Fire Ecology (WILDFIRES & INDIGENOUS FIRE MANAGEMENT) Mega Encore with Gavin Jones & Amy Christianson

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: Fire Ecology (Wildfires & Indigenous Fire Management) Mega Encore

Episode Overview In this compelling Mega Encore episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward delves deep into the intricate world of fire ecology and indigenous fire management alongside esteemed guests Dr. Gavin Jones and Dr. Amy Christianson. Released on January 10, 2025, this episode offers a rich exploration of how wildfires impact ecosystems, the escalating challenges posed by climate change, and the profound wisdom embedded in indigenous fire stewardship practices.

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1. Personal Experiences Amidst Wildfires

Alie Ward begins the episode by sharing her personal ordeal with wildfires, particularly the Eaton Fire near Pasadena, highlighting the immediate and visceral impact of raging infernos on communities. She describes evacuations, the relentless advance of smoke, and the physical toll it takes, setting a poignant backdrop for the discussion.

"The air is very heavy with smoke from like a thousand or so homes a few miles away that were lost in Altadena." [00:54]

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2. Understanding Wildfires: Causes and Trends

Dr. Amy Christianson provides a foundational understanding of wildfires, distinguishing between wildfires and forest fires. She emphasizes that approximately 80-90% of wildfires are human-caused, with a significant uptick in major fires over the past five years.

"Half of California's largest fires in the last century happened in the past five years." [14:09]

She further elaborates on fire regimes—natural patterns of fire frequency and intensity—and explains the shift from indigenous practices to modern fire suppression policies, leading to fuel accumulation and more severe fire events.

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3. The Ecological Role of Fire

Fire is not merely a destructive force but a critical ecological process. Dr. Christianson discusses how fires contribute to ecosystem health by:

• Reducing Fuel Load: Regular low-intensity fires eliminate underbrush, preventing massive fuel buildup.
• Promoting Biodiversity: Different fire severities create a mosaic of habitats, supporting diverse species.
• Enhancing Water Supplies: Fire-maintained landscapes can improve water runoff and reduce erosion.

"Fires create a template for wildlife and plants to thrive. They create a mosaic of different ages of forests that burned at different times and that creates a really diverse landscape." [16:23]

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4. Prescribed Burns vs. Indigenous Fire Stewardship

The conversation distinguishes between prescribed burns and indigenous (cultural) burns:

• Prescribed Burns: Conducted by agencies to manage landscapes, often involving large-scale, high-intensity fires that can unintentionally become severe.
• Indigenous Fire Stewardship: Rooted in thousands of years of traditional knowledge, these low-intensity, strategically timed burns maintain ecological balance without escalating.

Dr. Christianson highlights the adaptability and localized wisdom of indigenous practices, which contrast with the bureaucratic and sometimes ineffective approaches of modern fire management.

"Cultural burning is more about achieving a cultural objective around the forest, around where you live." [105:42]

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5. Wildlife Responses to Fire

Wildfires have varied impacts on wildlife, with some species adapting and thriving, while others struggle:

• Black-backed Woodpeckers: Thrive in severely burned areas due to abundant insects.
• Spotted Owls: Prefer lower-severity burns that preserve large canopy trees, supporting their habitat needs.
• Burrowing Animals: Utilize underground spaces to escape fire, demonstrating resilience.

"Some critters love that, others not so much. That's like part of the beauty of studying this stuff is like trying to figure out why some animals love it and some don't." [58:50]

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6. Challenges in Modern Fire Management

The escalating severity and frequency of wildfires present multifaceted challenges:

• Climate Change: Leads to prolonged droughts and hotter temperatures, exacerbating fire conditions.
• Fuel Accumulation: Decades of fire suppression have resulted in dense forests ripe for mega-fires.
• Wildland-Urban Interface: Increased human habitation in fire-prone areas heightens the stakes of wildfire impacts.

Dr. Christianson expresses frustration with the complexity of firefighting strategies and the slow adaptation of policies to incorporate indigenous knowledge.

"It's such a big problem, and sometimes it's hard to sort of feel like we can get out of it." [78:36]

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7. Integrating Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Fire Management

A significant portion of the discussion centers on reintegrating indigenous fire practices to restore ecological balance and mitigate wildfire risks. Dr. Christianson underscores the importance of collaboration, trust-building, and valuing traditional knowledge in modern fire management frameworks.

"Good fire is really kind of like this pyro diversity idea where we have a really nice mixture of fire that kind of restores it cleans out the understory in some places." [50:33]

She advocates for moving beyond bureaucratic hurdles to embrace culturally informed strategies that align with both ecological needs and community values.

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8. Personal Reflections and Optimism

Despite the daunting challenges, Dr. Christianson remains a "reckless optimist," believing in the potential for significant positive change through informed science and community collaboration.

"We have this incredible opportunity to...use science that informs how we manage forests...we can make a positive impact and we can make a change in, you know, how these fires are burning." [37:43]

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9. Audience Engagement and Q&A Highlights

The episode includes a robust Q&A segment addressing listeners' queries on wildlife survival strategies, prevention of forest fires, and the feasibility of returning to indigenous stewardship amidst modern constraints.

Notable Listener Questions:

• "What happens to wildlife when there is a fire?" [58:50]
• "Can I really prevent forest fires?" [63:43]
• "How do prescribed fires differ from cultural burns?" [105:42]

Selected Quotes from Q&A:

"We absolutely can prevent forest fires. Not all of them, and we not necessarily should prevent all of them over think about prescribed fires." [63:43]

"Some of my favorite things about being a fire ecologist is just that the world is infinitely more complex than we think it is." [80:39]

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10. Conclusion and Future Directions

The episode concludes with an emphasis on the necessity of integrating indigenous fire stewardship into contemporary fire management practices to create more resilient ecosystems and communities. Dr. Christianson and Dr. Jones advocate for continuous learning, mutual respect, and adaptive strategies to address the evolving challenges of wildfire management.

"The glass is not half full. It's like, oh, my God, it's almost so overflowing. It's like, you know, we. We can do this, you guys. Like, we can totally do this." [78:36]

Alie Ward teases a follow-up episode focusing further on indigenous fire ecology, promising deeper insights and additional expert voices to enrich the conversation.

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11. References and Further Reading

For those interested in delving deeper into the topics discussed:

• Good Fire Podcast: Hosted by Dr. Amy Christianson and Matt Kristof, exploring indigenous fire stewardship.
• Blazing the Celebrating Indigenous Fire Stewardship: A comprehensive guide authored by Dr. Christianson.
• A Time for Burning by Dr. Henry Lewis: An anthropological study on indigenous fire practices.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Ologies serves as an enlightening exploration of fire ecology, emphasizing the critical role of fire in maintaining healthy ecosystems and highlighting the invaluable contributions of indigenous fire management practices. Through personal anecdotes, expert insights, and thoughtful discussions, Alie Ward and her guests illuminate the path toward more sustainable and culturally respectful wildfire management in an era of unprecedented climatic challenges.

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

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[Gavin Jones]

That take credit cards nationwide and every.

[Alie Ward]

Time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the Febr 2024 Nelson report oh hey, it's your cousin 3,000 miles away checking in to see if your house is on fire alie Ward. Except in this case I'm the cousin's cousin and everyone is texting me to ask if my house is on fire and it is covered in cinders and it's raining down ashes and we're about a mile or so as the crow flies or as the embers drift from the evacuation line of the wildfire that's raging in LA right now. The Eaton Fire near Pasadena. And this week I've been Las Vegas the last few days on a business trip and I've been like up all night feverishly refreshing the WatchDuty app for updates on the fire spread. Meanwhile, my husband Jarrett, your podmother, has been like packing up our passports and our birth certificates and our baby who's a 12 year old dog and he's been staying with friends here and there until the winds died down a little bit. But we're back home and most of our neighbors on our street have evacuated. The air is very heavy with smoke from like a thousand or so homes a few miles away that were lost in Altadena. I haven't slept much at all the last couple days and the winds are picking back up tonight and at press time there's 0% containment on the nearby Taos Eaton fire and then the Pacific Palisades fire is barely contained and it's growing and fires are starting and smoldering all over la. I have a nasty smoke headache. And so I'm giving you this very relevant encore while I catch my breath about how fires start, why they're getting worse, and how indigenous knowledge and fire management differs from what we have going on right now. And then at the end, there's a very relevant 2025 secret about something that has made me cry several times today, which is very spooky. Okay, here we go. The CDC has a bunch of recommendations about dealing with the smoke, which we'll link in the show notes for this episode. But in case you can't stay indoor, hopefully with an air filter running, we thought we'd highlight what the CDC has to say about masks. Quote don't rely on dust masks for protection. Paper comfort or dust masks commonly found at hardware stores, trap large particles such as sawdust. But these masks will not protect you or your lungs from smoke. So an N95 mask, properly worn, will offer some protection. So bust out those N95s if you are somewhere with smoke right now. Also, speaking of health, another reason why I'm running this mega episode is I've been dealing with some health stuff and I will talk about it in this mega secret at the end of this mega episode. If you care, if you make it all the way there. But take care of yourselves and please enjoy this mega encore Double Feature of Fire Ecology and Indigenous Fire Ecology Hem oh hey, it's it's the pair of sunglasses that you leave in the car that's scratched. It's not your favorite, but it's better than nothing in a pinch alie ward back with a piping hot episode of Ologies. It's top of mind for a lot of us out here up here in the Northern Hemisphere, especially toward the west of the continent. Wildfires, fire ecology, blazing infernos, apocalyptic nightmares. This ologist sospesh got his bachelor's in zoology, a master's in Wildlife ecology, and a PhD in Wildlife Ecology Statistics, all from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is currently a wildlife and terrestrial ecosystems research Such a mouthful. He's a research scientist at the U.S. department of Agriculture's Forest Service, also an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico. He has been published on papers about fire refuges for wildlife, where they hide out, mega fires, habitat loss. He's also just casually the editor at the association of Fire Ecology, so I have been following him online for a while. I reached out to casually ask him about pyrology versus Fire ecology, and before I knew it, I was begging him to talk to me. So we hopped on to Chat while fires were raging in the west this week and I was in a muggy Florida hotel room for work and it smelled like a turtle tank. But before we dive into the conversation, I want to thank [e-mail] Ologies. It costs a dollar a month to join and then you can submit questions to the ologists. Thank you to everyone listening and making us the number one podcast in the science category on Spotify. And thank you for leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts to get us seen by I truly read them all because I desperately want to make a show that does not suck. And to prove it, I'm going to read you a still glowing coal of assessment from Burt Lancaster, who wrote Ologies is your cynicism antidote. I simultaneously feel beautifully tiny and so expansive that I could burst after listening. Sometimes I just have to stand there and laugh to myself for a while. Sometimes I cry. Emotions are weird. Love you, dad Ward Burt Lancaster, get a hanky because your your Internet dad right here loves you right back. Okay, everyone who left a review, I read it. I love you also. Okay. All right, let's fire off some questions. Yeah. Okay, open your ears for info on what fire is how hot it burns. Fire trends, tinder boxes, lots and lots of forest fire, flim flam tolerant wombats, Angelina Jolie movies, cunning pinecones, thick bark, tragic koalas, indigenous fire stewardship and more with researcher, scientist of the woods, desert dweller, owl cuddler, forest service employee, optimist, and fire ecologist, Dr. Gavin Jones.

[Amy Christensen]

Yes, Gavin Jones. And my pronouns are he, him.

[Matt Kristof]

Got it.

[Alie Ward]

And you are currently in New Mexico.

[Amy Christensen]

That's right. In the great city of Albuquerque.

[Alie Ward]

Do you guys have trees there?

[Amy Christensen]

You know we do, yes.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Amy Christensen]

It's pretty much desert out here, so when the trees grow, they don't grow very tall.

[Alie Ward]

And now tell me how a fire ecologist from Wisconsin and Florida and now New Mexico.

[Amy Christensen]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

How did your life path lead to fire ecology?

[Amy Christensen]

Oh my goodness. It was really an accident. I do consider myself a fire ecologist, but I was really trained and I did my graduate work and all my studies in wildlife ecology. And when I was in grad school, I was doing some research out in the Sierra Nevada in California on the cutest cuddliest creature there is, the California spotted owl. And yeah, like pretty much anybody who spends enough time doing science out in fire prone lands like the Sierra Nevada, you eventually become a fire ecologist because a fire happens and then you have to try to figure out what to do with it. So that's exactly what happened. I was doing my, my master's degree. I was at the University of Wisconsin with my supervisor, Zach Peary, and we were doing a study out in California on spotted owls, trying to figure out what kind of forests they used, how they would respond to climate change. And just as I was finishing my master's degree, like just a month or two before I defended my degree, a big fire burned through our study area. Yeah. And at the time, to be honest with you, I was pretty devastated. I was like, man, what does this mean for the work that I've been doing? Does this even mean anything anymore? It changed the game a little bit, but it provided an incredible opportunity to learn about how these animals. This owl that I was studying responded to fire. It was basically a natural experiment. This fire burned through our study area in 2014, and it burned through about half of it. And so in ecology, when we're doing these field studies, we rarely get the chance to do experiments like almost everything we do is observational. We go out and we see what we see and we record it and we try to make sense of it. We rarely get to do experiments like, you know, other folks get to do in the lab who are doing chemistry or other molecular things. But this was really a natural experiment to see how this species of owl responded to fire. And that's what launched me into, I guess, being a, being a real sucker for fire and for learning about how it, it works in some of these systems, why it happens, how it happens, what its consequences are. And I'm totally hooked now.

[Alie Ward]

How many of your owls were latered, how many of the owls survived that? Like, what percentage of the impacted area? Half of your study area.

[Amy Christensen]

So some of them didn't make it, some of them dispersed, some of them left the fire. They were able to get out of the way. And then there's large parts of the fire that didn't burn so severely, that burned at lower severity, where basically a lot of the trees, the big trees in the canopy, they kind of, you know, they survived. And some of the understory burned a little bit more of a, what we, what we call, quote, unquote, good fire in some of these areas, which I'd love to talk more about, but, you know, a lot of those birds did great and are still persisting in some of those areas that experienced lower severity fire, those lower severity effects to the, to the forest.

[Alie Ward]

But predictably, many bit the proverbial dust and returned to the earth as ash. Gavin told me that one of his Colleagues was surveying the charred land and found a little aluminum owl leg band that they use for tagging. And it encased a little crispy owl leg. Did not go well for that one. And how did that wildfire start so well?

[Amy Christensen]

So that particular wildfire, that was a human started fire. And it's actually a kind of a sad story as some. Some guy. I'm trying to remember the details. You should look this up, Ali. But some guy was, I think, taking a video for his ex girlfriend or something and like lit some house on fire. And then that started this. This gigantic. It was like at the time, one of the largest fires that had burned in the state of California.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, buckle up. Here's a story. So this was 2014's King Fire. And it started in Pollock Pines and the Sierra Nevadas. And I already knew of this fire. Parents lived in Pollock Pines in 2014, and my sisters and I had to plead with them to heed the emergency evacuation orders as pyrocumulus clouds billowed over their hill. We were like, please get to safety. I'm sweating a lot. Don't make me come up there. I can't. The roads are closed. So I booked my mom and dad a hotel in Reno out of harm's way. And the hotel turned out to have a mirrored ceiling and a very thrifty but sensual vibe, they tell me. I get the feeling that there were also hourly rates available at this hotel. I got them. I didn't read the reviews. Okay. It was an emergency anyway. The King fire that reduced homes to ashes and dashed people's dreams. It flambed Gavin's owls. It was all started by a guy named Wayne Huntsman, who was not a Huntsman, but an arsonist. A formerly incarcerated firefighter, actually, who that sweltering September day had set several fires to impress a paramour. He took video for her standing between two small smoldering blazes that were just starting to take off. I'm stuck in the middle bed. I'm not sure how their relationship turned out. But as proof that we're living in a simulation, the burn area, the burn scar, is absolutely shaped like a perfect 97,000 acre deck. And balls all ablaze in one of the state's most infamous literal thirst traps. Okay, so how much is our horny, greedy species to blame? Oh, man.

