into streams, and by preventing huge fires with
Speaker 2: more frequent smaller ones. Also, erosion doesn't get out of
Speaker 2: control when there were a regu fires like you see
Speaker 2: with post megafire mud slides. Also, the charcoal after a
Speaker 2: burn could trap carbon for millennia, and the recovery of
Speaker 2: vegetation takes more excess carbon from the atmosphere. According to
Speaker 2: the twenty nineteen paper how wildfires trap carbon for centuries
Speaker 2: to millennia. Okay, but wildfires burn at eight hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: That's fourteen seventy two fahrenheit America. So the animals hate
Speaker 2: natural and cultural burns too, right, No animal wants to
Speaker 2: be trapped in a blaze. But I'm just going to
Speaker 2: stop myself from singing about the circle of life in
Speaker 2: your ears.
Speaker 3: And then from an ecosystem perspective, and from what I
Speaker 3: like to think about a lot is the biodiversity perspective.
Speaker 3: So you know what kinds of animals there are, and
Speaker 3: the richness of animal life and plant life. Fires create
Speaker 3: this template for wildlife and plants to thrive. And also
Speaker 3: this that creates this natural dynamic where you have places
Speaker 3: that burn in one year and then don't burn for
Speaker 3: a while, and places that burn frequently, in places that
Speaker 3: burn at high severity and low severity. You can kind
Speaker 3: of think about it as this patchwork, this mosaic of
Speaker 3: different ages of forests that burned at different times, and
Speaker 3: that creates a really diverse landscape that generates the habitat
Speaker 3: for lots of critters. It can be a really regenerative
Speaker 3: and restorative process to the land, both from a ecosystem
Speaker 3: perspective and also really fire is a necessary part of
Speaker 3: these systems, and so when we can put the right
Speaker 3: kind of fire on the landscape, it really benefits us
Speaker 3: to as people as society.
Speaker 2: So fire mosaic paints a beautiful picture of land in
Speaker 2: different states of recovery. And if you're looking to learn
Speaker 2: more about it, don't google fire mosaic unless you want
Speaker 2: to see a lot of tiling crafts that seem to
Speaker 2: be an homage to burning man. But look up the
Speaker 2: official term. It's patch mosaic burning. So let's talk different
Speaker 2: flavors of fire, because it does matter.
Speaker 3: So you can think this is a really overly simplistic
Speaker 3: way to think about fire, because fire is a really
Speaker 3: complicated process. But the way that we often sort of
Speaker 3: describe it and think about it within fire ecology world
Speaker 3: is we think about natural low severity fire regimes. You know,
Speaker 3: in a given area, you might expect fires to sort
Speaker 3: of burn a lower severity, not too hot, not too
Speaker 3: all consuming. They burn along in the understory, nice and happy,
Speaker 3: crawl along and burn some logs here, burn some trees there,
Speaker 3: but generally don't destroy or consume the big trees in
Speaker 3: the overstory of the canopy. So that first end of
Speaker 3: the system, that's kind of frequent low severity fires. And
Speaker 3: then on the other end of the whole spectrum you
Speaker 3: can think about infrequent high severity fires or fire regimes rather,
Speaker 3: So these are places in that area is for fires
Speaker 3: when they do burn, to burn pretty big and pretty hot.
Speaker 3: And those are both natural, but they're natural in those
Speaker 3: different places. And so why why is it that you
Speaker 3: have some places that naturally burn low severity and generally
Speaker 3: I'm talking about forest fires here and then other places
Speaker 3: of the forests that naturally burn it really high severity
Speaker 3: and really large. We can think about those two ends
Speaker 3: of the spectrum also in terms of what's limiting the system.
Speaker 3: So in these low severity fire systems, those are generally
Speaker 3: systems that are limited by fuel. And so what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is the climate is such that on
Speaker 3: any given year, the conditions are right for fire, Like
Speaker 3: if there's a lightning strike or another ignition, fire is
Speaker 3: going to burn and the fuel is dry, and the
Speaker 3: only thing that's keeping that fire. One of the primary
Speaker 3: things it's controlling that fire and where it burns is
Speaker 3: where the fuel is, where the trees are, where the
Speaker 3: kindling so to speak is. And because those fires those
Speaker 3: places they ignite every year, there's ignitions all the time,
Speaker 3: and the conditions are right for fire, they burn really frequently.
Speaker 3: And so you can think about places where the fires
Speaker 3: burn every couple of years, and when they do burn,
Speaker 3: they kind of clean out or you know, burn in
Speaker 3: that understory, so sort of below the forest canopy. It's
Speaker 3: burning the smaller trees, it's burning some of the medium trees,
Speaker 3: and it's burning some of the big trees. But mostly
Speaker 3: it just every time a fire burns, it burns all
Speaker 3: that fine fuel or a lot of it, right, And
Speaker 3: so that's the primary sort of control on how fire burns.
Speaker 3: In some of these dry fuel limited systems.
Speaker 2: So in these areas, the way it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: is that fires don't get mega because blazes are more frequent,
Speaker 2: so burning all of the fallen wood and the understory,
Speaker 2: so an excess of fuel doesn't build up. So that's
Speaker 2: one way that these giant, devastating fires can be avoided.
Speaker 3: And then on the other end of the spectrum, you
Speaker 3: have these climate limited systems, so rather than the system
Speaker 3: being limited by fuel, it's limited by climate. And so
Speaker 3: this is a place like the Pacific Northwest, where it's
Speaker 3: really wet, right, it's generally wet most of the time,
Speaker 3: it's cool. There's maybe quite a few ignitions, but when
Speaker 3: those ignitions occur, the fuel is not really ready to burn.
Speaker 3: It's too wet, and maybe it burns a small fire
Speaker 3: or something like that, but it just kind of extinguishes itself.
Speaker 3: And you think about that system, those kind of areas,
Speaker 3: and when you end up getting those really big, infrequent,
Speaker 3: severe fires that occur there, it's because there's been a
Speaker 3: some sort of climate activity, like a drought that's caused
Speaker 3: all that fuel that hasn't burned in a really long
Speaker 3: time to dry out, and then it burns, and when
Speaker 3: it does burn it burns really big because there's tons
Speaker 3: of fuel available, right, And so those are that's kind
Speaker 3: of the two ends of the spectrum. And you know,
Speaker 3: I was trying to think about this today. How do
Speaker 3: I describe that that like spectrum in a way that's
Speaker 3: not so dry and academic. And I was thinking about, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: like the haircut that I get is like a frequent
Speaker 3: fire system. Okay. You know, I go to Great Clips
Speaker 3: or Sport Clips or whatever just down the street from me,
Speaker 3: and I get my haircut every few weeks, maybe every month.
Speaker 3: It's it kind of maintains the general structure. It never
Speaker 3: kind of goes super long, and I never buzz it
Speaker 3: super short either. I just kind of keep it, you know, tamed,
Speaker 3: so to speak. You know, I go in there frequently.
Speaker 3: I clean out sort of the growth, right that's happened
Speaker 3: in between each cut. And on the other end of
Speaker 3: the spectrum, you could have somebody and I did this
Speaker 3: once when I was in college, which I think you're
Speaker 3: right after college, you know, grow out your hair super
Speaker 3: duper long, Like I didn't cut it for I don't
Speaker 3: remember exactly how long it was, but let's say so
Speaker 3: you grow your hair for a year, five years or something.
Speaker 3: You know, get some pretty floppy, pretty pretty crazy hair,
Speaker 3: at least if you've got hair like me, and then
Speaker 3: you say I'm gonna buzz it, and so then you
Speaker 3: buzz it right off. That's kind of the I don't know,
Speaker 3: you can kind of kind of think about that as
Speaker 3: the two ends of the spectrum. Right, You've got like
Speaker 3: your frequent haircut system, and you've got your infrequent, high
Speaker 3: severity haircut system, where you know, you just let it
Speaker 3: grow and then you cut it all off.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in this analogy, the regular maintenance cuts are
Speaker 2: the low intensity fires, the ones that burn the undergrowth,
Speaker 2: that don't spread too far, or that extinguish themselves because
Speaker 2: there's enough moisture to keep things from being straight bone
Speaker 2: dry powder, keg kindling. But if those small fires don't happen,
Speaker 2: or if the fire resistant older trees are logged out,
Speaker 2: or if the climate is just super hot, then you
Speaker 2: get a situation that's much more dramatic. I've had got
Speaker 2: and is that like long main to buzz cut?