[Amy Christensen]

And that's another thing, is a lot of the ignitions are human ignitions. You know, people accidentally starting fires, machinery getting too hot, people driving over dry grass and things like that.

[Alie Ward]

So Gavin says that 80 to 90% of all wildfires are human caused ignitions. Half of California's largest fires in the last century happened in the past five years. By the way, a complex fire means a cluster of related fires in one area. But what's the difference between a wildfire and a forest fire?

[Amy Christensen]

We talk about wildfires. Typically when we're talking about wildfires, those are unplanned. So fires that we as people don't, don't plan. So you can kind of juxtapose that with a prescribed fire or a cultural fire. So prescribed fire is often fire that is purposely set and then managed by teams to achieve some type of objective. Maybe they're trying to restore some area, restore fire. You know, you probably hear a lot about, you know, people burning prairies and things like that. It's the same thing in forests. They go in and do prescribed burns. And then there's also a really important component of cultural burning. So indigenous communities using wildfire for their purposes, which, until, you know, about 100, 200 years ago, made up the overwhelming majority of the fire activity that was happening in a lot of these areas for, you know, the last 10,000 years or so. Indigenous peoples have been using fire in a really important cultural way. And that has really changed in the past couple of centuries with colonization. But that is an increasingly important part of the solution to sort of this modern wildfire problem.

[Alie Ward]

And obviously indigenous cultures and just the planet at large saw the benefit of prescribed burns. So what good do fires do either in prescribed burns or just in nature?

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, fires are a critical piece of ecosystems around the world. Every square inch of land that has vegetation has some type of fire regime. It has some sort of natural fire cycle. And fire is kind of a restorative process. There's many benefits of fire from. We can think about it from a human perspective, we can think about it from a sort of an ecosystem perspective. You know, from the human perspective. You know, fires create more resilient forest when they burn the right way. When we have sort of a natural kind of lower intensity fire. In some systems, like in the Sierra Nevada, where I've spent a lot of my time, that reinforces healthy water supplies. It reduces, you know, erosion.

[Alie Ward]

Side note, a fire regime sounds like Satan's cabinet members farting flames in a Hades boardroom. But it's actually just a gentle term. A fire regime describes a pattern of fire. How frequent, how intense, what kind of fuel it gobbles, and maybe me just calling it Satan's cabinet members farting in Hades. Maybe that's part of the root of Europeans fear of fire, and thus this historical fire suppression by colonists. I wondered this and I begged myself not to Google it because this aside would be like 45 minutes long. But snap. I found a 2015 paper from the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B title Fire in the Mind Changing Understandings of Fire in Western Civilization. What? In which author Stephen J. Pyrne writes, you ready for this? The Old Testament is in fact a cauldron of stories, rites and beliefs simmering over a mix of religious fires. He goes on to say, the heartland of European forestry knew fire only as a human artifact, not a natural process. Most new and colonized lands were burned lands naturally, but the agencies found themselves in a continuous firefight. So fire became a political as well as practical challenge. He continues, the upshot has generally been disastrous. Okay, so what does the land miss out on when natural fire is suppressed and indigenous populations are fined, imprisoned, or even up until the 1930s in the US shot for fire stewardship? Well, from an ecology standpoint, those fires can help the water supply by eliminating excess vegetation and thus increasing runoff into streams, and by preventing huge fires with more frequent, smaller ones. Also, erosion doesn't get out of control when there are regular fires, like you see with post megafire mudslides. Also, the charcoal after a burn could trap carbon for millennia, and the recovery of vegetation takes more excess carbon from the atmosphere, According to the 2019 paper, how wildfires Trap Carbon for Centuries to Millennia. Okay, but wildfires burn at 800 degrees Celsius. That's 1472 Fahrenheit America. So the animals hate natural and cultural burns too, right? No animal wants to be trapped in a blaze. But I'm just going to stop myself from singing about the circle of life in your ears.

[Amy Christensen]

And then from an ecosystem perspective, and from what I like to think about a lot is the biodiversity perspective, so you know what kinds of animals there are and the richness of animal life and plant life. Fires create this template for wildlife and plants to thrive. And also this creates this, this natural dynamic where you have places that burn in one year and then don't burn for a while, and places that burn frequently and places that burn at high severity and low severity. You can kind of think about it as this patchwork, this mosaic of different ages of forests that burned at different times and that creates a really diverse landscape that generates the habitat for lots of critters. It can be a really regenerative and restorative process to the land Both from a ecosystem perspective and also really, you know, fire is a necessary part of these systems. And so when we can put the right kind of fire on the landscape, it really benefits us too, as people and as society.

[Alie Ward]

So fire Mosaic paints a beautiful picture of land in different states of recovery. And if you're looking to learn more about it, don't Google Fire Mosaic unless you want to see a lot of tiling crafts that seem to be an homage to Burning Man. But look up the official term. It's patch mosaic burning. So let's talk different flavors of fire, because it does matter.

[Amy Christensen]

So you can think this is a really overly simplistic way to think about fire because fire is a really complicated process. But the way that we often sort of describe it and think about it within fire ecology world is we think about natural, low severity fire regimes. You know, in a given area, you might expect fires to sort of burn at lower severity, not too hot, not too all consuming. They burn along in the understory, nice and happy, crawl along and burn some logs here, burn some trees there, but generally don't destroy or consume the big trees in the overstory of the canopy. So that first end of the system that's kind of frequent low severity fires, and then on the other end of the whole spectrum, you can think about infrequent high severity fires or fire regimes rather. So these are places in that area is for fires when they do burn, to burn pretty big and pretty hot. And those are both natural, but they're natural in those different places. Why is it, why is it that you have some places that naturally burn low severity? And generally I'm talking about forest fires here, and then other places, other forests that naturally burn at really high severity and really large. We can think about those two ends of the spectrum also in terms of what's limiting the system. So in these low severity fire systems, those are generally systems that are limited by fuel. And so what I mean by that is the climate is such that on any given year the conditions are right for fire. Like if there's a lightning strike or another ignition, fire is going to burn and the fuel is dry. And the only thing that's keeping that fire, one of the primary things that's controlling that fire and where it burns is where the fuel is, where the trees are, where the kindling, so to speak, is. And because those fires, those places they ignite every year, there's ignitions all the time. And the conditions are right for fire, they burn really frequently. And so you can think about places where the fires burn every couple years. And when they do burn, they kind of clean out or burn in that understory. So sort of below the forest canopy, it's burning the smaller trees, it's burning some of the medium trees, and it's burning some of the big trees. But mostly it just every time a fire burns, it burns all that fine fuel or a lot of it, right? And so that's the primary sort of control on how fire burns in some of these dry fuel limited systems.

[Alie Ward]

So in these areas, the way it's supposed to be is that fires don't get mega because blazes are more frequent. So burning all of the fallen wood and the understory so an excess of fuel doesn't build up. So that's one way that these giant devastating fires can be avoided.

[Amy Christensen]

And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have these climate limited systems. So rather than the system being limited by fuel, it's limited by climate. And so this is a place like the Pacific Northwest where it's really wet, right? It's generally wet most of the time. It's cool. There's maybe quite a few ignitions, but when those ignitions occur, the fuel is not really ready to burn. It's too wet. And maybe it burns a small fire or something like that, but it just kind of extinguishes itself. And you think about that system, those kind of areas, and when you end up getting those really big, infrequent severe fires that occur there, it's because there's been a, some sort of climate activity like a drought that's caused all that fuel that hasn't burned in a really long time to dry out. And then it burns. And when it does burn, it burns really big because there's tons of fuel available, right? And so those are, that's kind of the two ends of the spectrum. And you know, I was trying to think about this today. How do I describe that, that like spectrum in a way that's not so dry and academic? And I was thinking about like, okay, like the haircut that I get is like a frequent fire system. Okay. You know, I go to great clips or sport clips or whatever just down the street from me. And I get my haircut every few weeks, maybe every month. It's, it kind of maintains the general structure. It never kind of goes super long and I never buzz it super short either. I just kind of keep it, you know, tamed, so to speak. You know, I go in there frequently, I clean out sort of the, the growth, right? That's happened in between each cut. And on the other end of the spectrum, you could have somebody. And I did this once when I was in college, I think maybe right after college, you know, grow out your hair super duper long. Like I didn't, I didn't cut it for, I don't remember exactly how long it was. But let's say you say you grow your hair for a year or five years or something, you know, get some pretty floppy, pretty, pretty crazy hair at least if you got hair like me. And then you say, I'm going to buzz it. And so then you buzz it right off. That's kind of the, I don't know, you kind of think about that as the two, the two ends of the spectrum, right? You've got like your frequent haircut system and you've got your infrequent high severity haircut system where, you know, you just let it grow and then you cut it all off.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so in this analogy, the regular maintenance cuts are the low intensity fires, the ones that burn the undergrowth, that don't spread too far or that extinguish themselves because there's enough moisture to keep things from being straight, bone dry powder keg, kindling. But if those small fires don't happen, or if the fire resistant older trees are logged out, or if the climate is just super hot, then you get a situation that's much more dramatic.

[Amy Christensen]

I fuck up.

[Alie Ward]

And is that like long main to buzz cut? Is that what a mega fire is then?

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah. So that term, I would say that's a good way to think about it. Yeah. From the long man to the buzz cut, the term megafire is a really interesting term and it really doesn't have a great definition. A lot of people when they talk about megafires, they're thinking about these basically really big fires, just fires that are giant in size. But you can have a really, really large fire that doesn't necessarily create that forest buzz cut. Right? It doesn't necessarily kill all the trees within its forest path. It may kill some trees in some parts, but not throughout the whole fire.

[Alie Ward]

So a forest mullet maybe, but not the cool kind that Gen Z has the warning, my cousin will probably hit on your wife kind of mullet. Not ideal.

[Amy Christensen]

You can have really large fires that are not necessarily super damaging. You can have smaller fires that are pretty severe and intense and destroy a lot of what's there. In terms of the, the forests, there isn't really a single definition of megafires. A lot of people like to think about them in terms of their impact to society too. So it's not just like how big or severe they are in terms of how many trees they kill, but it's, you know, how much that fire influences people and you know, how much of the infrastructure it destroys. And there's a growing problem within the US and particularly the western US which right now, as you know, is experiencing quite a bit of fire activity, is that there's, there's a lot more people living in that interface, what we call the wildland urban interface or the. Woo. Yeah, Woo.

[Alie Ward]

So yes, the US Forest Service defines the wildland urban interface as, quote, a group of home and other structures with basic infrastructure and services within or adjacent to federal land that is an at at risk community, AKA all the cute cabins that you save on Pinterest when you should be working on a spreadsheet for your boss because you just want to get away for the weekend, but go to some place that still has coffee shops. So more and more folks ditched the cities in the pandemic for these type of living situations and might be getting their very first tastes of PSPs, which are public safety power shutoffs. When utility companies straight up cut power for a day, maybe a few weeks when winds are high, in case otherwise live downed wires ignite, the forest Realtors might not tell you about that until after you're done with escrow. So wowee. Indeed.

[Amy Christensen]

The wildland urban interface is kind of this intermingling of people and the forest right, where they kind of overlap a little bit. And there's a lot more people living there now than there was 10, 20 years ago. And so you can think about fires just generally having more of a mega impact on people now because we're just more vulnerable in some ways to those fire effects when those fires do burn through.

[Alie Ward]

And now as we're speaking, the Dixie fire is the one of the largest fires California has ever seen. There's the, Is it the bootleg fire up in Oregon?

[Amy Christensen]

Yep, in southern Oregon. That's right.

[Alie Ward]

So I'm surprised you were able to even talk to me right now. Can you tell me a little bit about what your job entails? Do you have. Is the busy season all year round because you're analyzing data that comes in, or do you have to go to the field a lot? Are you getting reports from people who are closer to each of the fires? Do you have to count all the fires? All of that? Yeah.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah. So I am not one of the incredible people who are out on the front lines doing this work on the fires. Right. My work is really more focused on after fire burns. What can we learn from it? And there are also a ton of people, of course, who are out there responding to these fires, like the Dixie fire and the bootleg fire and many others when those are burning. And those are the people who really deserve the applause and the praise.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Amy Christensen]

Who are out there doing this really dangerous work. And I'm, relatively speaking, I'm a desk jockey compared to those people. So I spend a lot of my time here at the computer trying to take that data and learn from the fires and trying to understand how wildlife respond to those fires. That's what I do most of the time. This last year, Covid year, has definitely made things even more so away from the field. But I, boy, I love field work. I've done quite a bit of it. I love getting out into those burned landscapes and trying to figure out what's going on.

[Alie Ward]

What is it like when you are doing field work? What kind of samples do you have to collect and what kinds of observations are you making?

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah. So a lot of the work that I've done has focused on how this one little critter, that spotted owl, responds to these burned areas, these fires that have come through. And so myself and some of my really outstanding colleagues, both back from when I was in grad school that I established during my PhD program, some of those collaborators back at University of Wisconsin, as well as some of my fantastic teammates here at the Rocky Mountain Research station with the U.S. forest Service, we, we've done quite a bit of work trying to understand how this bird, this spotted owl, responds to fires. We've gone out and spent quite a bit of time in these burned areas capturing owls and putting GPS tags on them to see where they move in these burned areas to see if they like them or if they're using them. We literally go out into the woods and hoot at the Malley.

[Alie Ward]

Do you really?

[Amy Christensen]

We really do. It's. You walk into the woods where you think there's going to be an owl, and you just start hooting with your mouth. You just do it and they hoot back because they're like, hey, who the heck is that?

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my gosh. And then are you able to count them based on who hoots?

[Amy Christensen]

Pretty much, yeah. So we call them callback surveys. So we're calling and they call back, and that's how we locate them. And oftentimes we're just interested in detecting them. So, okay, there's an owl here, there's an owl there, sort of establishing where they are across the landscape.

[Alie Ward]

Did I look this up? Of course. And please enjoy the absolute maestro of this art, Sierra Pacific Industries wildlife biologist Kevin Roberts. What I like to do when I'm.

[Amy Christensen]

Surveying for spotted owls and using my.

[Alie Ward]

Voice is kind of mix them all up and do something to the effect of, thank you, Kevin. We beg you to make a ringtone. Is it too much to ask? You can only answer that in owl hoots. But anyway, that is how you do a Jim Carrey level impersonation of spotted owl owls.

[Amy Christensen]

But a lot of the work I've done is focused on capturing those owls once we find them and putting little GPS tags on them and seeing where they go. And then we get that data and we see where they went and we try to figure out, okay, how are they interacting with some of those burned areas? What can we learn from that about what type of fire they like, what kind of forest they like, and how we might be able to manage the forests in a way that supports them.

[Alie Ward]

And how is fire ecology changing with the climate, with droughts? Why do droughts even happen? Is the water that would normally rain here raining somewhere else? Where is the water?

[Amy Christensen]

So, okay, so again, this is something that much smarter people would have a much better answer for. But I will say that something that is for certain is that we are entering into uncharted territory with fire and fire ecology and fire behavior. And one of my good colleagues at University of California, Merced, Leroy Westerling, has, you know, said many, many times to me, and I've seen him write about this too, you know, there is no more normal in terms of fire. There's not even a new normal. It's a new abnormal, you know, because we just, it's really, it's becoming really difficult to predict, predict what's going to happen in the future because we don't have a reference point anymore. We're sort of just going into uncharted territory. And so, you know, when it comes to drought and climate change and things like that, look, those are definitely a part of the equation in terms of what's going on with wildfire and what's going to happen, particularly climate change and, you know, how that interacts with forests and dries out fuels and things like that. Sometimes it's hard to just talk about drought and climate change for many reasons, because it's hard as like, a scientist who's interested in conservation, like, what can I do about that? I mean, I don't mean to sound like nihilistic, like, oh, we can't do anything about it, because we can. We absolutely can. It's never too late to make actions on those big problems like climate change. Right. But, you know, I have the honor to work for this agency, the U.S. forest Service, that is in charge of managing a ton of land. And so what can we do on the ground to make a difference in terms of how these fires burn? Right. And considering climate change, that plays a role, plays a really important role, and so does drought in terms of driving some of these wildfire patterns that we've seen. But there's also something to be said for how forests are managed and how flammable forests are and how we can potentially manage them in a way that tries to mitigate those worst effects of fire when they do come through. So it's really like you are going to hear people say, oh, these fires are just because of climate change. There's nothing we can do about it. And then you're going to hear people say, oh, climate change has nothing to do with it. It's. We just need to manage forests differently. And the reality is it's neither of those. It's. It's kind of both, right? It's both climate change and, you know, the forest and the patterns of fuels across the landscape are affecting how fires burn. As a research scientist with the Forest Service, I'm thinking about how can I do science that informs how we manage forests? And that's one of the coolest parts about my job, is that I work for an agency that has a really strong management component. A huge part of the agency is people out there doing this work, managing forests, coming up with forest plans and management plans and fire plans. And I get to do science that helps them figure out how to do that. And we work together, you know, in a collaborative way to figure that out. And that is where I think I like focusing on those solutions. Right. How can we press the levers and make a. Make a difference from the ground?

[Alie Ward]

Is the leading theory on that is just more and better prescribed burns, or is it humans stop living in the.

[Matt Kristof]

Woods for a while?

[Alie Ward]

Like, what are. What is the best tool you have?

[Amy Christensen]

Yes, so that is a great question. And I think this is a misconception that if humans just got out of the picture, it would all be better. You know, I think it's easy to think that way, like, oh, we're just the problem and humans suck and we just need to get out of the picture and nature will do its own thing and blah, blah, blah. And look, you know, I understand that perspective. I'm sensitive to it. But we have to remember indigenous peoples have been burning for 10,000 years. And you know, we need more fire on the landscape, not less. It's just what kind of fire burns? This is kind of crazy to think about, but especially given you're looking at these maps. I've got the New York Times Wildfire Tracker open here. I got another tracker on my desktop open as well. Like with all these big fires burning, you're thinking like, man, there's just got to be so much more fire now than there ever was.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, that's what I would think.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah, that's totally what you would think. But it's actually not the case. There's still less fire in the west, in western North America than there was many, many years ago. 1002-003005-00000 years ago.

[Alie Ward]

But they were smaller back then. Is that the thing?

[Amy Christensen]

So they just burned differently. I'll bring you through a little, a little bit of a time warp. So we often in western science delineate sort of this pre colonial era. And in the pre European or pre Columbus pre colonial era, there was a lot of fire in the West. I mean, these are flammable landscapes and they never really got put out. Right. All these ignitions would just burn and vast areas of the landscape would burn all the time, depending again on what kind of system you're in. Right. So these frequent fire systems would burn very frequently. You know, every couple of years you'd have fires kind of returning to the same areas. Then when settlers, white settlers, colonized and pretty much disrupted indigenous burning and began actively suppressing wildfires, the amount of fire in the landscape just dropped bye bye to almost nothing. We were very effective at suppressing fires for a long time in the western US and basically what's happened is only recently have we sort of lost our handle on our ability to put out fires. The level of activity that we're seeing now is still far less than the level of fire activity that used to burn. But the difference is that because in many of these forests, and particularly in these frequent fire forests or these dry forest systems that used to burn really frequently, they haven't burned in a century or more. And so when they do burn, they burn really hot and really big. And that's not a natural kind of fire for this system. And also along with that, we have a lot more people again living in those fire prone areas. And so we feel the effects a lot more as well. As the population has increased, we still have way less fire activity on the landscape. It's just that these fires are typically burning in a way that is, for those forests, unnatural and for society, really not acceptable. Right. The other crazy thing is that we actually have, in some areas, particularly, again, these sort of historically frequent fire systems. We have a lot more trees, too, than we used to have.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, how is that?

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah, which it goes right along with that fire suppression. So we put out fires for 100 years or more, and all those little shrubs and saplings that would have burned in those regular fires grew up to be big, you know, medium sized trees, more trees.

[Alie Ward]

Isn't that good? Well, it's kind of like a garage that we have failed to Marie Kondo for a long time, which, I'll be honest, is my garage. Gotta clear some stuff out. I'm talking to myself.

[Amy Christensen]

And so we have actually a lot more trees on the landscape now in a place like the Sierra Nevada, where I've spent a lot of my career doing this research than we used to. It's just like, the kinds of fires are different, the kinds of trees are different. We have a lot more smaller trees and medium sized trees and a lot fewer of those really giant old trees, which are really kind of an endangered species sort of in and of themselves. Because over the past 100 years or so, particularly pre 1980s, there was quite a bit of. Of large tree logging going all the way back to the early 1900s and late 1800s. So a lot of those big old trees were removed. A lot of those smaller trees grew up with that fire suppression. And now we just have a ton of smaller trees on the landscape. And that, again, is kind of feeding back into why we have fires that are burning differently, because these fires are burning through, you know, these pretty thick connected, like, well connected forests that historically just didn't look like that at all.

[Alie Ward]

So forests look and behave much differently now than they were for tens of thousands of years because of colonial human tinkering. Don't you want to know all about indigenous fire stewardship now and cultural burns? So do I. And did I, hours before this podcast episode went up, decide to feverishly book an indigenous fire scientist to talk to me for next week? I did, so stay tuned. I just thought I'd plant that expectation for you. And what about the effect of fire on seeds opening and certain plants saying, like, sweet, there was just a fire, Now's my time to shine. Like, are ashes good for certain types of botany?

[Amy Christensen]

So, okay, one of my colleagues, Jen Stevens, he's with the Forest Service as well now. He's done some really awesome work looking at tree adaptations to fire and fire regimes. But one of the most common examples of how trees are are adapted to fire is particularly when thinking about seeds is is serotony.

[Alie Ward]

S E R O T I N.

[Amy Christensen]

Y so serotony is this trait that some trees have. Not, not all trees, but some trees have this basically waxy kind of resin that, that encompasses their cones and their seeds and they only open when fires burn because the fire melts that wax off of their, their seeds and the seeds drop and then they, the tree is able to regenerate. And typically, or at least in many cases, in some cases that I know of, those trees require a really severe fire to release its seed.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so serotoninous means later or following. And it is not to be confused with sertoline, which is the generic form of Zoloft, which I googled wrong. So A According to nationalforest.org, serotinous cones with full mature seeds can just chill out closed up on a pine tree like a jack pine or a table mountain pine, for years until a fire sweeps through and the resin melts and then the seed confetti party time happens. So this is also side note how indoor fire sprinklers work. They're not reliant on smoke, but on heat of over 150 degrees Fahrenheit. So there's a little glass capsule in fire sprinklers and it's filled with glycerin and that heats up and bursts and opens the sprinkler valve. And apparently they open individually wherever it's hottest, not all at once like in the movies. I'm looking at you, Lethal Weapon 4, the Incredibles and Charlie's Angels and Mean Girls and Casino Royale and Kindergarten Cop and the Peanuts movie and all the other ones that I'm going to link on my website because I found someone with a YouTube channel who is very pissed about the sprinkler myth. Anyway, heat seeds disperse, it's natural.

[Amy Christensen]

And so some trees have adapted that, that trait. And in, in other cases, trees have really thick bark. And this is the case for many of the trees in these frequent fire systems that experience fires all the time on a, you know, five, ten year cycle or you know, in that range, trees have really thick bark because they need to survive that frequent heat and disturbance from fire. And so there's really remarkable adaptations that plants have to fire. And also increasingly we're trying to learn about animal adaptations to fire. Typically we think about these in terms of behavioral adaptations. So like how do animals interact with either fire itself or the post fire landscape? In a way that tells us a little bit about, kind of opens the book on their evolution, how they evolved.

[Alie Ward]

So what are the spotty owls like? It turns out small patches of high intensity fires which were more common in pre colonial times. Spotty owls are like me at a cocktail party, just waiting for a tray of egg rolls to roll past. Now, in scientific terms, this is called a sit and wait predator.

[Amy Christensen]

And the owls like to sit on the edge, on that green edge and hunt into that smaller patch of open forest where it can see little, you know, critters run across, and it has a better flight path and that sort of thing, while also concealing itself from its predator, like the great horned owl. So that's just one example that I've been involved in. But we generally expect, you know, not only plants to have these adaptations, but also animals to potentially have these behavioral adaptations too.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, that's so interesting. Also, I didn't realize that owls had drama between them. You would think it'd be like, I'm an owl, you're an owl, let's make this happen, you know?

[Amy Christensen]

No, it's so true. There is totally drama. And one of my mentors and colleagues, his name's Rocky Gutierrez, he's done some work looking at owl communities and trying to figure out, like, how owls can coexist in space. There's a lot of drama out there in the, in the owl.

[Alie Ward]

So much. Speaking of drama, have you seen the acclaimed dramatic film those who Wish Me Dead, starring Angelina Jolie, who is a person who lives in a fire tower?

[Amy Christensen]

No, I have not.

[Alie Ward]

If you like fires and people being miscast, you will love those who Wish Me Dead.

[Amy Christensen]

Good. That's my main genre of movie that I like.

[Alie Ward]

Wonderful.

[Amy Christensen]

Miscasting. Yeah, that's great.

[Alie Ward]

If you like to watch a movie in the entire time, picture someone else playing the lead role. You will love those who Wish Me Dead. She is absolutely gorgeous. She's a stunner. I love her acting. I don't know why they cast her this movie. It seemed so weird.

[Amy Christensen]

Why'd they put you in a fire tower?

[Alie Ward]

Well, I'm just lucky, I guess. Anyway, those who Wish Me Dead just so much, so much forest fire and a lot of just breathing through smoke. That seems like it should be thicker, but you can, you can smell this movie. Listen, there are a lot of actors that are suited for certain types of cinematic environments, okay? Oh, but if you watch it, Medina Sanghor is so good in it that I just Looked up her name and then I followed her on Instagram. So some beautiful creatures are more well suited to some roles and environments. That's all. What about the term pyro diversity? Is that a real word?

[Amy Christensen]

Oh, Allie, I'm so glad you asked that question. I am street smart and book smart. Yes. So pyrodiversity is something that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about in recent years. It's kind of a fun buzzword, you know, like pyro diversity. Like, what does that even mean? Someone made that up. And it's probably because, well, somebody did make it up. It basically is another way to think about this, this fire mosaic that we were talking about earlier. The term pyrodiversity sort of emerged alongside this idea that that pyrodiversity gives rise to biodiversity. So basically that the more different kinds of fire that we have on the landscape, the more different kinds of severities, the different fire ages, basically, the greater mixture of different types of fire characteristics that are in a landscape is going to lead to greater biodiversity, which means more species, basically. So you have more kinds of wildlife, more kinds of plants, et cetera, more kinds of bees, more kinds of bats, more kinds of birds, et cetera, because you have all sorts of different kinds of habitat for them that's been produced by fire.

[Alie Ward]

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's an important idea because it, it really kind of underlies this important role of fire in these cases with, you know, the Dixie fire and the bootleg fire, these fires that are really like destructive to human infrastructure and also, you know, to people's lives. I mean, this is really serious stuff. That is, is sad and it's hard to watch. But on the other side of the coin, we do need fire on the landscape, right? We just, we need a different kind of fire. We don't want to see more, you know, of the destructive fires that are out there. We want to see good fire. And what I mean by good fire is really kind of like this pyro diversity idea where we have a really nice mixture of fire that kind of restores, it cleans out the understory in some places, it kills some trees, it disrupts the system a little bit. Some disruption is good. And you create that really sort of wide ranging variety of habitats for different critters to live. And that also supports all sorts of other great things like water quantity and quality. It reduces runoff, it reinforces the resilience of ecosystems and forests. So, like, fire is so good and it's like we want that good kind of fire. It's really such a restorative thing. And it's just pyrodiversity kind of encompasses this idea of like that beautiful mosaic on the landscape that is always changing. It's not just static, it's always changing, always being renewed. That's the idea of pyro diversity.

[Alie Ward]

Aha. Can I blaze through a lightning round?

[Amy Christensen]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Pardon the pun, even though I'm not sorry. Okay. And before your questions, we donate to a cause each episode. And as a Forest Service employee, Gavin can't directly endorse anything in particular. So it was my pick this week. And a donation will be going to the Common Good Community Foundation. They have established a matching fund to assist all local communities impacted by the Dixie Fire. And all donations will be distributed to Plumas county agencies involved in directly assisting communities and individuals most affected by the fire. More info is [e-mail] and that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. In this house, we like acorns. We like acorns that fall from trees. You know that. But also big fan of acorns that make it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you and your retirement. Your podmother Jarrett turned me on to Acorns and acorns got him into the door of looking at his money and his savings in a completely different way. Because you don't need to be an expert, Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you, fits your money goals. You do not need to be rich. You could start with five bucks. You can start with your spare change, which is what Jared did. Financial strategizing is not something that a lot of us have had a background in and it feels like it's easier just to not think about it. But what we love about Acorns is that it makes financial wellness feel possible. Acorns gives you small simple steps so you can give your money a chance to grow. Head to acorns.com ology or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 2 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important [e-mail] Ologies I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter cups. It's really resists Anyway, anything but Reese's Peanut Butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these chocolate salty peanut butter. The textures. I love everything about them. Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's peanut butter cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's Peanut Butter cups now at a store near you found wherever candy is sold. And I am. This show is sponsored by Better help. Listen, in 2025, maybe you're ready for a little something new. Life isn't about a makeover resolution that fades by February. 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They also use premium fabrics, finishes. Every piece feels like luxury. I'll tell you a secret. This holiday season I had to do a bit of bouncing around to the east coast, back to the west coast, back to the east coast, back to the west coast to see family on schedules that worked for everyone. You know what I packed intentionally? A pair. Quint's cashmere sweater and Quint cashmere jogging pants. I got a red eye. You know what I'm wearing? Luxury. I knew that my brain needed to know. I got a little treat coming up, so treat yourself this winter without the luxury price tag. Go to Quince.com Ologies for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U-I-N-C-E.com Ologies to get free shipping and 365 day return Quince.com Ologies get me through the Winter okay, let's tend to your smoldering curiosities. Great question from Nicole. DG Marie Charlotte Felkegaard Megan McLean Daniel Kim Liz Gross Eden Sunshine, Talia Dunyak Nicole Kleinman also asked, in Nicole's words, what happens to wildlife when there is a fire? Daniel Kim wants to know, are there any animals that have adapted to survive forest fires? And Nicole asks, do they all leave or are some able to hide or Survive in a sneaky way.

[Amy Christensen]

Oh, that's so great. This is a great question. So I don't know if I can just do a super quick answer to this because I'm gonna be too excited about it, but yeah. So how do wildlife respond to wildfire? So here's the thing. It really depends. And that's like the greatest scientific smoke and mirrors. Like, hey, it depends, but it really does. Some species like fire, some don't. And it also depends on what kind of fire it is, you know, if it's really severe or mild. So for example, there's one species that some of my awesome colleagues have worked on. It's called the black backed woodpecker. Many people think of it as a poster child of severely burned forest because it really needs these patches of totally killed trees. It depends on the insects that live in those recently killed trees. It needs those severely burned forests. Several years after those fires burn and those trees are killed, it's no longer good habitat. Like, it's really kind of the short term thing. They, they flock to these really severely burned places, they totally thrive and then they are out of there and onto the next fire. So some critters love that, others not so much. So the spotted owl, the species that I spend a lot of time studying, it is really kind of more of an old forest obligate. It doesn't love that severely burned stuff quite as much. So basically there are winners and losers. That's the answer. It's never as simple. It's never as simple as you make it. It's not just all animals are going to die or leave when a fire burns. Now some of them are going to do great and some of them are not. That's like part of the beauty of studying this stuff is like trying to figure out why, why do some animals love it and some don't. The world is so complex and amazing. It's like really fun to try to figure that out. Right. And then in terms of where animals go, some animals can escape fires, you know, fly out of the way, run out of the way. I always think of like Bambi movie Bambi, like all the animals are like parading out of the forest. I don't want to ruin Bambi for anybody. It's. But you know, some animals can evade fire. Even, you know, flying critters cannot always fly away from fast moving fires. Some animals will burrow under the ground and wait for the fire to pass and then come back out, which is totally crazy. You should. Yeah, it's, it's nuts Ooh.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. Burrowing critters hiding from fires. My heart burst into flames. So which animals burrow? All right, some Australian possums hide out in tree hollows. Snakes hightail it down a burrow. But wombats also hit the basement during bushfires. And there were a bunch of Internet rumors going around last year that they invite and usher other critters in. These rumors spread like wildfire, but they are flimflam. They actually just tolerate other animals hiding out in their wombat doomsday bunkers. But same with gopher tortoises in the US and to hear all about that, you can amble slowly over to the testudinology episode with wonderful tortoise scientist Amanda Hipps. Now, what about rebel birds?