Speaker 4: Is that what a mega fire is?
Speaker 6: Then?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that term, I would say, that's a good
Speaker 3: way to think about it. Yeah, from the long man
Speaker 3: to the buzz cut. The term megafire is a really
Speaker 3: interesting term, and it really doesn't have a great definition.
Speaker 3: A lot of people when they talk about megafires, they're
Speaker 3: thinking about these basically really big fires, just fires that
Speaker 3: are giant in size. But you can have a really
Speaker 3: really large fire that doesn't necessarily create that forest buzz cut, right.
Speaker 3: It doesn't necessarily kill all the trees within its path.
Speaker 3: It may kill some trees in some parts, but not
Speaker 3: throughout the whole fire.
Speaker 2: So a forest mullet maybe, but not the cool kind
Speaker 2: that gen Z has, the warning my cousin will probably
Speaker 2: hit on your wife kind of mullet not ideal.
Speaker 3: You can have really large fires that are not necessarily
Speaker 3: super damaging. You can have smaller fires that are pretty
Speaker 3: severe and intense and destroy a lot of what's there
Speaker 3: in terms of the forests. There isn't really a single
Speaker 3: definition of mega fires. A lot of people like to
Speaker 3: think about them in terms of their impact to society too,
Speaker 3: So it's not just like how big or severe they
Speaker 3: are in terms of how many trees they kill, but
Speaker 3: it's you know how much that fire influences people, and
Speaker 3: you know how much of the infrastructure it destroys, and
Speaker 3: there's a growing problem within the US, and particularly the
Speaker 3: western US, which right now, as you know, is experiencing
Speaker 3: quite a bit of fire activity. There's a lot more
Speaker 3: people living in that interface, what we call the wildland
Speaker 3: urban interface or the wui yeah woui So yes.
Speaker 2: The US Forest Service defines the wildland urban interface as quote,
Speaker 2: a group of home and other structures with basic infrastructure
Speaker 2: and services within or adjacent to federal land that is
Speaker 2: an at risk community. Aka all the cute cabins that
Speaker 2: you save on pinarest when you should be working on
Speaker 2: a spreadsheet for your boss because you just want to
Speaker 2: get away for the weekend, but go to someplace that
Speaker 2: still has coffee shops. So more and more folks ditched
Speaker 2: the cities in the pandemic for these type of living
Speaker 2: situations and might be getting their very first tastes of PSPs,
Speaker 2: which are public safety power shutoffs when utility companies straight
Speaker 2: up cut power for a day, maybe a few weeks
Speaker 2: when winds are high in case otherwise, live downed wires
Speaker 2: ignite the forest realators might not tell you about that
Speaker 2: until after you're done with escrow. Wowie.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the wildland are going to interface is kind of
Speaker 3: this intermingling of people and the forest right where they
Speaker 3: kind of overlap a little bit. And there's a lot
Speaker 3: more people living there now than there was ten twenty
Speaker 3: years ago. So you can think about fires as generally
Speaker 3: having more of a mega impact on people now because
Speaker 3: we're just more vulnerable in some ways to those fire
Speaker 3: effects when those fires do burn through.
Speaker 2: And now, as we're speaking, the Dixie Fire is the
Speaker 2: one of the largest fires California has ever seen. There's
Speaker 2: the is it the Bootleg fire up an organ.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in southern Oregon, that's right.
Speaker 2: So I'm surprised you were able to even talk to
Speaker 2: me right now. Can you tell me a little bit
Speaker 2: about what your job entails. Do you have is the
Speaker 2: busy season all year round because you're analyzing data that
Speaker 2: comes in? Or are you do you have to go
Speaker 2: to the field a lot? Are you getting reports from
Speaker 2: people who are closer to each of the fires?
Speaker 4: Do you have to count all the fires all of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, So I am not one of the incredible
Speaker 3: people who are out on the front lines doing this
Speaker 3: work on the fires, right My work is really more
Speaker 3: focused on a fire burns. What can we learn from it.
Speaker 3: And there are also a ton of people, of course,
Speaker 3: who are out there responding to these fires like the
Speaker 3: Dixie Fire and the Bootleg fire and many others when
Speaker 3: those are burning, and those are the people who really
Speaker 3: deserve the applause and the praise, right who are out
Speaker 3: there doing this really dangerous work. And I'm relatively speaking,
Speaker 3: I'm a desk jockey compared to those people. So I
Speaker 3: spend a lot of my time here at the computer
Speaker 3: trying to take that data and learn from the fires
Speaker 3: and trying to understand how wildlife respond to those fires.
Speaker 3: That's what I do most of the time. This last year,
Speaker 3: COVID year, has definitely made things even more so away
Speaker 3: from the field. But boy, I love field work. I've
Speaker 3: done quite a bit of it. I love getting out
Speaker 3: into those burned landscapes and trying to figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 2: What is it like when you are doing field work,
Speaker 2: what kind of samples do you have to collect, and
Speaker 2: what kinds of observations are you making.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a lot of the work that I've done
Speaker 3: has focused on how this one little critter, that spotted
Speaker 3: owl responds to these burned areas, these fires that have
Speaker 3: come through and so myself and some of my really
Speaker 3: outstanding colleagues, both back from when I was in grad
Speaker 3: school that I established during my PhD program, some of
Speaker 3: those collaborators back at University of Wisconsin, as well as
Speaker 3: some of my fantastic teammates here at the Rocky Mountain
Speaker 3: Research Station with the US Forest Service, we've done quite
Speaker 3: a bit of work trying to understand how this bird,
Speaker 3: this spotted owl, responds to fires. We've gone out and
Speaker 3: spent quite a bit of time in these burned areas,
Speaker 3: capturing owls and putting GPS tags on them to see
Speaker 3: where they move in these burned areas, to see if
Speaker 3: they like them or if they're using them. We literally
Speaker 3: go out into the woods and hoot at the alley. Dear, really,
Speaker 3: we really do. You walk into the woods where you
Speaker 3: think there's going to be an owl and you just
Speaker 3: start hooting with your mouth. You just do it, and
Speaker 3: they hoot back because they're like, Hey, who the heck
Speaker 3: is that?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. And then are you able to count
Speaker 2: them based on who hoots?
Speaker 3: Pretty much? Yeah, So we call them callback surveys. So
Speaker 3: we're calling and the call back and that's how we
Speaker 3: locate them and oftentimes we're just interested in detecting them,
Speaker 3: so okay, there's an owl here, there's an owl there,
Speaker 3: sort of establishing where they are across the landscape.
Speaker 4: Did I look this up? Of course?
Speaker 2: And please enjoy the absolute maestro of this art see
Speaker 2: Ora Pacific Industries wildlife biologist Kevin roberts Well.
Speaker 6: I like to do when I'm surveying for spotted owls
Speaker 6: and using my voice is kind of mix them all
Speaker 6: up and do something to the fact of whoa, whoa,
Speaker 6: who whoa.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Kevin. We beg you to make a ring tone.
Speaker 2: Is it too much to ask?
Speaker 4: You can only.
Speaker 2: Answer that in owl hoots. But anyway, that is how
Speaker 2: you do a Jim Carrey level impersonation of spotted owls.
Speaker 3: But a lot of the work I've done is focused
Speaker 3: on capturing those owls once we find them, and putting
Speaker 3: little GPS tags on them and seeing where they go.
Speaker 3: And then we get that, we get that data and
Speaker 3: we see where they went and we try to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 3: how are they interacting with some of those burned areas.
Speaker 3: What can we learn from that about what type of
Speaker 3: fire they like, what kind of forests they like, and
Speaker 3: how we might be able to manage the forests in
Speaker 3: a way that supports them.