[Amy Christensen]

There are other creatures. There's firehawks, and they're down in Australia. And they will actually, like, pick up burning branches and drop them to burn other parts of their habitat so that they can catch their prey.

[Alie Ward]

I have heard of these, and it sounds so devious, but they even will get together and wait for rodents to run out.

[Amy Christensen]

That's wild. That's just wild. Yeah, there's winners and losers. Like, there's such a variety of animals that respond in different ways to fire, and that's just the coolest thing. And that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why pyro diversity, going back to pyro diversity, is thought to promote biodiversity, because the more kind of variety of fire you have, the more different kinds of animals that are going to benefit from that variety. Right? So, you know, if you have sort of your forest that was killed by trees next to a forest that is totally green and old and, you know, decaying almost, you have this big mosaic of different kinds of forests that burn at different times that's going to support all kinds of different critters. So it's, it's, it's a cool thing. Now, that's a good thing.

[Alie Ward]

And several people, Rebecca Winesettle, India Lind, Nicole Kleinman, Jesse Hurlburt want to know, can I really prevent forest fires? Rebecca asks, or is this just another example of a giant corporation trying to foist responsibility onto individuals? Nicole wants to know, was smoking the bear more helpful or harmful to forests? What do you think about Smokey the Bear? Are you at liberty to say?

[Amy Christensen]

I. I think Smokey the Bear is super cute. I will say that we absolutely can prevent forest fires. Not all of them, and we not necessarily should prevent all of them over think about prescribed fires. Right. Like, we do want to put some Fire in the landscape. But as I mentioned before, a giant majority, like, like 87%, between 80, 90% humans, cause 87% of all wildfire occurrences annually within the Western U.S. like, that's crazy. That's a big number.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Amy Christensen]

And a lot of those. You can go look this up. There's this, A couple studies out there that have shown, you know, these gigantic spikes of fire activity on the 4th of July every year. Oh, like, we absolutely play a role in ignitions. A very small percentage of all of the ignitions result in those really big, big fires. Of course, many of the fires that ignite don't burn everything up, but we absolutely, as people can be careful about how we burn. I think that Smokey the Bear is just misunderstood.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Amy Christensen]

You know, like, because it's true, you know, we, we as people, like, we, we absolutely do start fires. We start unintended, unplanned fires that sometimes result in really devastating circumstances. There's sort of this perception that all fire is bad among some people. And maybe, I don't know, I don't know if Smokey the Bear is associated with that or not. But, you know, all fire is not bad. Like, fire is so important. And the reason why some fire is really bad right now and particularly is because we haven't had the kind of fire on the landscape that is natural in a lot of these systems.

[Alie Ward]

So a lot of patrons looking at you, Michael Davis, Peter Ashley Herbel, Sebastian Pepino, first time question askers, Carla Jerez and Ada Smith, Chandra Mason, Bennett Gerber, they all essentially asked, what do we do? Should firefighting teams approach it more strategically, like, let it burn 25 miles over here, but let's stop it here. Or at this point, like, what do we even do?

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah. So that is such a difficult and vexing question that much smarter people than me are like, thinking really, really hard about. So I don't want to make any, like, really poorly informed statements about how firefighters should be doing their job because they're doing an incredible job. But I'll say that generally there's, there's many times when fires are burning and there's a decision made to let, let the fire burn on its own for a little while when it's deemed to be safe. Right. So especially in areas where there's not as many people in, you know, like kind of more wilderness type areas, because fires, fires can do some of that work for us to restore the natural structure of a system. So fires can be really restorative, especially in those cases when we think it's going to burn in a quote unquote healthy way or a natural way. And there aren't people who are in danger. So that's kind of the idea of those manage wildfires. Just, you know, when wildfires burn and we're kind of trying to manage them as opposed to just put them out or suppress them.

[Alie Ward]

And from Smokey the Bear, let's move on to goats. Ashley Mitten and Leanna Schuster literally both started their questions. Goats, both of them. Please tell us about how goats are used to help reduce fire risk in areas with excess vegetation. And Ashley says, I mean, a few hours and they chewed down most of the pasture. Can goats save us?

[Amy Christensen]

Man, I wish goats could just save us. That would be so great. Just hand it all over to them. Yeah, I'm sure they've got it figured out. No, but I actually don't know about goats being used in wildfire management. That, that could just be my, my naivety. So I'll punt that one.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. All right, goats. I tried to rent some for my hillside about two years ago and it was a minimum, sadly, of five acres. And I just moved in and it was too soon to ask my neighbors if they wanted to go in on a goat herd with me. I didn't want to come on so strong. But there are businesses like goatsrus.com that'll rent them out. I thought this was a pretty common practice, hiring goats to eat your overgrown grass, because when I was in high school in Northern California, a lot of neighbors did that. And then I, I read the FAQ on goatsrus.com and what this business started in the tiny town I went to high school in around the time I was in high school. Holy literal smokes. As far as coincidences go, it's the greatest of all time. Okay, so this next smoky query was asked by plenty of folks, including patrons. Hannah Aussie, Alana Wood, firefighter supporter, Lizzie Martinez, Charlie Kakamo, first time question asker, Ashley Martinez, Nina Eve Zeininger as Matic, Ada Smith, Joseph and Katie Coast. Let's see. Dylan McGuire says, I live in eastern Washington where smoke has become the fifth season. When will we have the giant forest rakes mentioned by Donald Trump? They spent a lot of time on.

[Matt Kristof]

Raking and cleaning and doing things and.

[Alie Ward]

Do we need to rake the forest?

[Amy Christensen]

So, you know, this is, I, I think, again, this is, this is just a misunderstanding. So going back to smoke, this is a real problem. Right? We, we don't like being exposed to smoke, you remember? I'm sure I don't know, Ali, if this happened where you were, I think this was up in the. In the Bay Area.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Amy Christensen]

Last year, you probably remember seeing all over social media those pictures of, you know, San Francisco being just like orange. It was like some scene from Blade Runner or something. The problem with smoke is that, you know, it's going to be there, it's going to happen. If we're living in a. In a system that has fire and that where we need to have fire, we're going to also have smoke. That's. That's just a part of a part of it, Right? Where there's fire, there's smoke. The real important question is how do we want our smoke? You know, and that's how some people are trying to think about this problem of smoke, because it is a real serious public health problem. Right. With these sort of unplanned, big quote, unquote mega fires that happen, we all of a sudden get a ton of smoke. We didn't know it was coming. It disrupts our lives and puts us at risk. And there's a lot of smoke, right, that happens just this past week or two. There's. I saw people on Twitter, you know, out on the east coast saying that they had, you know, they were getting some smoke from some of the wildfires in the West. That kind of unpredictable nature is, I think, for many people, not desirable.

[Matt Kristof]

I'll say.

[Amy Christensen]

And so the idea is if we can use more prescribed and planned fires and more cultural and indigenous fires where we know when the smoke is coming, it's a lower amount. It's like, you know, less smoke in general is coming our way at any given time, but maybe a little more often. You know, those are kind of the two options, right. We can either sort of have our smoke in big pulses when we don't know what's coming, or we can try to make it a little more predictable.

[Alie Ward]

It seems like the where's and the whys are important here.

[Amy Christensen]

That's exactly right, for sure. Yes.

[Alie Ward]

What about Maria Juravleva wants to know. Underground wildfires? I understand how they start, but how do they keep going? How is there enough oxygen for some to last for years? How deep do they go? Jeremiah Miller says, what's the strangest place there's been a wildfire? They're underground.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah, some fires do burn underground. It's kind of crazy. So one of the interesting kind of related phenomenon that I've witnessed is sometimes in these areas that have recently burned, you come across a gigantic hole in the ground, like just a Giant hole. There's, you know, tree, there's trees around you, and then there's just a gigantic hole in the ground.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Amy Christensen]

When I started doing this work in these post fire landscapes, I was like, what in the heck is going on here? And I started asking around. And these are basically trees that have burned and kept burning and smoldering and smoldering. And the smoldering fire continued down through their root system, underground throughout the whole root system. And maybe they'll, they'll even pop up somewhere else, like, you know, a little ways away where the root kind of pops back up onto the, you know, ground. And basically these, these are like gigantic casts for trees, right? Like where the tree and its roots used to be. So fires can absolutely burn, you know, in a subterranean way. I've seen some of these sort of root holes following fire, which is just kind of wild to see.

[Alie Ward]

It is wild to see. And I know because I just watched a ton of videos of smoldering, flickering root systems. They can burn for weeks, months, maybe even through a whole season. And the fire will just pop up somewhere else. Also, somewhere in Pennsylvania, there is an abandoned Centralia coal mine that's been on fire since 19, 1962. And experts say there is enough fuel to just keep it burning for 250 years. No one knows what to do. They just all left town except for five people who still live there. They're like, we're not going anywhere. Like, that's cool. But yes, fires underground. Flames, Flames, breathing, heaving. Oh, man, I didn't even know that was possible. I would not have thought that. That is bananas. Ugh. Some of y'all patrons, Lizzie Marr, bushfire asker Brandy Harbaugh, first time question asker, longtime lurker Adriana Alfaro want to know what can we expect the normal amount of wildfires to be? Is there a normal. They all want to know numerically, how much worse are big wildfires gonna get? Give us numbers. We need numbers.

[Amy Christensen]

So, you know, if you look at how fires have changed in the last 30 years, 40 years, we have seen a lot more fire activity now than we did 10, 15, 20 years ago and 30, 40 years ago. So one of my colleagues I just mentioned a moment ago, his name is Sean Parks with US Forest Service, and one of his colleagues, they put out a study recently showing that between 1985 and 2017, there was an eight fold increase in area that, that burned at high severity on an annual basis in the western US Eight fold. So there is certainly a lot more large fires now, and there's also when those, those fires are burning more severely now than they did 35 or so years ago. 35, 40 years ago. But that's like the sort of small scale context. But then if you zoom back out and look at sort of the whole context of the last several thousand thousand years, we are seeing less fire now than we did way back when. It's a different kind of fire that's burning. Right. That's not necessarily natural in some of these systems. And then also we are, we are experiencing more of the effects of fire than we ever have as humans to the negative effects because we're living in these fire prone areas where for a long time it was, you know, somewhat safe to live. Right. Because fires weren't burning that much for the last 100 years in a lot of these areas because we're pretty good at putting them out. But now that those fires are burning more severely and more intensely and we're living there and we have the news to cover it all the time. Yeah, we certainly are hearing about it more.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Amy Christensen]

And it is having a serious impact on people, as you know. You know, there's all sorts of really tragic stories of these fires burning through towns. And one of those towns just, you know, the Dixie Fire, I believe, burned through, through Greenville, California in the last day or two. And that's an incredibly tragic thing to have happened. And. Right. Like, we are, we are living in a world that's really different now.

[Alie Ward]

Right. I know it's kind of like top of mind for everyone. I feel like when you say, oh, I live in California, people ask you like, is your city on fire? And you're like, I don't know, Let me check Twitter.

[Amy Christensen]

I, I just, I just texted one of my friends who lives in California, like, are you guys, where are you? Are you okay?

[Alie Ward]

Are you broke?

[E]

Morning.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, so, yeah, literally beepity like this just in. According to an NPR report that dropped about an hour ago, the U.S. forest Service just announced that wildfires will be aggressively extinguished this summer and all the preventative controlled burns are suspended. Apparently, fire season is predicted to be so bad they can't spare any of the thousands of firefighters on the ground to go do prescribed burns. Kind of like, like not being able to go to bed because you have paper due, but then you can't finish the paper because you're too tired. Something's gotta change. Tune in next week for more on that. Now, on the topic of heavy hearts amid blazing wildfires, is there anything that is the most difficult thing about Being a fire ecologist, I mean, I already. The idea of, like, a charred owl leg is going to hurt my heart until the day I die. But anything that is just really frustrating or difficult for you, I would say.

[Amy Christensen]

That one of the frustrating things is just how difficult this problem is. It's just such a big problem, and sometimes it's hard to sort of feel like we can get out of it. I like to call myself a reckless optimist. For me, the glass is not half full. It's like, oh, my God, it's almost so overflowing. It's like, you know, we. We can do this, you guys. Like, we can totally do this. This is such a difficult problem. It seems like we. We're facing the same problems every year. But I think that there's. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light has to do with getting more of that good fire on the landscape. And that's something that I know is a priority for the agency. I work for the U.S. forest Service and trying to restore the resiliency of these forests. And I think, like, what I. The sort of nugget of goodness that I try to take is that we, as you know, at least on my side, the science side of this agency, we have this incredible opportunity to, like, learn about this, you know, about fires, why they burn, how they burn, what their consequences are and what we can do about it. And we get to work with the managers and the people who are, again, outdoing that stuff on the ground. We've got our hands on some of the levers. We can make a positive impact and we can make a change in, you know, how these fires are burning. Even as we're thinking about, you know, these bigger problems like climate change, we can put our fingers on the. On the lever a little bit. And so there's a huge opportunity in the coming decades to make a big difference in sort of the next century of fire.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. How do you think an average Joe like myself sitting around biting my nails at the news, what can we do?

[Amy Christensen]

You know, I would say follow Smokey the Bear's advice. So we'll put him on the pedestal for a minute and say, just, you know, watch out for yourself. Make sure that you are not contributing to any of the problems with, you know, these unplanned ignitions and fires. That's one thing you can do. So, you know, maybe try to avoid, you know, explosive gender reveal parties. You know, that's good. Probably not do that. You know, don't be throwing your cigarettes out. And don't drive your car or anything on dry grass and things like that. You know, like, there's little. Little things like that you can do. But this is a big problem, and it takes both sort of individuals to make sure they're, you know, not starting these. These unplanned fires, but also these big sort of institutional actions and management to fight this problem. So it's, you know, I would say don't. Don't bite your nails down to the. To the bone. Just make sure you're not the one who's starting that fire.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, Good to know. Don't start any fires. Don't try to impress any ex girlfriends.

[Amy Christensen]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Don't by starting.

[Amy Christensen]

They're not gonna be impressed.

[Alie Ward]

Not gonna be impressed. The gender reveal party couple who started a fire last year in November were charged with manslaughter for a firefighter's death. And that lovelorn arsonist of the 2014 King Fire, sentenced 20 years in prison and ordered to somehow pay $60 million to victims of the crime. So imagine what you could do with $60 million and 20 years of your life. Yeah. Think twice before doing any horned up fire tomfoolery.

[Amy Christensen]

Just get it. Just get him a cupcake or something.

[Alie Ward]

Get him a cupcake. Do that. Don't be on the news. What about your favorite thing about fire ecology? Like, is it putting puzzles together? Is it being out in the field?

[Amy Christensen]

I would say my favorite part about being a fire ecologist is similar to my favorite part about being a scientist, which is just that the world is infinitely more complex than we think it is. And I learn new things every day about what's going on with these fires and how animals are responding. My preconceptions are always just kind of blown out of the water whenever I start digging into this stuff. So it's just such a wonderfully rich world out there, and fire is such a critical part of that whole system. And so being able to step into that complexity and try and just use my little, you know, pick to chip away at one corner of that, you know, vast unknown, the world of fire ecology is just the greatest honor and pleasure. I've got three little kids, and, you know, I. When I sit down at my computer and start clacking away every day, I'm partly thinking, like, what can I do to make this world better than I, you know, than when I came into it? And, you know, sometimes it may seem that my little corner of the world is insignificant, but, yeah, I like to think that me and all my wonderful colleagues within my agency and outside of it as well. Working in this area. We're all pulling in the same direction and we're trying to make this world a better place as well and get that good fire back on the landscape and try and yeah, change the game a little bit.