Speaker 2: And how is a fire ecology changing with the climate
Speaker 2: with droughts? Why do droughts even happen? Is the water
Speaker 2: that would normally rain here raining somewhere else?
Speaker 4: So where is the water?
Speaker 3: So okay? So again, this is something that much smarter
Speaker 3: people would have a much better answer for. But I
Speaker 3: will say that something that is for certain is that
Speaker 3: we are entering into uncharted territory with fire and fire
Speaker 3: ecology and fire behavior. And one of my good colleagues
Speaker 3: at University of California mer said, Leroy Westerling has you know,
Speaker 3: said many many times to me, and I've seen him
Speaker 3: write about this too. You know, there is no more
Speaker 3: normal in terms of fire. There's not even a new normal.
Speaker 3: It's a new abnormal, you know, we because we just
Speaker 3: it's really it's becoming really difficult to predict what's going
Speaker 3: to happen in the future because we don't have a
Speaker 3: reference point anymore. We're sort of just going into uncharted territory.
Speaker 3: And so you know, when it comes to drought and
Speaker 3: climate change and things like that, Look, those are definitely
Speaker 3: a part of the equation in terms of what's going
Speaker 3: on with wildfire and what's going to happen, and particularly
Speaker 3: climate change, and you know how that interacts with forests
Speaker 3: and drives out fuels and things like that. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: hard to just talk about drought and climate change for
Speaker 3: many reasons because it's hard as like a scientist who's
Speaker 3: interested in conservation, like, what can I do about that?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I don't. I don't mean to
Speaker 3: sound like nihilistic, like, oh, we can't do anything about it,
Speaker 3: because we can, We absolutely can. It's never too late
Speaker 3: to make actions on those big problems like climate change, right,
Speaker 3: But you know, I have the the honor to work
Speaker 3: for this agency, the US Forest Service, that is in
Speaker 3: charge of managing a ton of land, and so what
Speaker 3: can we do on the ground to make a difference
Speaker 3: in terms of how these fires burn?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And you know, considering climate change like that plays a role,
Speaker 3: plays a really important role, and so does drought in
Speaker 3: terms of driving some of these wildfire patterns that we've seen.
Speaker 3: But there's also something to be said for how forests
Speaker 3: are made and how flammable forests are, and how we
Speaker 3: can potentially manage them in a way that tries to
Speaker 3: mitigate those worst effects of fire when they do come through.
Speaker 3: So it's really like you are going to hear people say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, these fires are just because of climate change,
Speaker 3: there's nothing we can do about it. And then you're
Speaker 3: going to hear people say, oh, climate change has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it. It's we just need to manage forests differently.
Speaker 3: And the reality is it's neither of those. It's it's
Speaker 3: kind of both, right, It's both climate change and you know,
Speaker 3: the forest and the patterns of fuels across the landscape
Speaker 3: are affecting how fires burn. As a research scientist with
Speaker 3: the Forest Service, I'm thinking about how can I do
Speaker 3: science that informs how we manage forests. And that's one
Speaker 3: of the coolest parts about my job is that I
Speaker 3: work for an agency that has a really strong management component,
Speaker 3: you know, huge part of the agency as people out
Speaker 3: there doing this work, you know, managing forests, coming up
Speaker 3: with forest plans and management plans and fire plans, and
Speaker 3: I get to do science that helps them figure out
Speaker 3: how to do that, and we work together, you know,
Speaker 3: in a collaborative way to figure that out. And that
Speaker 3: is where I think I like focusing on those solutions, right,
Speaker 3: How can we press the levers and make a difference
Speaker 3: from the ground.
Speaker 2: Is the leading theory on that is just more and
Speaker 2: better prescribed burns, or is it humans stop living in
Speaker 2: the woods for a while, Like what is the best
Speaker 2: tool you have?
Speaker 3: Yes, so that is a great question. And I think
Speaker 3: this is a misconception that if humans just got out
Speaker 3: of the picture, it would all be better.
Speaker 4: Mm hm.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's easy to think that way, like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're just the problem and humans suck and we just
Speaker 3: need to get out of the picture and nature will
Speaker 3: do its own thing and blah blah blah. And look,
Speaker 3: you know I understand that perspective. I'm sensitive to it.
Speaker 3: But we have to remember indigenous people's have been burning
Speaker 3: for ten thousand years, and you know, we need more
Speaker 3: fire on the landscape, not less. It's just what kind
Speaker 3: of fire burns. This is kind of crazy to think about,
Speaker 3: but especially given you're looking at these maps. I've got
Speaker 3: the New York Times wildfire tracker open here, i got
Speaker 3: another tracker on my desktop open as well. Like with
Speaker 3: all these big fires burning, you're thinking, like, man, there's
Speaker 3: just got to be so much more fire now than
Speaker 3: there ever.
Speaker 4: Was Yeah, that's what I would think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's totally what you would think, But it's actually
Speaker 3: not the case. There's still less fire in the West.
Speaker 3: In western North America, then there was many many years ago,
Speaker 3: one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 4: But they were smaller back then. Is that a thing?
Speaker 3: So they just burned differently. I'll bring you through a
Speaker 3: little a little bit of a time warp. So we
Speaker 3: often in Western science delineate sort of this pre colonial
Speaker 3: era and in the pre European or pre colonial era,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of fire in the West. I mean,
Speaker 3: these are flammable landscapes and they never really got put out, right,
Speaker 3: All these ignitions would just burn, and vast areas of
Speaker 3: the landscape would burn all the time, depending again on
Speaker 3: what kind of system you're in, right, So these frequent
Speaker 3: fire systems would burn very frequently, you know, every couple
Speaker 3: of years you'd have fires kind of returning to the
Speaker 3: same areas. Then, when you know, settlers, white settlers colonized
Speaker 3: and pretty much disrupted indigenous burning and began actively suppressing wildfires,
Speaker 3: the amount of fire in the landscape just dropped to
Speaker 3: you know, almost nothing. We were very effective at suppressing
Speaker 3: fires for a long time in the Western US, and
Speaker 3: basically what's happened is only recently have we sort of
Speaker 3: lost our handle on our ability to put out fires.
Speaker 3: The level of activity that we're seeing now is still
Speaker 3: far less than the level of fire activity that used
Speaker 3: to burn. But the difference is that because in many
Speaker 3: of these forests, and particularly in these frequent fire forests
Speaker 3: or these dry forest systems that used to burn really frequently,
Speaker 3: they haven't burned in a century or more, and so
Speaker 3: when they do burn, they burn really hot and really big,
Speaker 3: and that's not a natural kind of fire for this system.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, along with that, we have a
Speaker 3: lot more people again kind of living in those fire
Speaker 3: prone areas, and so we feel the effects a lot
Speaker 3: more as well as the population has increased, and so
Speaker 3: we still have way way less fire activity on the landscape.
Speaker 3: It's just that these fires are typically burning in a
Speaker 3: way that is for those forests unnatural and for society
Speaker 3: really not except right. The other crazy thing is that
Speaker 3: we actually have in some areas, particularly again these sort
Speaker 3: of historically frequent fire systems, we have a lot more
Speaker 3: trees too than we used to have. Oh yeah, which
Speaker 3: like it goes right along with that fire suppression. So
Speaker 3: we put out fires for one hundred years or more,
Speaker 3: and all those little shrubs and saplings that would have
Speaker 3: burned and those regular fires grew up to be big,
Speaker 3: you know, medium sized trees.
Speaker 4: More trees.
Speaker 2: Isn't that good?
Speaker 4: Well, it's kind of.
Speaker 2: Like a garage that we have failed to Marie Condo
Speaker 2: for a long time, which I'll be honest, is my garage.