[Alie Ward]

I love it. I appreciate it so much. I'm glad that you are not currently in the middle of a fire.

[Matt Kristof]

Me too.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Thank you for talking to me during obviously a very, very busy time for fire folks.

[Amy Christensen]

It's been my pleasure. Absolutely.

[Alie Ward]

So yes, fire off your burning questions to the coolest nerds out there. That is what we do. And stay tuned for a special follow up episode next week week. Cross your fingers. I can make it happen. Anyway, Learn more about Dr. Gavin Jones by following him on Twitter at Ecology of Gavin. We are on there also at Ologies and I'm there as A.L.I.E. ward with one L. Same handles on Instagram. Come be our friends. Feel free to support the show for a dollar a month if you like it at patreon.com Ologies merch is available at ologiesmerch.com thank you Shannon Feltus and Boni Dutch of the podcast. You are that for managing merchandise. Thank you Erin Talbert for adminning the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White of the Wordery for making the transcripts. Caleb Patton bleeps them and those are all available for free at the link in the Show Notes. Every other Thursday we also release new smologies. They are edited down short, clean, classroom friendly versions of your favorite episodes. Thank you to Zeke Rodriguez Thomas of mindjam Media for editing those. Big thanks to Kelly Dwyer for website design. If you need a website, she's your gal. Link in the Show Notes to her. Thanks Noelle Dilworth and Susan Hale for keeping the schedules running and for social media quizzes and merch Monday posts. Thank you to Main Squeeze and Hot as Hell editor Jarrett Sleeper of mindjam Media for putting it all together. And of course longtime editing help Steven Ray Morris of the podcast the Purrrcast and see Jurassic Right. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. He's in a band called Island. They have a new album out Isleomania. And if you listen to the end, you know I tell you a secret. And this week's secret is sometimes if I need a brain break, I'll go on Craigslist and I'll just click the free section to see what people are giving away so you could see things that people just put up There free. And I just sometimes like to look and see what people are getting rid of. And then I try to figure out, like, what a life story is for that. Like, why is this person giving away like a ballerina statue? What's up with this wheelbarrow? Let's look at a couple right now. You want to? Okay. Okay. Let's see what's up there. Oh, there's two guinea pigs. And it just says, need gone. Damn. That is the meanest way to give away a guinea pig. Now I just want to get these guinea pigs. I have 10 guinea pigs needed for pickup. I can no longer take care of them and will have to release them if I cannot find anyone to pick them up. Yikes. If anyone needs guinea pigs in la. I didn't mean to make that so sad. A vintage artist portfolio case. Did they quit being an artist? I don't know. I hope not. Oh, here's a six foot pine ladder. I don't need one, but it's fun to look a lot of free pianos on here. Again, I don't want or need these things, but sometimes it's just nice to wonder how'd that person get the piano in the first place? And why don't they play it anymore? Anyway, I love when people. I love when people spare things from landfills and other people get things for free. What can I say? Ooh, tap shoes. Okay, bye. Bye. Pachydermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, Old factology, Mapology, serology, seminology. So how could we have avoided all of that? You're asking? Please enjoy indigenous fire ecology. Oh, it's so good. Pass it on. Oh, hey, it's that incense that reminds you of freshman year so much that you can only smell it sometimes because you don't want the nostalgia to fade. Alie ward back with a follow up as promised episode of Ologies that serves as a companion piece to last week's fire ecology episode. So perhaps listen to that one first. Come here for more context. Or don't. Ultimately, none of my beeswax. Okay, so just a little behind the scenes on this one's format. Format is a little different than what you're used to. I spoke with this ologist while she was up in the wilderness of Canada on vacation and the Internet was spotty. So the first 10 minutes or so. It's not the finest quality audio we've ever had on Ologies, but we did our best. And then she sent some standalone recordings, answering more questions, and then after the break, we're featuring excerpts from her own Indigenous fire ecology podcast, Good Fire with Matt Kristof, making this a real community effort and a fire mosaic episode indeed. So this ologist got her Master's and PhD in Hazard Management and fire science and works as a fire Social scientist for the Canadian Forest Service. She is a Metis Woman from Treaty 6 Territory on land now known as Canada and has authored papers such as Social Science Research on Indigenous Wildfire management in the 21st century and future Research Needs. So she is well schooled on this. And then I saw she has a podcast called Good Fire Recorded with Matt Kristoff who also hosts the youe Forest Podcast. So this ologist was on vacation. I desperately wanted to chat with her the one week she was trying to relax, but she luckily was very up to take a little break and chat amid spotty Internet and some tech diffs. Huge thanks to Matt for getting us in touch and for lending us excerpts from your forest and Good Fire to future. Also, thank you to [e-mail] Oliver Apologies for making the show possible. This episode was informed by the questions you left about Indigenous fire stewardship. And thanks to everyone who rates and reviews podcasts. It matters more than you will ever know and I read them all so I can prove it with a fresh shout out for one left this week such as Sarah Ib who wrote I started listening to this podcast and got to the gynecological episode and decided to make my first OB GYN appointment after Turns out I have endometrial cancer, I had a hysterectomy and I'm currently doing radiation therapy. Thank you dad. Bad word for this informative podcast. Sarah. What what? Sending you the biggest, biggest hugs and the best vibes for a speedy defeat of that. And thank you for getting checked out. Okay, onward to the episode. Etymology is simple. Indigenous means Native fire has a root meaning fire and ecology, the study of where we live. So we'll be covering cultural burns, drip torches, forest debris, healthy trees, the legality of indigenous fire stewardship, fighting fires with strategy, napping on the fire line, evacuations and more with fire scientist, advocate, podcast host, Canadian Forest Service employee, scholar and indigenous fire ecologist, Dr. Amy Christensen.

[F]

Yeah, no problem at all. It's great too to have so much like attention on this topic as well.

[Alie Ward]

Oh it's, it's wonderful, wonderful to have you. So now are you at the top of a mountain right now trying to get cell service?

[F]

No, I'm actually at my parents cabin but they do not have great Internet but does it sound okay?

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, it sounds great so far.

[F]

Literally, they're at, like, the very north end of a lake called Shuswap Lake. And currently we're actually surrounded by three fires as well.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my gosh. And is that an area that you're pretty familiar with? Has your family been there for a long time?

[F]

Yeah, my parents have this cabin that we've had in our family, I think, for about 30 years now.

[Alie Ward]

Have you seen a change at all in how the summers go in terms of, say, being surrounded by fire?

[F]

So the area that we're in is actually kind of a rainforest area. We always kind of jokingly refer to it as that. And we used to get so much rain out here in the summer. In probably the last 10 years, we've noticed it's been getting warmer in this area and we've been getting less rain. And even the cedars are really starting to not look as healthy. And then the last probably five years, we've had more summers of smoke. So it's really been. Yeah, I've really noticed a change just even in my lifetime.

[Alie Ward]

And how long have you been studying fire? How long had you been a fire scientist?

[F]

I grew up in northern Alberta. There's always kind of fires around my family, although we didn't kind of have the connection. We were disconnected from cultural burning practices. But my family was kind of always, you know, a bit involved in fire. And my husband's a wildland firefighter. And, yeah, just growing up, it seemed like kind of a normal thing in the north. And when I moved down south to an urban center, that was when I really realized, you know, that other people didn't have that or, you know, weren't so used to that, I guess. I started actually as a geologist, but I always loved hazards, but more volcanic hazards and things that I was interested in. So I did two years actually in New Zealand, where I did my master's on volcanic hazard management. But, you know, I always kind of feel, like, bound to the forest in Alberta. So I ended up kind of coming back and I even said to my PhD supervisor, like, you know, I'll study anything but fire. You know, I don't want to have fire in my life because I just, you know, was around it all the time and wanted something different, but. But, yeah, kind of slowly got pulled back into the field. And, yeah, I've been at the Canadian Forest Service now for about 10 years.

[Matt Kristof]

Just when I thought I was out.

[Alie Ward]

They pulled me back in. Oh, my God. What is your work like? And have you grown to appreciate it at all, or are you still like fire? Here we are again, you and me. Fire.

[F]

Yeah. No, I think. Yeah, it's kind of one of those things. You have to realize that maybe you're just, like. I don't know. I don't want to say destined to be, but, you know, I think that's living in the north. It's just, you know, I think that you have that experience with fire and seeing it around you, and that's one thing I always find interesting is when I meet, you know, other fire scientists who aren't, you know, from areas that experience fire. And I think sometimes it may be hard for them to relate, especially when we're talking about fire risk and kind of how people act during a fire event.

[Alie Ward]

So one of Dr. Christensen's areas of research and work is studying evacuations. So when to leave your home with just a few possessions and your life for what might be the last time. And it's something that she says fire scientists who haven't grown up around fire and had to themselves evacuate might not understand. And if you listen to last week's episode, I mentioned that my parents lived in the remote Sierra Nevadas for years, and coercing them to evacuate during the King fire was not easy, even with the promise of a night or two at the Fantasy Inn with a mirrored ceiling.

[F]

When I first started at the Canadian Forest Service, there was, like, no interest, really, in indigenous fire management or cultural burning practices or indigenous firefighters. So I would say it was, like, a very lonely kind of first five or six years. And so most of my colleagues are actually international folks, so mainly folks from actually California and Australia who are in this field as well. But I think, like, pretty much since we started having the big fire events in Canada, that's really what's forced people to kind of look at maybe a different way of looking at fire on the landscape. My interest in fire is also tied to, like, my own family's history. So my family's Metis, so we're from northern Alberta, the Cardinal and Lavican families, and. And we kind of had, like, a weird kind of disconnection from culture, which most Metis families in Canada actually experience during colonization. And so it's basically, we weren't allowed to practice any of our traditions and other things. It's interesting to me because it almost parallels fire in a way. So when settlers, you know, first came to Canada, one of the first things that they brought with them was actually fire suppression. And as they move kind of west across Canada, they basically just put into place fire suppression policies wherever they went. And the big reason for that was, you know, that they saw the forest as this wilderness, as this kind of natural place. But really now we know, like. And lots of scientific studies now are pointing out that that wasn't natural. Like many of those areas, we're actually stewarded by indigenous people to look that way. Actually, the first fire suppression campaign was in 1610 in Newfoundland in Canada, where that was like kind of the first, you know, enactment of, you know, thou shalt not light fires on the landscape.

[Alie Ward]

Amy says that she is from northern Alberta, and there were only two fire rangers for the entire province. So.

[F]

So even though they had, like, a fire suppression policy, you know, those guys couldn't be everywhere, obviously, so there was still a lot of cultural burning that went on. So I would say that in where I'm from, it really only kind of stopped or halted around the 60s or the 70s where fire really stopped being allowed on the landscape in the north. And what we've seen with that, you know, is just a massive increase in fuel loading and also kind of these, like, monoculture forests where there the stands are, you know, all one species, like, all similar age, and. And they're really vulnerable to pests or to other disturbances like fire. And so we're getting these massive big fire events that have come through. And so for indigenous people, you know, like my family and others, my family were actually buffalo hunters, and they used fire in the buffalo hunt, but also afterwards to improve the habitat for buffalo and other things to help them in their hunting. When the settlers started coming across and saying, like, no, you can't do this. Like, you don't know as much as us. Like, you know, it really devalued Indigenous people and their knowledge. And then when you add into that, you know, we had residential schools in Canada where Indigenous people, you know, were sent there and basically told, you know, that, you know, they were savages, that their way of knowing their family, of knowing the earth wasn't proper. And, you know, that they had to learn this new way that was much better. So we, like my colleague Faisal Mullah, we was telling me that they call that, like, a cultural severance activity, where basically you're just told that, you know, suddenly, you know, you cannot practice your culture anymore. And so the impacts of that are just massive on people, not only on, like, you know, their ability to use fire, but also just on who they are as a person, their pride in their family and other things. And so I too, like, even now, I still have a Lot of anger about that. And, you know, how I wasn't able to learn from my elders about landscape stewardship and other things because of that, you know, like, kind of dominant Western worldview.

[Alie Ward]

Do you know, or has there been research into how much of that knowledge is lost?

[F]

Yes, actually, Henry Lewis, who is a researcher, he actually started in California, but then was at the University of Alberta.

[Alie Ward]

Dr. Henry T. Lewis, aka Hank, was an anthropology professor at the University of Alberta and was one of the first researchers to really document and indigenous fire stewardship and its role in shaping the landscape. And he wrote the paper A Time for Burning. It was published in 1982, and a PDF to it is linked on my site. It's typewritten on a typewriter, it's wild, and it details all of the different biomes and how indigenous cultures shaped them with fire. And if you're like, no reading, need visuals. He also made a 16 millimeter documentary titled the Fires of Spring.

[Gavin Jones]

All of this was managed by people.

[Alie Ward]

Who had developed a complex technology of.

[Gavin Jones]

Fire to assure a continued successful adjustment to the northern boreal forest.

[Alie Ward]

Somehow this ended up on YouTube.

[E]

Hank, God, he went up and worked.

[F]

With the woodland Creandeni people in northern Alberta. So actually kind of where my family's from as well. And what he was saying was in the 1970s, when he did his work, that he thought that between 90 and 95% of that knowledge had been lost. So, I mean, that was now, like, it's hard to believe it almost 50 years ago, right when that was happening. So for me, like, I often hear people say in meetings, like, you know, oh, well, Indigenous knowledge is inapplicable to today and cultural burning practices because, you know, now we have climate change. Like, now there's more values on the landscape in terms of thinking about structures and other things. But I always argue against that because for me, like, it's not about, like, Indigenous people. Like, we're alive today, we're part of society. Like, we see all these things, like, Indigenous people are on the front lines of climate change. Like, of course we know that that's occurring. And, you know, Indigenous knowledge, the most beautiful thing about it is how adaptable it is to the local environment. So, like, for, like, because, you know, you're living in that environment, you're dependent on it.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so Amy's Internet cut out again. So we tried a new way of recording just via the phone and her laptop. And it sounds much better, which is great. So clear, in fact, you may even be able to discern the pitter patter of children's footsteps on the cabin stairs as her family vacationed around her. Hi. Maybe this will work.

[Matt Kristof]

I can hear you great at home.

[E]

It's funny because I have a pretty good setup with a podcasting microphone in head headphones. And of course I'm like, oh, it's this week when I'm gone. But no worries.

[Alie Ward]

But where were we? Yes, that indigenous fire knowledge is starting to get more attention as climate change worsens and larger fires erupt. And as a fire scientist, what is her workday like?

[E]

Sure.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah.

[E]

So with my job with the cfsi, most fire research scientists, I say kind of do the same thing. So we have our research projects that we run or that we're a part of. So a lot of my day is actually kind of meeting about research and other things that are going on. So really similar to, like, you know, an academic researcher from a university. But then as well, we also kind of have the policy or the government side. So I sit on a lot of, like, national or international committees or working groups, you know, looking at fire and trying to direct policy. We just recently in Canada finished the blueprint for wildland fire science for 2019-2029. So looking at, you know, topics that. That we should really be spending money basically in time doing research on. And one of those the themes from that was actually on indigenous fire. So we also have an evacuation database actually with the Canadian Forest Service, where we've tracked wildfire evacuations in Canada since 1980. So during the summer, like, that's one thing is that we have, like, lots of our staff working on that, doing data entry into it. Yeah, it's a big job this summer. Like, in 2020, I think we only had 20 different evacuations in Canada, but this year, I think we're already at 125 different evacuation events. So it's a huge job.

[Alie Ward]

So this blueprint for a Wildland Fire Science in Canada 2019-2029 outlines, in its own words, a business case to increase investment in wildland fire science. And it is 57 pages of really great strategies covering themes like understanding fire in a changing world, recognizing indigenous knowledge, and enhancing knowledge exchange mechanisms to improve the ways in which wildland fire science and technology are shared, understood, and implemented. So Amy's team had been working on that. And for the curious, I will link to the full PDF on my website now. As far as the increasing evacuations, that issue gets more personal as this episode unfolds. Even more personal than my parents in an hourly motel in Reno. And this is Something I think a lot of people have trouble wrapping their brain around. And maybe there is no good answer, but is it climate change? Is it human ignition and carelessness? Is it not letting the forest burn as it naturally would? How do you scientists come up with plans to tackle this issue if it's kind of like a trifold problem?