Speaker 2: Got to clear some stuff out. I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 3: And so we have actually a lot more trees on
Speaker 3: the landscape now in a place like the Sierra Nevada,
Speaker 3: where I've spent a lot of my career doing this research,
Speaker 3: than we used to. It's just like the kinds of
Speaker 3: fires are different, the kinds of trees are different. We
Speaker 3: have a lot more smaller trees and medium sized trees,
Speaker 3: and a lot fewer of those really giant old trees,
Speaker 3: which are really kind of an endangered species sort of
Speaker 3: in and of themselves. Because over the past one hundred
Speaker 3: years or so, particularly pre nineteen eighties, there was quite
Speaker 3: a bit of large tree logging going all the way
Speaker 3: back to the early nineteen hundreds and late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: so a lot of those big old trees were removed,
Speaker 3: a lot of those smaller trees grew up with that
Speaker 3: fire suppression, and now we just have a ton of
Speaker 3: smaller trees on the landscape. And that again is kind
Speaker 3: of feeding back into why we have fires that are
Speaker 3: burning differently because these fires are burning through you know,
Speaker 3: these pretty thick connected, like well connected forests that historically
Speaker 3: just didn't look like that at all.
Speaker 2: So forests look and behave much differently now than they
Speaker 2: were for tens of thousands of years because of colonial
Speaker 2: human tinkering. Don't you want to know all about indigenous fires,
Speaker 2: stewardship now and cultural burns?
Speaker 4: So do I?
Speaker 2: And did I hours before this podcast episode on up
Speaker 2: decide to feverishly book an indigenous fire scientist to talk
Speaker 2: to me for next week. I did, so stay tuned.
Speaker 2: I just thought i'd plant that expectation for you. And
Speaker 2: what about the effect of fire on seeds opening and
Speaker 2: certain plants saying like sweet, there was just a fire,
Speaker 2: now's my time to shine like our ash is good
Speaker 2: for certain types of botany.
Speaker 3: So okay. One of my colleagues, Jens Stevens, he's with
Speaker 3: the Forest Service as well. Now he's done some really
Speaker 3: awesome work looking at tree adaptations to fire and fire regimes.
Speaker 3: But one of the most common examples of how trees
Speaker 3: are adapted to fire is, particularly when thinking about seeds.
Speaker 4: Is seroteny as E R O T I N.
Speaker 3: Why so, seroteny is this trait that some trees have,
Speaker 3: not not all trees, but some trees have this basically
Speaker 3: waxy kind of resin that encompasses their cones and their seeds,
Speaker 3: and they only open when fires burn because the fire
Speaker 3: melts that wax off of their seeds and the seeds drop,
Speaker 3: and then they the trees able to regenerate and typically
Speaker 3: it releases in many cases. In some cases that I
Speaker 3: know of, those trees require a really severe fire to
Speaker 3: release its seed.
Speaker 2: Okay, So serotenus means later or following, And it is
Speaker 2: not to be confused with certolene, which is the generic
Speaker 2: form of zoloft, which I googled wrong. So according to
Speaker 2: Nationalforest dot Org, serotinous cones with full mature seeds can
Speaker 2: just chill out closed up on a pine tree like
Speaker 2: a jackpine or a table mountain pine for years until
Speaker 2: a fire sweeps through and the resin melts and then
Speaker 2: the seed confetti party time happens. So this is also
Speaker 2: side note how indoor fire sprinklers work. They're not reliant
Speaker 2: on smoke, but on heat of over fifty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: So there's a little glass capsule in fire sprinklers and
Speaker 2: it's filled with glycerine, and that heats up and bursts
Speaker 2: and opens the sprinkler valve. And apparently they open individually
Speaker 2: wherever its hottest, not all at once like in the movies.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at you, Lethal Weapon four, the Incredibles and
Speaker 2: Charlie's Angels and Mean Girls and Casino Royal and Kindergarten
Speaker 2: Cop and the Peanuts movie and all the other ones.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to link on my website because I
Speaker 2: found someone with a YouTube channel who is very pissed
Speaker 2: about the sprinkler myth. Anyway, heat seeds disperse, it's natural, and.
Speaker 3: So some trees have adapted that that trait, and in
Speaker 3: other cases trees have really thick bark. And this is
Speaker 3: the case for many of the trees and these frequent
Speaker 3: fire systems that experience fires all the time on a
Speaker 3: five to ten year cycle or you know, in that
Speaker 3: range trees have really thick bark because they need to
Speaker 3: survive that frequent heat and disturbance from fire. And so
Speaker 3: there's really remarkable adaptations that plants have to fire. And
Speaker 3: also increasingly we're trying to learn about animal adaptations to fire.
Speaker 3: Typically we think about these in terms of behavioral adaptations,
Speaker 3: So like, how do animals interact with either fire itself
Speaker 3: or the post fire landscape in a way that tells
Speaker 3: us a little bit about it kind of opens the
Speaker 3: book on their evolution, how they evolved.
Speaker 2: So what are the spoty owls like? It turns out
Speaker 2: small patches of high intensity fires, which were more common
Speaker 2: in pre colonial times. Spoty owls are like me at
Speaker 2: a cocktail party, just waiting for a tray of egg
Speaker 2: girls to roll past. Now, in scientific terms, this is
Speaker 2: called a sit and wait predator.
Speaker 3: And the owls like to sit on the edge, on
Speaker 3: that green edge and hunt into that smaller patch of
Speaker 3: open forest where I can see little critters run across,
Speaker 3: and it has a better flight path and that sort
Speaker 3: of thing, while also concealing itself from its predator, like
Speaker 3: the great horned owl. So that's just one example that
Speaker 3: I've been involved in. But we generally expect, you know,
Speaker 3: not only plants to have these adaptations, but also animals
Speaker 3: to potentially have these behavioral adaptations too.
Speaker 4: Mm hm oh that's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Also, I didn't realize that owls had drama between them.
Speaker 2: He would think they'd be like, I'm an owl, you're
Speaker 2: an owl. Let's make this happen, you know.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's so true. There is totally drama. And
Speaker 3: one of my mentors and colleagues's name is Rocky Guctis.
Speaker 3: He's done some work looking at owl communities and trying
Speaker 3: to figure out, like how owls can coexist in space.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of drama out there in the in the.
Speaker 2: Hour so much. Speaking of drama, have you seen the
Speaker 2: acclaimed dramatic film Those Who Wish Me Dead starring Angelineishole,
Speaker 2: who is a person who lives in.
Speaker 4: A fire tower.
Speaker 3: No, I have not.
Speaker 2: Well, if you like fires and people being miscast, you
Speaker 2: will love Those Who Wished Me Dead.
Speaker 3: That's that's my main genre of movie that I like,
Speaker 3: wonderful miscasting. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: If you like to watch a movie in the entire
Speaker 2: time picture someone else playing the lead role, you will
Speaker 2: love Those Who Wish me dead. She is absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 2: She's a stunner. I love her acting. I don't know
Speaker 2: why they cast her this movie. It seemed so weird.
Speaker 3: Why they put you in a fire tower?
Speaker 4: Well I'm just lucky, I guess.
Speaker 2: Anyway, those who wish me dead just so much, so
Speaker 2: much forest fire and a lot of just breathing through
Speaker 2: smoke that seems like it should be thicker.
Speaker 4: But you can just you can smell this movie.
Speaker 2: Listen. There are a lot of actors that are suited
Speaker 2: for certain types of cinematic environments. Okay, Oh, but if
Speaker 2: you watch it, Medina Sanghor so good in it that
Speaker 2: I just looked up her name and then I followed
Speaker 2: her on Instagram. So some beautiful creatures are more well
Speaker 2: suited to some roles and environments. That's all.
Speaker 4: What about the term pyro diversity? Is that a real one?
Speaker 3: Oh? Allie, I'm so glad you asked that question. I
Speaker 3: am street smart and book smart. Yes, so pyrodiversity is
Speaker 3: something that I've been spending a lot of time thinking
Speaker 3: about in recent years. It's kind of a fun buzzword,
Speaker 3: you know, like pyro diversity, Like, what does that even mean?