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah, I agree with you.

[E]

It's such a complex issue. I mean, there's also the fact that people are just building more in, you know, areas that are of higher risk to fire. You know, as communities get larger and kind of expand out into what, you know, some people call the wildland urban interface, it's really increasing fire risk. I think that that's the hard thing too, is that there's no, like, magic bullet solution, right? Like, even with cultural burning, like, you know, I'm such a strong proponent of getting that back on the ground. But that doesn't all tackle, you know, how vulnerable some homes and other things are to fire at the moment.

[Alie Ward]

Climate change, she said, is also a pretty big freaking deal.

[E]

But the one thing, you know, that I think locally, like, you know, in our towns and stuff that we can control is the fuels that are available to burn. And so that's why, you know, I think that cultural burning, or landscape level fuel management, as well as the community, wild farms, mitigation is so important to do in combination. And lately too, I've been seeing. I don't know if you are seeing it in the States as much, but in Canada there's a bit of a movement to just kind of, you know, fireproof communities or, you know, keep homes or, you know, structures safe from fire. But to me, that's really missing the point of, like, the landscape around your home. Like, for me, I don't want to be living, you know, if my home is standing in, like, the middle of, you know, a blackened landscape. And in Canada, it can take a long time for the forest to regenerate, sometimes, you know, 20, 30, 40 years. And even then, they're finding up north in the boreal forest, the burns are just so hot that they're basically kind of killing the soil and any vegetation around. So, yeah, it's quite a complex issue. But I think when, and I think as an indigenous person, I look at the forest, I don't just see it as trees or timber values or other things. You see it as like, part of who you are, right? Like your relations. So you want to be able to, you know, steward and protect that area as much as you do, you know, your own home or Structure.

[Alie Ward]

And can you describe a little bit about prescribed fires and indigenous fire stewardship versus cultural burns? I think a lot of people maybe want to lump them in together, but can you describe a little bit about how they work or what they are? Yeah.

[E]

So there's a bit of a danger of that. This whole thing now where we're seeing prescribed fire and just kind of throwing cultural burning into that. So prescribed fire is, you know, generally what agencies do. So where they're setting fire on the landscape, but. But in many cases they're setting, you know, high severity fires. It's burning really fast and they want to burn a lot of land in a little bit of time. So we see like lots of aerial ignition of fires. We see them using, you know, basically like helicopter ignition. And in Canada, like lots of times people put that together as, you know, being a crown fire, being these big bad kind of out of control fires that are burning up, you know, mountainsides. That's generally the media that we see in Canada about prescribed fire. But it really differs from cultural burning because cultural burning is more about achieving a cultural objective around the forest, around where you live. So you don't really want to have these big, large sand replacing fires that go through and can kill everything in a prescribed fire event. That sometimes is what happens in Canada. Yeah. So for cultural fire too, the thing is that most fires are actually pretty low intensity. In Australia, they call them like slow burns or cool burns, and they generally move through the understory and they're done at certain times of year where the potential fire behavior is very low risk. So, you know, where you're not getting, you know, potential of crown fire, there's lots of natural fuel breaks around the fire. In Canada, that's usually snow still on the ground. For indigenous people, cultural burning too is like a family, a community activity. So, like when I'm doing burns and things like I take my. My daughters, my mom was on the last one that we did.

[Alie Ward]

There's a great photo that's run in a few news articles about Amy's work. And she's standing in a golden grassy field. It's hazy with smoke as a cultural burn grass fire. She's overseeing lurches behind her. And there's a husky Wolfy do sitting to her right, staring off. And Amy's wearing black leggings and a red flannel shirt and is pregnant with what would be her second daughter. So the mood is very calm, unlike what most people's experience of land on fire might be.

[E]

Lots of times, you know, we don't wear personal protective equipment, you know, like the kind of Nomex that you usually see firefighters wearing. Because usually the fires are honestly just so slow. And most people find them, I think, a bit boring, too, because it can take a really long time to burn a really small piece of land. And so for agencies, it doesn't really work well. Right. Because that for them means more staffing dollars and other things to achieve, like, you know, a smaller area burned.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. When it comes to how much fuel is in some of the forest now, that would be too much for, say, a prescribed burn maybe to tackle. I'm reading like, there's so much, you know, dead timber and fallen timber because we've suppressed fire for so long. Like, where does fire management even begin to kind of tackle that issue?

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah, it's.

[E]

It is a big issue. And I think people often get overwhelmed. Like, I just hear, you know, all the time, oh, it's so complex. There's so many things and so many people's competing values. But I think that we often lose the focus on, like, local communities. So in Canada, our First nations have reserves. And so if you go onto a reserve many times, like when you speak to the elders and other people, like, they know what needs to be done in their area. Like, they know if certain areas are too fuel loaded and, you know, they want to go in there and kind of mechanically treat the forest.

[Matt Kristof]

So.

[E]

So, you know, by using machines and labor to go in and do thinning and other things before they can burn to kind of keep the fuel load low in those areas. So I think for me, that's the biggest thing is that we really need to go back to kind of these local solutions to fire. And that's really kind of what our research is showing, that, you know, local people want to be involved. So, you know, I talk mostly about indigenous peoples, but, you know, ranchers, farmers, other people who, you know, use the landscape for their livelihood. They also, you know, really want to have a healthy forest and environment around them. And they know the areas too, and even forestry companies. Like, the one nice thing about cultural burning is that because we're doing kind of these low understory burns, like, we don't want to burn the nice, big, healthy trees. Right. Because those are so important for cultural activities and for other, like our relations, other animals. It's actually a really nicely works together because you kind of can get cultural burns going through and really removing some of that deadfall and promoting those healthy big tree growth that like the timber.

[Alie Ward]

Companies love and obviously this is something that is a family issue for you, too, having, you know, being married to someone who is a firefighter. At what point did you decide to spread the word about good fire? And the term good fire, too, is something that I'm. I kind of just learned, too. But can you. Can you talk a little bit about what good fire is?

[E]

Sure. So good fire, I think, comes just from the idea that, you know, it's very obvious that we can have good fires on the landscape. You know, that fire is something that is helpful to the environment and to people. And so I think Indigenous people, lots of times see fire almost in a dichotomy. So kind of, you know, these bad fires and then the good fire that we can use as a tool. But before colonization, Indigenous people would use fire on the landscape in good ways. But then also we did have lightning fires, obviously, back then. Right. But they would come across the landscape and kind of enter into this mosaic landscape that these indigenous burns and other lightning caused fires. And so as they would enter them, then the fire behavior would change. So as, you know, it entered a meadow, the fire intensity might decrease, and then it would go back into the forest and maybe increase, and then it would hit, like, a deciduous stand of trees and go down again. And so this mosaic or patchwork on the landscape was actually really helpful for fire to kind of of decrease the intensity of these fire events. But what we're seeing right now is because we've been suppressing those fire events, there's just so much fuel in the forest that we're seeing these bad fires. So even, like, I'm thinking, like, the Dixie Fire in California right now, or we have, like, multiple fires in Canada at the moment, too, that are bad fires. Like, lots of times, you know, we look at and say, oh, fire is natural. There's good ecological benefits. But for me, there's nothing good about these current fires happening right now.

[Alie Ward]

So at this point, our FaceTime call cut out because of spotty Internet. So Amy recorded a clip answering a few more questions because she is the best and knew that we only had a few days until this went up, and she's once again the best.

[E]

I also just wanted to mention the importance of Indigenous people in fire in Canada, but also in other countries. You know, we often think about Indigenous people and fire management is something that happened in the past. But we have a lot of amazing Indigenous firefighters in Canada, Indigenous fire managers and other people who are really, you know, on the front lines trying to bring back good fire and indigenous fire stewardship and really out there every summer, kind of protecting our communities from these bad fires. And especially in Canada, lots of times there we don't give enough attention, I think, to those indigenous firefighters. Lots of times they're kept kind of from progressing in their careers because they might not have the appropriate western education level, so, you know, a degree or a diploma or something, but they have, you know, might have 20, 30, 40 years experience of being on the fire and so knowledgeable and incredible. And I think, you know, lots of times we need to look at where western science as well got some of its ideas. Like I've spoken to many elders who've told me about drip torches and how they would use tree limbs and SAP to create their own drip torches. That's what their ancestors did. And how they would spread fire across the landscape was in doing that. So now, you know, it's a metal canister with fuel in it. But it's kind of the same idea that indigenous peoples had about how to use fire properly on the land and just this incredible knowledge base. And people in the community, you know, had roles in Canada. Some nations actually had families that were fire keepers. There were many people who knew about fire and had knowledge about fire activity.

[Alie Ward]

After the break, you'll hear a clip from Good Fire podcast hosts Amy Christensen and Matt Kristof talking about indigenous firefighters experience on the fire line. And I admit I found this discussion hilarious. But before that, remember Henry T. Lewis? Hank, the anthropologist who wrote A Time for Burning and made that Fires of Spring film? So the retro 16 millimeter film aesthetics are far from the coolest thing about his fireworks.

[E]

One of the coolest things I think from Henry Lewis's work was when he was speaking to Woodland Cree and Dene elders about how they would use fire to melt the frost in the ground. And I've seen actually a few kind of western science studies lately on that. But that's actually an older technique that the communities would use. So you get kind of all the dry grass on top of a meadow or something, and they would go and burn that in the really early spring because that's the most important thing about indigenous burning is the time to burn when it's safe to do a good fire. And they would, that would then turn that level, that grass into, you know, black. And so the black would absorb the heat of the sun and then start to melt, melt the frost out of the ground in the early spring. And that would give you much like earlier green shoots and green grass coming up that then moose, deer, other things could come in and eat for in that area. So it would make your hunting or other things a lot easier to do.

[Amy Christensen]

That's genius.

[E]

So yeah, I think that that's those are things, you know, that and there's probably so much more out there that we don't even know that community used and how they would use fire in a good way. And I mean, if people are interested as well, you know, Frank Lake I think is probably one of the first kind of fire ecologists who also is an indigenous man who, you know, saw very early the importance of Indigenous fire knowledge and bringing it. And he's written some really great publications that I think for people are eye opening, you know, about how we can use fire in a good way on the landscape.

[Alie Ward]

And to hear an earload of other incredible indigenous voices in fire ecology, you'll want to subscribe to Good Fire. It's a podcast series by Amy and Matt and we are featuring audio from a discussion as they launched good fire in 2019. They were gracious enough to let us steal some clips to round out the conversation amid our tech issues this week. And as it turned out, Amy and I had further trouble connecting because those three fires that she mentioned around her family cabin got bigger and they were forced to evacuate from their vacation. So yes, her work is timely and personal and she literally wrote the book on this, a volume titled First Nations Wildfire A Guide for Communities and External agencies alongside Tara McGee and First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership. So I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well. Now, in her name, we're donating this week to a cause of her choosing and she asked that it go to Indigenous residential school survivors. That's IRSSS CA. For over 20 years, they've assisted First Nation peoples in British Columbia to recognize and be holistically empowered from the primary and generational effect of the residential schools by supporting research, education, awareness, establishing partnerships and advocating for justice and healing. And the Society assists survivors with counseling, court support, information, referral, referrals, workshops and more. And you can find out more@IRSSS CA. There's a link in the show notes. And in Canada, consider participating in Orange shirt day on September 30th. It's also known as National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Okay, so that donation was made possible by some sponsors of the show. This podcast is sponsored brought to you by Squarespace. I am a happy Squarespace customer and I have been since the start of all its ologies. Right before I launched Ologies, I was like, I have to do A website. I gotta make my personal website. How am I going to do this? I procrastinated for three years and then I heard about Squarespace on another podcast and I was like, I'm going to try it. Turns out I'm in love with them. Squarespace is an all in one website platform. Squarespace makes it really easy to just make a beautiful website. They have great templates, they have drag and drop tools. It's really easy to to edit and change. You can engage with your audience. You can sell anything from products to content to time all in one place. And you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or [e-mail] Ologies. Squarespace really makes it easy for people and I talking about myself to make the website of your dreams. So check out squarespace.com for a free trial and then when you're ready to launch, launch squarespace.comologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. I did it. You can do it. I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It's really Reese's. Anything but. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get this chocolate, salt, salty peanut butter. The textures. I love everything about them. Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's Peanut Butter Cups now at a store near you found wherever candy is sold. And I am okay. You know, sometimes you eat something and you're like, ah, feel so much better. And other times you eat a meal and you're like, I want to go nap on the couch and I can't remember my own name or I need 10 desserts right now. That could be your glucose talking. My glucose is very loud. My insulin floods in response to sugar and then it crashes and I feel like garbage. But introducing lingo. This is a bio wearable. It's from Abbott and it tracks your glucose levels in real time. And then on an app it gives you insights into how high they went, how much they crashed, how well managed your glucose is throughout the day. So I tried lingo. I have it on my arm right now and it's awesome for me. I know that my blood sugar greatly impacts my life and I can look at that and see the data. I love that Lingo has science backed recommendations to eat in a way that works better for you personally. So to see how your body responds to food and learn what you can do to improve your metabolism, try Lingo. It starts at $49 for a two week plan, no prescription needed and for a limited time you can save 10% on your first order with the code ologies@hello lingo.com the Lingo Glucose system is for users 18 years and older, not on insulin. It's not intended for diagnoses of diseases, including diabetes. For more information please visit hello lingo.com Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.

[Gavin Jones]

Discover is accepted at 99% of places.

[Alie Ward]

That take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] creditcard Based on the February 2024 Nelson Report this new year enrich your life by learning a new language with Rosetta Stone. Their immersive courses ensure long term language retention and their True accent feature even gives you pronunciation feedback. Plus, Rosetta Stone's flexible learning options let you learn anywhere, anytime. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. Listeners can get 50% off Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership by visiting RosettaStone.com pod50 that's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Visit RosettaStone.com pod50 and so many of you patrons asked about indigenous fire management, namely, and I'll list you all off at once very quickly. Cameron Brown, Doug Potential future firearcologist Ronan Jackie, Chris Brewer, Kimberly Hoffman, Ellen Skelton, Thomas N. Windom, Brianna Freeman, Justin Roberts, Anthony Willis, Donell O'Neill and Alexandra Catule. And because our time chatting was cut short again, we're so honored and lucky to feature relevant clips from a conversation with the Good Fire podcast host Amy Christensen and her co host Matt Kristoff. Okay, here Amy is talking to Matt.

[Matt Kristof]

About fears of fire even in our indigenous communities. Like lots of people are now worried about fire and scared of fire. And I think so for me when I come across people like, you know, that kind of have that tendency to think of fire as bad, I always say, you know, well there's good fire. And that's kind of, you know, the name from the podcast. So, you know, when we're doing these kind of good fires, it's basically, it's not a wildfire, it's totally different. Most indigenous people want to bring back burning, right, and bring back that cultural practice to their landscape. Because most elders, when they look at the forest, the first thing that they say is that it's unhealthy and that it needs cleaning up. When I first started working a bunch of elders, I'd always hear this cleaning up phrase, cleaning up. And, you know, it took a while till I realized that, you know, that meant fire that they wanted because, you know, you don't normally think of that. You think like, I'll go out with a rake or something, like Donald Trump thinks that we're doing. But, you know, it was actually, you know, that they wanted to use fire to kind of clean up all that, that dead litter on the forest floor. So they just want to do that again in their territory. But I think they also realize that because of the fire suppression that we've had over the last, you know, 50 to 300 years, depending where you are in Canada, that it's not that easy just to bring back our burning practices, right, because we burned on intervals. So depending on where you were or, you know, if you were burning a meadow, you might burn the meadow every three years. If you were burning like, you know, an old growth forest, then you might burn every 20 years. Like, you know, it just depended on what you were burning or what objective you were trying to achieve. So, you know, we, and now we've excluded fire. So I mean, the litter and the, the buildup of fuel is crazy. So I think like now most of the elders I talk to, they say, like, if we went and tried to do this now, like, we would basically burn down the forest because we'd be trying to start a low intensity burn, but there's just too much fuel on the floor, so it would immediately like escalate.