Speaker 3: Someone made that up? And it's probably because well, somebody
Speaker 3: did make it up. It basically is another way to
Speaker 3: think about this fire mosaic that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: The term pyrodiversity sort of emerged alongside this idea that
Speaker 3: pyrodiversity gives rise to biodiversity. So basically that the more
Speaker 3: different kinds of fire that we have on the landscape,
Speaker 3: the more different kinds of severities, the different fire ages. Basically,
Speaker 3: the greater mixture of different types of fire characteristics that
Speaker 3: are in a landscape is going to lead to greater biodiversity,
Speaker 3: which means more species basically, so you have more kinds
Speaker 3: of wildlife, more more kinds of plants, et cetera, more
Speaker 3: kinds of bees, more kinds of bats, more kinds of birds,
Speaker 3: et cetera, because you have all sorts of different kinds
Speaker 3: of habitat for them that's been produced by fire.
Speaker 4: Ah Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So it's it's an important idea because it
Speaker 3: it really kind of underlies this important role of fire
Speaker 3: in these cases with you know, the Dixie fire and
Speaker 3: the Bootleg fire, these fires that are really like destructive
Speaker 3: to human infrastructure and also you know, to people's lives.
Speaker 3: I mean, This is really serious stuff that is sad
Speaker 3: and it's hard to watch. But on the other side
Speaker 3: of the coin, we do need fire on the landscape,
Speaker 3: right We just we need a different kind of fire.
Speaker 3: We don't want to see more, you know, of the
Speaker 3: destructive fires that are out there. We want to see
Speaker 3: good fire. And what I mean by good fire is
Speaker 3: really kind of like this pyro diversity idea, where we
Speaker 3: have a really nice mixture of fire that kind of restores,
Speaker 3: It cleans out the understory in some places, it kills
Speaker 3: some trees, It disrupts the system a little bit. You know,
Speaker 3: some disruption is good, and you create that really sort
Speaker 3: of wide ranging variety of habitats for different critters to live,
Speaker 3: and that also supports all sorts of other great things
Speaker 3: like water quantity and quality. It reduces a runoff, It
Speaker 3: reinforces the resilience of ecosystems and forests. So like, fire
Speaker 3: is so good, and it's like, we want that good
Speaker 3: kind of fire. It's really such a restorative thing. And
Speaker 3: it's just pyrodiversity kind of encompasses this idea of like
Speaker 3: that beautiful mosaic on the landscape that is always changing.
Speaker 3: It's not just static it's always changing, always being renewed.
Speaker 3: That's the idea of pyrodiversity.
Speaker 4: Huh. Can I blaze through a lightning round?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Part in the pun, even though I'm not sorry, okay, And.
Speaker 2: Before your questions, we donate to a cause each episode,
Speaker 2: and as a forest Service employee, Gavin can't directly endorse
Speaker 2: anything in particular, so it was my pick this week
Speaker 2: and a donation will be going to the Common Good
Speaker 2: Community Foundation. They have established a matching fund to assist
Speaker 2: all local communities impacted by the Dixie Fire, and all
Speaker 2: donations will be distributed to Plumous County agencies involved in
Speaker 2: directly assisting communities and individuals most affected by the fire.
Speaker 2: More info is up at common Goood Plumas dot org.
Speaker 2: And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show.
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Speaker 2: Okay, let's tend to your smoldering curiosities. Great question from
Speaker 2: Nicole d g Marie Charlotte Falcucard, Meghan McLean, Daniel Kim,
Speaker 2: Liz Gross Eden, Sunshine, Talia Dunyak. Nicole Kleiman also asked,
Speaker 2: in Nicole's words, what happens to wildlife when there's a fire.
Speaker 2: Daniel Kim wants to know are there any animals that
Speaker 2: have adapted to survive forest fires?
Speaker 4: And Nicole asks do they all leave? Or are some
Speaker 4: able to hide or survive in a sneaky way?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so great. This is a great question. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can do a super quick
Speaker 3: answer to this, but I'm going to be too excited
Speaker 3: about it. But yeah, so how do wildlife respond to wildfire?
Speaker 3: So here's the thing. It really depends and that's like
Speaker 3: the greatest you know, scientific smoke and mirrors, Like, hey,
Speaker 3: it depends, but it really does. Some species like fire,
Speaker 3: some don't. And it also depends on what kind of
Speaker 3: fire it is, you know, if it's really severe or mild. So,
Speaker 3: for example, there's one species that some of my awesome
Speaker 3: colleagues have worked on. It's called the black backed woodpecker.
Speaker 3: Many people think of it as a poster child of
Speaker 3: severely burned forest because it really needs these patches of
Speaker 3: totally killed trees. It depends on the insects that live
Speaker 3: in those recently killed trees. It needs those severely burned forests.
Speaker 3: Several years after those those fires burn and those trees
Speaker 3: are killed, it's no longer good habitat, Like it's really
Speaker 3: kind of this short term thing. They flock to these
Speaker 3: really severely burned places, they totally thrive, and then they
Speaker 3: are out of there and onto the next fire. So
Speaker 3: some critters love that, others not so much so. The
Speaker 3: spotted out all the species that I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time studying it is really kind of more of
Speaker 3: an old forest obligate. It doesn't love that severely burned
Speaker 3: stuff quite as much. So basically there are winners and losers.
Speaker 3: That's the answer is. It's never simple. It's never as
Speaker 3: simple as you make it. It's not just all animals
Speaker 3: are going to die or leave when a fire burns. No,
Speaker 3: some of them are going to do great and some
Speaker 3: of them are not. That's like part of the beauty
Speaker 3: of studying this stuff is like trying to figure out
Speaker 3: why why do some animals love and some don't? The
Speaker 3: world is so complex and amazing it's like really fun
Speaker 3: to try to figure that out right. And then in
Speaker 3: terms of where animals go, some animals can escape fires,
Speaker 3: you know, fly out of the way, run out of
Speaker 3: the way. I always think of like Bamby movie bab
Speaker 3: like all the animals are like parading out of the forest.
Speaker 3: I don't want to ruin Bambi for anybody, it's uh,
Speaker 3: but you know, some animals can be a fire, even
Speaker 3: you know, flying critters cannot always fly away from fast
Speaker 3: moving fires. Some animals will burrow under the ground and
Speaker 3: wait for the fire to pass and then go back out,
Speaker 3: which is totally crazy. You should Yeah, it's it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Oooh okay, burrowing critters hiding from fires. My heart burst
Speaker 2: into flames. So which animals burrow?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: Some Australian possums hide out in tree hollows. Snakes high
Speaker 2: tail it down a burrow. But wombats also hit the
Speaker 2: basement during bush fires. And there were a bunch of
Speaker 2: internet rumors going around last year that they invite and
Speaker 2: usher other critters in. These rumors spread like wildfire, but
Speaker 2: they are flame flam They actually just tolerate other animals
Speaker 2: hiding out in their wombat doomsday bunkers. But same with
Speaker 2: gopher tortoises in the US. And to hear all about that,
Speaker 2: you can amble slowly over to the Testudonology episode with
Speaker 2: oneful tortoise scientists Amanda Hips. Now, what about rebel birds?
Speaker 3: There are other creatures. There's fire hawks, and they're down
Speaker 3: in Australia and they will actually like pick up burning
Speaker 3: branches and drop them to burn other parts of their
Speaker 3: habitat so that they can catch their prey.
Speaker 2: I have heard of these and it sounds so devious.
Speaker 2: But they even will get together and wait for rodents
Speaker 2: to run out.
Speaker 3: That's wild. That's just wild. Yeah, there's winners and losers.
Speaker 3: Like there's such a variety of animals that respond in
Speaker 3: different ways to fire, and that's just the coolest thing.
Speaker 3: And that's that's one of the reasons why pyro diversity,
Speaker 3: going back to pyrodiversity is thought to promote biodiversity because
Speaker 3: the more kind of variety of fire you have, the
Speaker 3: more different kinds of animals that are going to benefit
Speaker 3: from that variety. Right. So you know, if you have
Speaker 3: sort of your forest that was killed by trees next
Speaker 3: to a forest that is totally green and old and
Speaker 3: you know, decay almost we have this big mosaic of
Speaker 3: different kinds of forests that burn at different times. That's
Speaker 3: going to support all kinds of different critters. So it's
Speaker 3: a cool thing.
Speaker 7: Now, that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: And several people, Rebecca wine Settle, India Land, Nicole Kleinman,
Speaker 2: Jesse Hurlbert want to know, can I really prevent forest fires,
Speaker 2: Rebecca asked, or is this just another example of a
Speaker 2: giant corporation trying to foist responsibility on to individuals. Nicole
Speaker 2: wants to know what Smoky the bear more helpful or
Speaker 2: harmful to forests. What do you think about Smoky the Bear? Okay,
Speaker 2: liberty to say, I.
Speaker 3: Think Smoky the Bear is super cute. I will say
Speaker 3: that we absolutely can prevent forest fires, not all of them,
Speaker 3: and we not necessarily should prevent all of them. Over
Speaker 3: thinking about prescribed fires, right, Like, we do want to
Speaker 3: put some fire in the landscape. But as I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: a giant majority, like eighty seven percent between eighty ninety
Speaker 3: humans cause eighty seven percent of all wildfire occurrences annually
Speaker 3: within the Western US. Like, that's crazy, that's a big number. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a lot of those you can go look this up.
Speaker 3: There's this a couple studies out there that have shown,
Speaker 3: you know, these gigantic spikes of fire activity on the
Speaker 3: fourth of July every year. Oh, Like, we we absolutely
Speaker 3: play a role in ignitions. A very small percentage of
Speaker 3: all of the ignitions result in those really big, big fires.
Speaker 3: Of course, many of the fires that ignite don't burn
Speaker 3: everything up, but we absolutely as people can be careful
Speaker 3: about how we burn. I think that Smoky the Bear
Speaker 3: is just misunderstood. Okay, you know, like because it's true.
Speaker 3: You know, we we as people, like we we absolutely
Speaker 3: do start fires. We start unintended, unplanned fires that sometimes
Speaker 3: result in really devastating circumstances. There's sort of this perception
Speaker 3: that all fire is bad among some people. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if smoking the bears associated with that or not,
Speaker 3: but you know, all fire is not bad, Like fire
Speaker 3: is so important, and the reason why some fire is
Speaker 3: really bad right now and particularly is because we haven't
Speaker 3: had the kind of fire on the landscape that is
Speaker 3: natural in a lot of these systems.
Speaker 2: So a lot of patrons looking at you, Michael Davis,
Speaker 2: Peter Ashley Herbel Sebastian Pepino, first time question asker is
Speaker 2: Karla Jerez and Ada Smith, Schandra Mason, Bennett Gerber. They
Speaker 2: all essentially asked.
Speaker 4: What do we do it?
Speaker 2: Should firefighting teams approach it more strategically, like let it
Speaker 2: burn twenty five miles over here, but let's stop it
Speaker 2: here or at this point, like what do we even do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that is such a difficult and vexing question
Speaker 3: that much smarter people than me are like thinking really
Speaker 3: really hard about. So I don't want to make any
Speaker 3: like really poorly informed statements about how firefighters should be
Speaker 3: doing their job, because they're doing an incredible job. But
Speaker 3: I'll say that generally there's many times when fires are
Speaker 3: burning and there's a decision made to let the fire
Speaker 3: burn on its own for a little while when it's
Speaker 3: deemed to be safe. Right, So especially in areas where
Speaker 3: there's not as many people and you know, like kind
Speaker 3: of more wilderness type areas, because fires can do some
Speaker 3: of that work for us to restore the natural structure
Speaker 3: of a system. So fires can be really restorative, especially
Speaker 3: in those cases when we think it's going to burn
Speaker 3: in a quote unquote healthy way or a natural way
Speaker 3: and there aren't people who are in danger. So that's
Speaker 3: kind of the idea of those managed wildfires. Just you know,
Speaker 3: when wildfires burning, we're kind of trying to manage them
Speaker 3: as opposed to to just put them out or suppress them.
Speaker 2: And from smoky the bear, let's move on to goats.
Speaker 2: Ashley Nnton and Leanna Schuster literally both started their questions goats.
Speaker 2: Both of them please tell us about how goats are
Speaker 2: used to help produce fire risk in areas with excess vegetation,
Speaker 2: And Ashley says, I mean a few hours and they
Speaker 2: chewed down most of the pasture.
Speaker 4: Can goats save us.
Speaker 3: Man, I wish goats could just save us. That would
Speaker 3: be so great. Just hand it all over to them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure they've got it figured out. No, but I
Speaker 3: actually don't know about goats being used in wildfire management.
Speaker 3: That could just be my naivity. So I'll pump that one.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, goats.
Speaker 2: I tried to rent some for my hillside about two
Speaker 2: years ago, and it was a minimum, sadly of five
Speaker 2: acres and I just moved in and it was too
Speaker 2: soon to ask my neighbors if they wanted to go
Speaker 2: in on a goat hert with me. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to come on so strong. But there are businesses like
Speaker 2: goatsarus dot com that'll rent them out. I thought this
Speaker 2: was a pretty common practice, hiring goats to eat your
Speaker 2: overgrown grass, because when I was in high school in
Speaker 2: northern California, a lot of neighbors did that. And then
Speaker 2: I read the FAQ on goats rs dot com and
Speaker 2: what this business started in the tiny town I went
Speaker 2: to high school in around the time I was in
Speaker 2: high school. Holy literal smokes. As far as coincidences go,
Speaker 2: it's the greatest of all time. Okay, So this next
Speaker 2: smokey query was asked by plenty of folks, including patrons
Speaker 2: Hannah Aussi, Alana Wood Firefighter, supporter, Lousey Martinez, Charlie Cacamo,
Speaker 2: first time question asker Ashley Martinez, Nina eve Zeininger, asthmetic,
Speaker 2: Ada Smith, Joseph and Katie Coast.
Speaker 4: Let's see.
Speaker 2: Dylan McGuire says, I live in eastern Washington where Smoke
Speaker 2: has become the fifth season. When will we have the
Speaker 2: giant forest rakes mentioned by Donald Trump? And they spent a.
Speaker 6: Lot of time on breaking and planning and doing things.
Speaker 4: And do we need to rake the forest?
Speaker 3: So you know, this is I think again, this is
Speaker 3: this is just a misunderstanding. So going back to smoke,
Speaker 3: this is a real problem, right, we don't like being
Speaker 3: exposed to smoke. You remember, I'm sure I don't know Ali,
Speaker 3: if this happened where you were. I think this was
Speaker 3: up in the in the Bay area. Yeah. Last year,
Speaker 3: you probably remember seeing all of our social media those
Speaker 3: pictures of you know, San Francisco being just like Orange
Speaker 3: is like some blade runner or something. The problem with
Speaker 3: smoke is that you know it's going to be there,
Speaker 3: It's going to happen if we're living in a in
Speaker 3: a system that has fire, and that where we need
Speaker 3: to have fire, we're going to also have smoke. That's
Speaker 3: that's just a part of a part of it. Right
Speaker 3: where there's fire, there's smoke. The real important question is
Speaker 3: how do we want our smoke? You know? And and
Speaker 3: that's that's how some people are trying to think about
Speaker 3: this problem of smoke, because it is a real serious
Speaker 3: public health problem. Right with these sort of unplanned big
Speaker 3: quote unquote mega fires that happened, we all of a
Speaker 3: sudden get a ton of smoke. We didn't know it
Speaker 3: was coming. It disrupts our lives and puts us at risk.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of smoke right that happens. Just
Speaker 3: this past week or two, I saw people on Twitter,
Speaker 3: you know, out on the East coast saying that they had,
Speaker 3: you know, they were getting some smoke from some of
Speaker 3: the wildfires in the West. That kind of unpredictable nature
Speaker 3: is I think for many people, not desirable, Okay. And
Speaker 3: so the idea is if we can use more prescribed
Speaker 3: and planned fires, and more cultural and indigenous fires where
Speaker 3: we know when the smoke is coming, it's a lower amount.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, less smoke in general is come
Speaker 3: in our way at any given time, but maybe a
Speaker 3: little more often. You know, those are kind of the
Speaker 3: two options, right. We can either sort of have our
Speaker 3: smoke in big pulses when we don't know it's coming,
Speaker 3: or we can try to make it a little more predictable.