[Alie Ward]

So how do indigenous fire scientists and wildlands firefighters approach these really different schools of thought? Amy explains to Matt.

[Matt Kristof]

We call it like two eyed seeing. So that's kind of the new concept that's come up. So that's like, you know, where as indigenous people or even as non indigenous, like, you know, you're looking at the world through one eye, through your Western perspective, right? Because we're all trained in that, you know, like there's not inevitable. There's very few people that, you know, are born and raised in the bush and have that kind of only subsistence lifestyle.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

But then out of the other eye, you know, you can see with your indigenous eye. Right. So you can see, you know, how, you know, where things could be better. And I think for me, that's where fire management comes in because, you know, I'm trained from the Western perspective, but I think, you know, from like culture that like, you know, there's things that indigenous people do or know better. And you know, for me, part of my job is, you know, advocating for that and trying. So, you know, it's not saying like, drop all Western science around fire. Right. We need that. We need that too. But then indigenous people in our cultures also know ways, you know, for making the forest healthy. So to me, if you bring those two together, it makes like, you know what I mean? It's. Then you have like an incredible knowledge base that, that you're coming from.

[G]

Right.

[Alie Ward]

Ah, the firefighter stories.

[Matt Kristof]

I promised you one example is like talking to firefighters. So there's this one guy who was a non, like a non indigenous firefighter. So it's kind of funny up on the, you know, the fire crews, there, lots of that. There's like 30 or 40 year indigenous firefighters that have been on the fire line a long time. And they say, you know, these new kids, like university grads come up and start telling them what to do. So this one guy was actually telling me that he, you know, he started out of university as kind of a fire boss and went up on the, the one line and he had these native crews and he said he was, he thought they were the laziest people in the world because he's like, they would get up in the morning and work a little bit, but then he's like, then they nap all day. And then like in the, in the bush, you know.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

And then he's like. But then, you know, they would get up and kind of work all night and then he's like. And then I started like, really looking and watching what they were doing and he said that. Then one of the guys came up and told him, we fight the fire when it's the weakest because we see fire as a living being. And why would you fight something at the height of its Day at 2pm on a really sunny, hot day with high winds? Why would you do anything? The fire can just jump. But if you fight it in the morning when it's the weakest, or in the, in the evening or overnight when.

[G]

Humidity is high and the temperature is low, and so the activities. Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

Decrease. Yeah. And every. Well, I should say generally now with climate change, who knows. But generally fire activity decreases at night. Right. So, so anyways, but that these guys have got that not from textbooks but from years of being out and watching fires. So I think. And so he was saying like to me, like this non indigenous kid, that, that it was just amazing to see that because, because he didn't learn any of that in school. And so for him, he said he learned more that summer working with the native crews about fire than going to school, basically. And not to say, you know, don't stay in school kids, but like. Because that's important too. But you know, there's other ways and other things to, to learn as well about. About fire. Lots of the indigenous fire guys, they always tell me one of the funniest things is like the, when the fire season first started and like in, in Cree the word for white boy or whatever is munia. So they say like, oh, it's so funny when like the muni come on the fire because he's like, they're all just doing selfies with the fire in the background and he's like. And we're all like, you know, actually working and he's like. And you look. And all the muniar just lined up way away from the fire taking selfies. And then it was funny because then I started seeing on Facebook, like lots.

[G]

Of people, they do well on Instagram.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah. But I think that that's like just maybe a bit of. And it's kind of more of like, because for indigenous people it's more of a lifestyle. Right. So they're, they, they've been doing that. That's. So it's, it's a great career for indigenous people because they can go out in the summer, make money, be on the land, and then in the winter they can go and like run their trap lines or hunt, be with their families and like kind of participate in their, their culture.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

So I think that that's why it's become like kind of a nice, nice lifestyle for certain people.

[G]

Yeah, for sure.

[Alie Ward]

So how do agencies and nations work together? How can ecologists and firekeepers spark those collaborations?

[Matt Kristof]

People always say, oh, you need to engage with the indigenous communities. And well like to me that's a nice concept. I know that lots of non indigenous people or companies get frustrated because, you know, they go to these communities and try to engage and nobody turns up or you know, they can't get a hold of anyone. Nobody returns their calls. And so I think for me, like, the thing to remember with that is, you know, for people to remember that, like, first nations are under the Indian act, right. So basically all their resource and, you know, how their capital for how they're run all basically is decided in Ottawa almost, you know, and how much money comes down to them. So most of the times, you know, even though the communities have high capacity, you know, for forestry or other things, it's often very underfunded because of what comes down the stream from Ottawa.

[Alie Ward]

Ottawa is in eastern Canada, in Ontario. And did you know that Ottawa is the capital of Canada? I didn't until right now. So if you feel the same, it's okay.

[Matt Kristof]

Basically, there's not enough money. Right. So they, you know, might not have a forestry coordinator, they might not have a lands person or, you know, or the chief might be like the, you know, the chief has to manage. Manage housing, health care, like, you know, everything like you can. So I know people get frustrated, but at the same time, I think, you know, there's. It needs to be a bit of patience and understanding there that lots of the nations are trying as much, as much as they can. And some are great. Like, there's some nations, you know, that have really gone into forestry there, you know, the community forests in B.C. i think that those are a really great example of things that are working well. Or I know there's been partnership, like, between different, like forest industries and indigenous nations, too.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

Most forestry people don't go into forestry because they want to, you know, kill all the trees and everything. Right. They go into it because they love being in the forest. Right. So they want to sustain that. Most indigenous people love being in the forest. Right. So right there you have a match of, you know, so then it almost goes to. Well, then, you know, if these are our shared values, how then can we, you know, move forward together? But I think one of the problems is that there's a real lack of trust because there's been a lot of people that have taken advantage of indigenous communities. So, you know, come in and said good things, said all the right things, and then, you know, ended up taking money and, you know, not involving the nation. And so it takes. It can take a while. I think, like, a helpful thing too is employing indigenous people. So, you know, when you make or want to work in a certain nation or with them, you know, to employ people from that band and give them, you know, a sustainable, you know.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

Career. And there is lots of indigenous people that actually have forest tech diplomas and other things. Yep, that that can do that. So I think, you know, and I know it's. It's not easy either. I don't want people to think, like, oh, yeah, you just sit at a table and decide your values, and then everything goes away.

[Alie Ward]

Amy explains that over the many years, promises have been made and broken, and outside collaboration has seemed to come with a price tag.

[Matt Kristof]

You know, I think you need to. To recognize, you know, if you want to do this kind of work, that there has to be some kind of benefit for the community as a whole as well. Whether that's, you know, monetarily or, you know, supporting like, a recreational forest or, you know, something. Yeah. To kind of come to that. I don't, like, there's not, I think, an easy answer for, you know, like, just do this one step and, you know, indigenous people will love to work with you. But for me, I think that forestry really has an advantage over, say, like, the oil and gas industry because I think that there's many more shared values or, like, I think the worldview of an indigenous person and a forester is much more similar. So, yeah, I think that that's kind of exciting almost, and, you know, something kind of a future. And I've seen, like, a bunch of nations now, you know, are opening their own. Own little sawmills and other things, and to me, that's, like, exciting. So. Because it has to do with the housing crises we have. Right. So they want to be able to, you know, harvest their own wood to build their own homes, which, I mean, why we aren't doing that, I have no idea. You know, instead of shipping in the wood and timber and stuff. So I think, yeah, there's. Unfortunately, there's not like, a really easy answer, but I would say, like, the biggest thing is, you know, to be genuine and patient and then understand that history, you know, that the situation that you're coming into, because lots of people get like a. I don't want to say white savior, because that sounds really bad, but, you know, it's kind of like, oh, I'm going to go to the community and help them, or, you know, like. And I think the problem is that there's a revolving door of these, you know, white saviors or people that, you know, are coming to save them. And like, even, like, if you go to a first nation conference, like, there's just kind of business, business people all over the place trying to sell the chiefs on different ideas and different. Different things. So, yeah, it's almost kind of being. Becoming trusted in the community and then also working Long term. And that's something that, you know, our, especially in government, like, we don't really support because, you know, everyone kind of wants to climb the ladder in government, whereas, you know, the most trusted people are generally the ones from the community who've been in the community the longest.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

And that's generally who like, an indigenous person would trust.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

So, yeah, it's almost like doing these relationships long term too. And I think there's some great examples out there of things that are going really well.

[Alie Ward]

So, yes, trust and incentives really matter, as does plain old money.

[Matt Kristof]

And I would say lots of that does come from like, that funding issue, you know, that sometimes they just don't have enough money. And then also other times, you know, we're dealing with lots of issues that have been brought on by colonization. Right. So like, if you're dealing with a suicide crisis in your community, you're not really going to care about forestry. Right. And so I hear people say that too. Like, to me sometimes about, you know, when I talk about how we're stewards of the environment, they'll say to me, like, have you ever been on a reserve and looked at, like, you know, there's garbage everywhere and, you know, and people don't care about their houses and like, that's hardly an environmental steward. And to me that's colonization. Colonization. Right. Like, that's where. Where we've gone and where we've been pushed.

[Alie Ward]

So reminder that cultural burning practices were criminalized, but now they're becoming of interest to Western scientists. And Amy says that returning to that fired stewardship could be really healing for forests, for people who love the forest, and for the people who have been kept from doing it for so long.

[Matt Kristof]

Moving forward, it's kind of like re. Like regaining our culture back. And so that's like where it's related to burning. That's. We're burning in those things because burning for us is a cultural practice. Right. And so I think by getting fire back on the landscape, by kind of making our forests healthier, you know, then that promotes a healthier community.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

So, you know, instead of kids sitting inside, you know, they're out on the land and like, what kid doesn't like fire?

[G]

Right, Totally.

[Matt Kristof]

So they're out with their elders, like burning and. And anyways, there's neat things, like even just showing kids, like, how smart their ancestors were. Like, the one elder that I was talking to was telling me about how drip torches actually came from first nations people, which I didn't know, but I think like, that to me, that's neat because you take kids out there.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

And you show them, like, well, you know, drip torches came from your. You know, and. And super cool. And even, like, kids had jobs on fires. Right. So. Oh, man, I actually heard this fantastic quote that almost made me cry the other day from this guy in Australia and he was saying, for them, burning is such a family affair. And actually, that's what I hear too, from all of our. The people I've talked to here is that, you know, it wouldn't just be the men that would go out and burn, it's the entire family and the kids, like, one thing they would do is pick up, like, pine cones and, you know, light them on fire and then from the fire and then throw them.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Matt Kristof]

So, like, awesome. Them for kids. And I know, like, there's fire managers probably listening to this saying, oh, my goodness, they're going to burn down the fire.

[G]

Please do not do this. If you are just a kid listening, I don't want to start throwing. Yeah. Flaming balls of fire. Don't do that.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah, but this was obviously under the direction of elders and, you know, also burning at, like, very low risk times. Right. Like, this was not in the very control. Yes. But so, you know, it's to give the kids a job on the fire. And the one. One guy from Australia was saying that for his mob, that for them it was bringing children's laughter back to the forest because the trees hadn't heard the children laugh in a long time and they felt that that was needed for the trees to be healthy too. And I mean, that kind of relates. Like, obviously children's laughter does not, you know, directly affect the tree, but it's more that, like, if people are out on the land stewarding it, right. Then that promote. Promotes health for the. The health of the trees. So anyways, to me, that was such a beautiful, like, quote because I think too often, you know, we kind of remove. Remove that or remove kind of the. The community.

[Alie Ward]

Patron Nikki DeMarco asks, Is there any way we could go back to Indigenous stewardship to help with this problem or does the red tape make it not feasible? So, moving forward, what are the legalities of it?

[Matt Kristof]

So on our. Like, the reserves, we're technically allowed to burn. Right. Because that's the, you know, the band. Well, it's federal jurisdiction, but, you know, the band kind of has a bit of control over it. So, you know, that you don't need provincial permission to do that. So, you know, lots of agents, fire management agencies say, you know, oh, we're so supportive of indigenous people and we want to help them, you know, you know, support their practices, you know, until we say, you know, we want to burn something. And so, you know, what I've seen even, you know, in B.C. is where I'm doing a lot of work right now because the nations there are so passionate about burning. But, you know, they, they're going into these meetings and it's, you know, like a really complicated process to get prescribed burning on the ground. And it's very western based. You know, you have to know like fuel types that are out there.

[G]

That's the culture we live in now. Right. So of course there's going to be that kind of bureaucracy.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah, it's like a crazy 12 step process and most of the communities look at that and just say, you know, we'll screw this. We're burning ourselves, you know, and then even when they want to burn, like I've heard of lots, you know, where somebody sees smoke and then, you know, calls the, you know, calls the emergency number and then, you know, a helicopter will just come and put out their, their little fire that they're burning.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Matt Kristof]

Without, you know, coming and dropping down and maybe talking to the people or, or seeing what's going on. So there's a bit of a disconnect. And I can see it from both sides. Right. Because especially in bc, like the virus has been so crazy that I think, you know, the BC see fire management or wildfire service there, you know, obviously doesn't want out of control fires.

[G]

Yes.

[Matt Kristof]

But the nations there want to burn. And so what I'm seeing right now is because they, they're just like smashing heads, basically. Like they're supportive until we want to burn. And because of that smashing of heads is that now the nations are saying like, well, screw you. This is our territory. We're doing what we want, you know, and then like it becomes like this real conflict situation. Situation.

[G]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

And we're trying to work with like the agency and you know, maybe even introduce some sort of like cultural burn protocol or procedure, you know, that's more indigenous based. That same thing. Like you're kind of getting permission, you know, you're notifying the correct authorities, but it's not as crazy as this, like existing process.

[G]

Well, I think that's. And we've just, again, it's not a thing. We've discussed a bit on the, on the other episodes we did that.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah.

[G]

The Good Fire podcast. But talking about that, that's another big barrier to indigenous burning or cultural Burning, however you want to call it, is the, like the western barriers on that. Because, like, you're right, we don't want out of control fires.

[Matt Kristof]

Yes.

[G]

So the Western, like the western government, like, we want to make sure that like any fire that is started is not going to become a problem for anything outside of the reserve or whatever.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[G]

But also at the same time recognizing that like you, like you were saying, indigenous people have been working with fire for thousands of years and understand the relationship. So how do you make sure that government feels comfortable.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah.

[G]

With this going on, but also ensuring that. Because it's entirely possible. Also, like, this is something that somebody who's playing devil's advocate would say. Right. Is just saying that, like, well, how do we ensure that they know what they're doing? Because it could be something. Somebody who. Just because they're indigenous doesn't mean they know what's going on. Right. They have to have that knowledge passed down and collected somehow.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah, no, I've heard that all the time. Like, oh, if we allow this, the Indians are going to be lighting fires everywhere.

[G]

Yeah, exactly. Right.

[Matt Kristof]

And then that kind of fear. Yeah, Right.

[G]

So there's that fear of will they take advantage of this and just do it for fun or whatever. And that exists. So we have to address that fear. So how do we. There's going to have to be a collaboration somehow to be like, okay, hey, we acknowledge that like these four people. Somehow, unfortunately, that's the way it's gonna have to. I think it's probably gonna have to go that these four people in this band have the knowledge.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah.

[G]

And they have to be like, I don't know. And this is super westernized of me to think. Right. Like, these people have the, the knowledge and the understanding of how to do this. So if they're in charge, we're not going to worry about it. But I also feel like indigenous communities having to talk to the overlord, the government about what they're doing on their own land is. Is counter. Is exactly the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish here.

[Matt Kristof]

Yeah. And so that's like. So, you know, like there's fire boss training. Right. Or no burn boss training. So there's like different levels of that you can go through. Same thing. It's very Western. Like, I know that now, like there's Bob Gray and other guys who train on that who are starting to incorporate a bit of indigenous knowledge or, you know, the importance of indigenous knowledge and burning. But same. It's very like kind of Western, you know, this is how we light a prescribed fire.