Speaker 2: It seems like the whares in the whys are important here.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right for sure.
Speaker 2: Yes, what about Maria Suavleva wants to know underground wildfires?
Speaker 2: I understand how they start, but how do they keep going?
Speaker 2: How is there enough oxygen for some to last for years?
Speaker 2: How deep do they go? Jeremiah Miller says, what's the
Speaker 2: strangest place there's been a wildfire?
Speaker 4: They're underground?
Speaker 3: Some Yeah, some fires do burn underground. It's kind of crazy,
Speaker 3: y who So, one of the interesting kind of related
Speaker 3: phenomenon that I've witnessed is sometimes in these areas that
Speaker 3: have recently burned, you come across a gigantic hole in
Speaker 3: the ground, like just a giant hole. There's no tree,
Speaker 3: there's trees around you, and then there's just a gigantic
Speaker 3: hole in the ground. Okay, when I started doing this
Speaker 3: work in these post fire landscapes. I was like, what
Speaker 3: in the heck is going on here? And I started
Speaker 3: asking around, and these are basically trees that have burned
Speaker 3: and kept burning and smoldering and smoldering, and the smoldering
Speaker 3: fire continued down through their root system underground, throughout the
Speaker 3: whole root system, and maybe they'll they'll even pop up
Speaker 3: somewhere else, like you know, a little ways away where
Speaker 3: the root kind of pops back up onto the ground.
Speaker 3: And basically these are like gigantic casts for trees, right
Speaker 3: like where the tree and its roots used to be.
Speaker 3: So fires can absolutely burn, you know, in a subterranean way.
Speaker 3: I've seen some of these sort of root holes following fire,
Speaker 3: which is just kind of wild to see.
Speaker 2: It is wild to see, and I know because I
Speaker 2: just watched a ton of videos of smoldering, flickering root systems.
Speaker 2: They can burn for weeks, months, maybe even through a
Speaker 2: whole season, and the fire will just pop up somewhere else. Also,
Speaker 2: somewhere in Pennsylvania, there is an abandoned Centralia coal mine
Speaker 2: that's been on fire since nineteen sixty two, and experts
Speaker 2: say there was enough fuel to just keep it burning
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty years. No one knows what
Speaker 2: to do. They just all left town except for five
Speaker 2: people who still live there. They're like, we're not going anywhere.
Speaker 4: Like that's cool.
Speaker 2: But yes, fires underground, flames, flames, breathing, heaving. Oh man,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that was possible. I would not
Speaker 2: have thought that. That is bananas.
Speaker 6: Ugh.
Speaker 2: Some of y'all patrons, Lizzie mar Bush fire asker, Brandy Harbaugh,
Speaker 2: first time question asker, longtime lurker, Adriana Alfaro want to
Speaker 2: know what can we expect the normal amount of wildfires
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 4: Is there a normal?
Speaker 2: They all want to know numerically, how much worse are
Speaker 2: big wildfires gonna get? Give us numbers. We need numbers.
Speaker 3: So you know, if you look at how fires have
Speaker 3: changed in the last thirty forty years, we have seen
Speaker 3: a lot more fire activity now than we did ten, fifteen,
Speaker 3: twenty years ago, thirty forty years ago. So one of
Speaker 3: my colleagues I just mentioned a moment ago, is named
Speaker 3: Sean Parks with us for a service and one of
Speaker 3: his colleagues. They put out a study recently showing that
Speaker 3: between nineteen eighty five and twenty seventeen there was an
Speaker 3: eight fold increase in area that burned at high severity
Speaker 3: on an annual basis in the western US. Eight So
Speaker 3: there is certainly a lot more large fires now, and
Speaker 3: there's also when those those fires are burning more severely
Speaker 3: now than they did thirty five or so years ago,
Speaker 3: thirty five forty years ago. But that's like the sort
Speaker 3: of small scale context. But then if you zoom back
Speaker 3: out and look at sort of the whole context of
Speaker 3: the last several thousand years, we are seeing less fire
Speaker 3: now than we did way back when it's a different
Speaker 3: kind of fire that's burning, right, that's not necessarily natural
Speaker 3: in some of these systems. And then also we are
Speaker 3: we are experiencing more of the effects of fire than
Speaker 3: we ever have as humans, and the negative effects because
Speaker 3: we're living in these fire prone areas where for a
Speaker 3: long time it was, you know, somewhat safe to live,
Speaker 3: right because fires weren't burning that much for the last
Speaker 3: hundred years in a lot of these areas because you're
Speaker 3: pretty good at putting them out. But now that those
Speaker 3: fires are burning more severely and more intensely, and we're
Speaker 3: living there and we have the news to cover it
Speaker 3: all the time. Yeah, we certainly are hearing about it
Speaker 3: more right, and it is having a serious impact on people,
Speaker 3: as you know, you know, there's all sorts of really
Speaker 3: tragic stories of these fires burning through towns. In one
Speaker 3: of those towns just you know, the Dixie Fire, I believe,
Speaker 3: burned through Greenville, California in the last day or two.
Speaker 3: And that's an incredibly tragic thing to have happened. And right,
Speaker 3: like we are, we are living in a world that's
Speaker 3: really different.
Speaker 2: Now, right, I know, it's kind of like top of
Speaker 2: mind for everyone. I feel like when you say, oh,
Speaker 2: I live in California, people ask you like, is your
Speaker 2: city on fire?
Speaker 4: And you're like, I don't know, let me check Twitter.
Speaker 3: I just texted one of my friends who lives in California, like,
Speaker 3: are you guys? Where are you? Are you okay? Are
Speaker 3: you burning?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So yeah, literally, BBITPB like this just in. According to
Speaker 2: an NPR report that dropped about an hour ago, the
Speaker 2: US four At Service just announced that wildfires will be
Speaker 2: aggressively extinguished this summer and all the preventative controlled burns
Speaker 2: are suspended. Apparently, fire season is predicted to be so
Speaker 2: bad they can't spare any of the thousands of firefighters
Speaker 2: on the ground to go do prescribed burns. Kind of
Speaker 2: like not being able to go to bed because you
Speaker 2: have a paper due, but then you can't finish the
Speaker 2: paper because you're too tired. Something's got to change. Tune
Speaker 2: in next week for more on that. Now, on the
Speaker 2: topic of heavy hearts amid blazing wildfires, is there anything
Speaker 2: that is the most difficult thing about being a fire ecologist.
Speaker 2: I mean, I already the idea of like a charred
Speaker 2: owl leg is going to hurt my heart until the
Speaker 2: day I die.
Speaker 4: But anything that is just really frustrating or difficult.
Speaker 3: I would say that one of the frustrating things is
Speaker 3: just how difficult this problem is. It's it's just such
Speaker 3: a big problem, and sometimes it's hard to sort of
Speaker 3: feel like we can get out of it. I'm I
Speaker 3: like to call myself a reckless optimist, you know, for me,
Speaker 3: like the glass is not half full, it's like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, it's almost overflowing. It's like, you know, we
Speaker 3: we can do this, you guys, like we can totally
Speaker 3: do this. This is such a difficult problem. It seems
Speaker 3: like we're facing the same problems every year. But I
Speaker 3: think that there is there is a light at the
Speaker 3: end of the tunnel, and that light has to do
Speaker 3: with getting more of that good fire on the landscape.
Speaker 3: And that's something that I know is a priority for
Speaker 3: the agency I work for, the US four Service and
Speaker 3: trying to restore the resiliency of these forests. And I think,
Speaker 3: like what I the sort of nugget of goodness that
Speaker 3: I try to take is that we, as you know,
Speaker 3: at least on my side, the science side of this agency,
Speaker 3: we have this incredible opportunity to learn about this, you know,
Speaker 3: about fires, why they burn, how they burn, what their
Speaker 3: consequences are, and what we can do about it. And
Speaker 3: we get to work with the managers and the people
Speaker 3: who are again out doing that stuff on the ground.
Speaker 3: We've got our hands on some of the levers. We
Speaker 3: can make a positive impact, and we can make a
Speaker 3: change in you know, how these fires are burning, even
Speaker 3: as we're thinking about you know, these bigger problems like
Speaker 3: climate change. We can put our fingers on the on
Speaker 3: the lever a little bit, and so there's a huge
Speaker 3: opportunity in the coming decades to make a big difference
Speaker 3: in sort of the next century of fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you think an average Joe like myself
Speaker 2: sitting around biting my nails at the news.
Speaker 4: What can we do?
Speaker 3: You know, I would say, follow Smokey the Bear's advice,
Speaker 3: so we'll put him on the pedestal for a minute.
Speaker 3: Just you know, watch out for yourself and make sure
Speaker 3: that you are not contributing to any of the problems
Speaker 3: with you know, these unplanned ignitions and fires. That's one
Speaker 3: thing you can do. So you know, maybe try to
Speaker 3: avoid you know, explosive gender reveal parties. Uh, you know
Speaker 3: that's good. Probably not do that. You know, don't be
Speaker 3: throwing your cigarettes out, and don't drive your car or
Speaker 3: anything on dry grass and things like that. You know,
Speaker 3: like there's there's little little things like that you can do.
Speaker 3: But this is a big problem, and it takes both
Speaker 3: sort of individuals to make sure they're you know, not
Speaker 3: starting these these unplanned fires, but also these big sort
Speaker 3: of institutional actions and management to fight this problem. So
Speaker 3: it's you know, I would say, don't don't bite your
Speaker 3: nails down to the to the bone. Just make sure
Speaker 3: you're not the one who's starting that fire.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know. Don't start any fires, don't try
Speaker 2: to impress any ex girlfriends.
Speaker 3: Yes, don't buy starting are going to be impressed.
Speaker 4: Not going to be impressed.
Speaker 2: The gender reveal couple who started a fire last year
Speaker 2: in November were charged with manslaughter for a firefighter's death,
Speaker 2: and that lovelorn arsonist of the twenty fourteen kingfire sentenced
Speaker 2: twenty years in prison and ordered to somehow pay sixty
Speaker 2: million dollars to victims of the crime. So imagine what
Speaker 2: you could do with sixty million dollars and twenty years
Speaker 2: of your life. Yeah, think twice before doing any hornt
Speaker 2: up fire tomfoolery.
Speaker 3: Just get it. Just get them a cupcake or something with.
Speaker 4: Get them a cupcake. Do that.
Speaker 2: Don't be on the news. What about your favorite thing
Speaker 2: about fire ecology, Like.
Speaker 4: Is it putting puzzles together? Is it being out in
Speaker 4: the field.
Speaker 3: I would say my favorite part about being a fire
Speaker 3: ecologist is similar to my favorite part about being a scientist,
Speaker 3: which is just that we it's the world is infinitely
Speaker 3: more complex than we think it is, and I learn
Speaker 3: new things every day about what's going on with these
Speaker 3: fires and how animals are responding. My preconceptions are always
Speaker 3: just kind of blown out of the water whenever I
Speaker 3: start digging into this stuff. So it's just such a
Speaker 3: wonderfully rich world out there, and fire is such a
Speaker 3: critical part of that whole system. And so being able
Speaker 3: to step into that complexity and try and just use
Speaker 3: my little you know, pick to chip away at one
Speaker 3: corner of that you know, vast unknown in the world
Speaker 3: of fire ecology is just the greatest honor and pleasure.
Speaker 3: I've got three little kids, and you know, I when
Speaker 3: I sit down on my computer and start clacking away
Speaker 3: every day, I'm partly thinking, like, what can I do
Speaker 3: to make this world better than I, you know, than
Speaker 3: when I came into it. And you know, sometimes it
Speaker 3: may seem that my little corner of the world is insignificant,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I like to think that that me and
Speaker 3: all my wonderful colleagues within my agency and outside of
Speaker 3: it as well, working in this area, we're all pulling
Speaker 3: in the same direction. We're trying to, you know, make
Speaker 3: this world a better place as well, and get that
Speaker 3: good fire back on the landscape and try and yeah,
Speaker 3: change the game a little bit.
Speaker 4: I love it. I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you are not currently in the middle
Speaker 2: of a fire me too, And thank you for talking
Speaker 2: to me during obviously a very very busy time for firefolks.
Speaker 3: It's been my pleasure aboutely.
Speaker 2: So yes, fire off your birding questions to the coolest
Speaker 2: nerds out there. That is what we do, and stay
Speaker 2: tuned for a special follow up episode next week. Cross
Speaker 2: your fingers. I can make it happen anyway. Learn more
Speaker 2: about doctor Gavin Jones by following him on Twitter at
Speaker 2: Ecology of Gavin. We are on there also at Ologies,
Speaker 2: and I'm on there as Ali Ward with one L
Speaker 2: same handles on Instagram. Come be our friends. Feel free
Speaker 2: to support the show for a dollar a month if
Speaker 2: you like it at patreon dot com. Slash Ologies Merch
Speaker 2: is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Felts
Speaker 2: and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for
Speaker 2: managing merch. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies
Speaker 2: podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White of the
Speaker 2: Wordery for making the transcripts. Caleb Patten bleeps them and
Speaker 2: those are all available for free at the link in
Speaker 2: the show notes. Every other Thursday we also release new Smologies.
Speaker 2: They are edited down, short, clean, classroom friendly versions of
Speaker 2: your favorite episodes. Thank you to Zeke Rodriguez Thomas of
Speaker 2: mind Jam Media for editing those big Thanks to Kelly
Speaker 2: Dwyer for website design. If you need a website, She's
Speaker 2: your gal link in the show notes to her. Thanks
Speaker 2: Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for keeping the schedules running
Speaker 2: and for social media quizzes and merch Monday posts. Thank
Speaker 2: you to Main Squeeze and Hottest Hell editor Jared Sleeper
Speaker 2: of Mindjam Media for putting it all together and of
Speaker 2: course longtime editing help Stephen Ray Morris of the podcast
Speaker 2: The per Cast and See Jurassic Right. Nick Thorburn wrote
Speaker 2: and performed the theme music. He's in a band called Islands.
Speaker 2: They have a new album out Ilamania. And if you
Speaker 2: listen to the end, you know I tell you a secret.
Speaker 2: And this week's secret is sometimes if I need a
Speaker 2: brain break, I'll go on Craigslist and I'll just click
Speaker 2: the free section to see what people are given away,
Speaker 2: so you could see things that people just put up
Speaker 2: there are free, and I just sometimes like to look
Speaker 2: and see what people are getting rid of, and then
Speaker 2: I try to figure out, like what a life story
Speaker 2: is for that, Like why is this person giving away
Speaker 2: like a ballerina statue. What's up with this wheelbarrow? Let's
Speaker 2: look at a couple right now? You want to Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: let's see what's up there. Oh, there's two guinea pigs,
Speaker 2: and it just says need gone. Damn, that is the
Speaker 2: meanest way to give away a guinea pig. No, I
Speaker 2: just want to get these guinea pigs. I have ten
Speaker 2: guinea pigs needed for pickup. I can no longer take
Speaker 2: care of them, and we'll have to release them if
Speaker 2: I cannot find anyone to pick them up. Yikes, if
Speaker 2: anyone needs guinea pigs in LA, I don't mean to
Speaker 2: make that so sad. A vintage artist portfolio case? Did
Speaker 2: they quit being an artist?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I hope not. Oh, here's a six foot pine ladder.
Speaker 2: I don't need one, but it's fun to look a
Speaker 2: lot of free pianos on here. Again, I don't want
Speaker 2: or need these things, but sometimes it's just nice to
Speaker 2: wonder how that person get the piano in the first place,
Speaker 2: and why don't they play it anymore? Anyway. I love
Speaker 2: when people. I love when people spare things from landfills
Speaker 2: and other people get things for free. What can I
Speaker 2: say ooh tap shoes, Okay Berybye. Pacodermatology, hobbiology or do zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, ceriology, elidology,