[G]

And that's all we know. That's the only culture I know. Right. So it's where my perspective is going to come from.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

So we were doing brainstorming some of the fire keepers, and we're like, you know, well, they do a certification course to get that. So maybe what we need to do then is have a cultural burning certification course, right. So that, you know, people would go through. And then once they get that, then, you know, they can go and. And light fires or whatever. But then. Then we had a lot of firekeepers that were saying, like, no, that is basically just us trying to fit into a western system.

[G]

Right.

[Matt Kristof]

And they were saying, like, the one guy actually at the firekeepers conference, I just went to the government, people were talking, and he stood up and he just said, you know, I find this really difficult because they were talking about, you know, like, all the procedures you need to go through to get approval. He stood up and he just said, you know, for me, this is my family's, like, my nation's inherent right to steward the land. This is my responsibility. This is why I was put on this earth, you know, so for me then to have to. To go and ask you for permission to do what is my responsibility and my right. That doesn't make any sense. And then he was saying, like, you know, 100 years ago, you guys were telling us we couldn't burn because we were destroying the forest. And now you're saying to us, oh, only we can burn, because, you know, you got. Because now the forest is destroyed. And he's like, you're the ones, you know, whose practices, because you wouldn't listen to us, you know, have led to this. If you would have listened to my ancestors, you know, then we wouldn't be in this predicament we're in now, so, like, let us kind of take it over. So I think it's one of those, like, I don't. I. I don't really like that term, like, wicked issue, you know, where it's like super complex. But it is kind of like that in a way. Right. Because you, like, you're worried the forest isn't healthy right Now, I don't personally want to say to somebody like, yeah, go out and burn and then have, you know, a massive crown fire start. But I think the thing is with indigenous fire practice is that it's, you know, you're burning at very specific times. So, you know, it's like early spring before the snow is left in Canada. It's Late fall, just like the day or two before the first snowfall. Right. You're not burning like obviously in the summer. So like, I would think that, that, you know, obviously still should be criminalized to some extent. You know, know that you need to find people or whatever that are just going because that is very high risk. And so like, what are like elders and ancestors say from like the different nations that I've talked to is that, you know, our burning that we do is so low risk. That's why we don't need protective equipment. That's why we don't need a burn plan. Because if we're doing it right, you know, there's, there's literally very lower, zero risk risk. Why I think they would say zero risk to what they're doing, you know, to starting an out of control fire, somebody getting hurt.

[G]

It's amazing how complicated the situation is to try and navigate this. But I think, yeah, the only way forward is to come together and have these discussions.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Matt Kristof]

Well, and there's, it seems like a.

[G]

Cop out to say that because it's just like, yeah, like we need to discuss it, but like, unfortunately that's the truth.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Matt Kristof]

Well, and on the Good Fire podcast, I think, like, that's what's interesting is because with the range of people that we talk to on there, like, like, you know, you go from somebody who thinks, you know, like it's their right to burn and they're not working with any agency and then to like other people who, you know, are employed, like me, kind of by an agency, like Frank Lake, you know, he works for U.S. forest Service and he's used his, you know, work within this kind of Western government structure to bring more fire back to his territory. So, yeah, it's just, it's really interesting to see kind of all the different perspectives.

[G]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

So that conversation was from the youe Forest podcast, which is hosted by Matt Kristof, who also co hosts Good Fire with Amy. And of course there's a whole Good Fire episode with Frank Lake and there's so many other great voices in indigenous fire ecology. So I'm going to link that episode and the podcast in general on my website and I will also put up a link to the wonderful 47 page book called Blazing the Celebrating Indigenous Fire Stewardship. So many resources, so much learning. Now to wrap up though, let's talk about some pains in some asses. So the most vexing thing about Amy's.

[Matt Kristof]

Job, I'd have to say my least favorite thing about my job is the bureaucracy, which I think that most people who work in a government agency can relate to. It's sometimes really frustrating when you know, you know, something needs to be done or what a solution solution could be. But then you kind of get held up in all sorts of bureaucratic processes. So I mean, that's my least favorite. Unfortunately, it takes up a lot of.

[E]

Time that we could be, you know.

[Matt Kristof]

Devoting to other things. So that's frustrating for sure in the.

[Alie Ward]

Standout best aspect, the most brightly glowing coal.

[Matt Kristof]

But I think my most favorite thing about my job is that I'm able to to work with communities and knowledge keepers from across Canada and then internationally sometimes as well. And I really realize that that's, you know, a position of privilege that I have and that I'm in to be able to do that. And it comes like with a lot of responsibility that often, you know, keeps me awake at night. But for me, when I'm able to bring firekeepers or other people to events or other things and just see their pride and finally being recognized in their knowledge being known. And sometimes like I've been referring to that as kind of like, you know, we had this big severance event with fire, but now what we're almost seeing is this reunion with fire where Indigenous people are coming back to it. And so, you know, we have the land back movement for Indigenous people. And often I think, you know, we need a fire back movement as well where Indigenous people, you know, impact again.

[E]

To make those decisions on the land.

[Matt Kristof]

And what I'm seeing right now in Canada especially is that there is a movement where people want to be involved in fire management decisions that are happening in their territories. And so I think that's really exciting.

[Alie Ward]

So ask smart people exciting questions because sometimes the situation is impossibly complex and they can help break it down for you. You like a fungus on a fallen log. And so for more on this topic, you can get yourself some good fire podcasts into your ears. It's hosted by Amy and by Matt Kristof and it's linked in the Show Notes. Matt's podcast again is yous Forest Podcast. Thank you so much to him for letting us use so much of his interview with Amy. You can follow Amy hristiansonamy on Twitter. There are more links in the Show Notes and up at my website, alieward.com ologies ologies/goodfire. You can follow us at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Allie Ward with one L. New full length adult friendly episodes continue to come out on Tuesday and we're moving smallogies releases to the weekend. I think Sundays are Mondays, so look for a new kid friendly episode next week. Also, I'm sorry that my neighbor's dog's barking. I can't really do anything about it. We gotta get this episode up. I'm so sweaty. Merch is [e-mail]. thank you to longtime friend Aaron Talbert. We met that when we were four for adminning the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White of the Wordery professional transcription company for making transcripts for ologies. They're available for free on my website. Thank you, Caleb Patton for bleeping episodes. Thank you, Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling and Susan Hale, both of you for helping with social media quizzes and such. As always, Giant. Thank you to resident editor. By resident, I mean we live in the same bed. Jarrett Sleeper, who helped me stitch all these audio clips together. And also of course, to Steven Marie Morgan for all the editing help and for working on smallogies now too. And 2025 dad here. So since this episode first aired, also we have put smallogies in its own feed, so there are free classroom safe kid friendly episodes available. Wherever you get podcasts, you can just look for smologies S M O L O G I E s and the new green cover art for it. Also since this episode first aired, we have added a few great ologies team members, such as Aveline Malik, who makes our professional transcripts, Jake Chaffee and Mercedes Maitland, who edit and managing director Susan Hale. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and I told you at the very beginning, look at this. You made it. If you stick around until the end, I will tell you a fresh secret. A smoldering hot one. And for this one, I'm gonna bring in editor and legally wedded husband, Jared Sleeper.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah, I think technically I own half the show.

[Alie Ward]

Actually, do you own half the show.

[Gavin Jones]

Because we're literally wedding because we're wet. It's California's a 5050 state, babe.

[Alie Ward]

Damn. Getting into that here not have a prenup.

[Gavin Jones]

Oh, my God.

[Alie Ward]

So this better work out okay. We share a hoem. We share a baby daughter who's 12 years old who is very hairy.

[Gavin Jones]

We share life. We share a heart space.

[Alie Ward]

We share.

[Gavin Jones]

We share a soul bond.

[Alie Ward]

What a life. I already was like, let's make this secret quick. And we're already like a minute into it.

[Gavin Jones]

You're asking me to make it quick. You say. You invite me on and say, make it quick. When I'm having the most mystical day I've had.

[Alie Ward]

Let's tell the secret, okay. Because this made me cool. So I was in. I was in Las Vegas. I was getting a flight home today. Now, again, as you heard at the top, there are these horrific wildfires raging. The closest one to us burned up like a thousand homes. And a really weird thing in LA right now is people are finding pages of books all over because the winds are so intense that they've just taken these pages of books and scattered them miles and miles away. Right, Right. So I was in Vegas. I was talking to you on the phone.

[Gavin Jones]

Yes. And I think it was pretty early this morning. Right.

[Alie Ward]

I don't know.

[Gavin Jones]

I think it was. I feel like I woke up and I remember I was very. I don't know, shook or something by the. Not embers. They're not embers. They're ashes. Ashes falling down. Because the smoke wasn't as bad as it was yesterday. And it's kind of poetic. You know, it looks like snow a little bit like this light snow. And so I went outside and I was looking around just at the yard and checking on things, you know, trying to make sure nothing's on fire, seeing how it smells out there. Not as campfirey. And I found a charred page of book.

[Alie Ward]

Creepy.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, yeah, because like you said, there have been people posting these and finding these little bits and pieces, and I knew you'd think it was cool. And I took picture of it, and then I was looking, and the first thing that struck me was on the first page, it had some phrase on it about ashes.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, that's already. If you find a charred.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah. That alone.

[Alie Ward]

If you find a charred book piece, A piece of a page of a book, a burned page of a book in your yard from miles away. And.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah.

[Gavin Jones]

And it's referring to. In ashes and ash. That's referring to itself. Strange.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. It said you could see along the lower half the words among the ashes.

[Gavin Jones]

Right. And I was looking at the rest of the words, trying to figure out it was. I flipped it over and more words. There's one in particular that referred to leaning on a grocery cart, a green grocery cart or something like that.

[Amy Christensen]

That.

[Gavin Jones]

And I had this inkling. I was like, this is familiar. I think I might have read this. And I went. And I did the Google book search thing. And first I was just typing in the dialogue, and a million things were coming up for the phrases that I was finding. And then I was like, let me just see. And I specified the book, I thought it was the Road by Cormac McCarthy.

[Alie Ward]

Which is one of your favorite books.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah, it is one of my favorite books. It was very moving book and a very formative book. I've always been pretty obsessed with post apocalypse stuff, but that one in particular, Corinth McCarthy's writing, really impacted me. And I. I remember that book as being the first one that made me, like, ball. Yeah, that made me go, whoa, A book can make you ball. You can just read a few sentences and just be weeping to yourself alone. And that really struck me. I thought it was, like, extraordinarily beautiful book.

[Alie Ward]

And I've never read it. And part of why I've never read it is I feel like I've never been in, like, a headspace to get into something that's so bleak.

[Gavin Jones]

Oh, it's atrocious. It's really tough. I read that book. This is a funny pairing, but I remember I read that book back to back with World War Z, which is a great book, actually. They do it in the style of an oral history. And that book has a chapter that involves cannibalism, and the Road involves cannibalism.

[Amy Christensen]

And.

[Gavin Jones]

And reading those books back to back just. I had never had a weird phobia. Like, you know, it's a disgust, but it never was. Like, after reading those books, I've been so creeped out by the idea of Campbellism, like, in a more intense way than you're.

[Alie Ward]

Like, you really turned me off.

[Gavin Jones]

I know every time I say that sounds crazy because you're like, well, yeah, we all. But you know what I mean in a way that you're like, oh, it's like. It's so visceral and just disgusting.

[Alie Ward]

Anyway, so Cormac McCarthy's the road.

[Gavin Jones]

Very beautiful book. Very intense book. And the themes of the book. The book is about this. I'll get it. Very brief. The book is this Father.

[Alie Ward]

No spoilers.

[Gavin Jones]

No, I'm doing my best not to do spoilers, but the premise, and people have probably seen the movie, that movie with Viggo Mortensen is pretty decent. I don't know, but the book is about an awful post apocalypse, like, just the most hellish version of it you could imagine. The world is destroyed, and this man is alone with his son, and he is trying to protect his son through this wasteland. And the son is still very young. And the father, in trying to protect the son, sort of manages to keep the son kind of pure and naive, even, like, decent. And he's trying to protect the decency in this land that there's just none of it left. It's just like a cruel, vicious landscape of a type of nature that like Thomas Hobbes would think up or something like that. You know, just like life is cruel, brutish and short. Right.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Bleeding bleak.

[Gavin Jones]

Bleak, bleak, bleak.

[Alie Ward]

And so this.

[Gavin Jones]

He talks about the. He talks about the child, though. He talks about child as being like the. The carrier of this light and that. Like that he carries the light of the world. And it's really beautiful and it really struck me when I was young. Anyway, so this page, this page, this page floats down. Floats down on no other pages. No other pages.

[Alie Ward]

No charred remnant of a book that you.

[Gavin Jones]

When you touch it. When I touched it, a piece felt like every time I touch it, it falls apart. More like unbelievably delicate.

[Alie Ward]

And the horrible part about finding these ashes everywhere is that that was someone's house, that was in someone's house. That was a book that someone bought and read or lent to someone. And it carried on these 80 mile an hour winds as a remnant of someone who is having the worst day of their life.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, and you and I were having a discussion then too. You were asking this question which is plaguing us both and I think plaguing so many people out here, because this is just a symptom of a wider chaos we're all experiencing and going to experience more knowing about climate change. This question of, like, what are we going to do? And. And what can we do? We're just struck by that all the time.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, like, what can we do?

[Gavin Jones]

And some. That question is very practical. Very like, are we going to move? Are we going to. What are we going to do with our lot? What are we going to do?

[Alie Ward]

Mutual aid funds that we can amplify which as this, as we learn more about which friends have lost houses, we can amplify. But right now it's like, what can we do? The fires are still 0% contained and.

[Gavin Jones]

It felt very spooky.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Gavin Jones]

That this floats down. And I'm prone to mysticism and receiving the signals when I can.

[Alie Ward]

My man cries, I cry, I cry.

[Gavin Jones]

I cry so much like my man.

[Alie Ward]

Cries and I love it.

[Gavin Jones]

And I find this scene in the book, I find it confirmed to be this from the road. And the scene is a very intense, beautiful scene in the book. And in the scene of the book, the father and the son have had recently this stroke of luck and they found this readout with a cache of food and stuff in it. And they have all this extra, like, riches for where they're at, but it's dangerous to carry that stuff in this land. The father's really scared of it being stolen from them to being a target now. So they're moving on. And they come across this old man wandering by himself. And in the scene, the old man is so scared to meet these people like, that he assumes are going to victimize him somehow, that he, like, sits in the middle of the road and just is doing nothing. And the son is saying to. Says to the old man, we're not robbers. We're not robbers. Like, he's this kid, like, that's the way he conceives of it, just robbers. And the man is like, just sitting and the father is freaking out. And the father's going, like, this man is probably here to set up an ambush. He's looking around for, like, where's the rest of the gang? And this is a distraction to kill us and steal from us. And. And the son is going, no, dad, he's just scared. Papa, he calls him. He's just scared. And the. The dad is like saying, if it's an ambush, you're going to go first. Like, it's so intense. And he's just saying, no, papa, he's just scared. And he begs the father to let's give him some food to feed him. He's like, please, let's just give him something. And the father basically, like, agrees and gives him a. A can of fruit cocktail. And the old man's like, what do I have to do for it? And he can't even understand that. They just want to help. They end up, like, eating a meal with him. And it's just very beautiful. And it felt like, holy, like, in this question that we're literally talking to ourselves, what do we do? What can we do? It was like, like, there's your answer. It's you help everybody that you can, when you can, and that these very basic small feeling things make sure people have food. I mean, I, you know, I have a very strong conviction that truly the meaning of life from a very evolutionary and I think spiritual standpoint is to eat delicious things and laughter in safety with people that you love. And I think everybody could be afforded that and should be afforded that in this world. And that feeling of, like, when things are so intense, people are losing their homes, like, very simple resources, like, how can you help the people around you? And that's where I've come to generally over Covid and what the Internet has done to us and the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that by focusing on like the hundred people around me that I can. The people in my Stream street, our neighbors, you and Gami, our close friends, like just doing what you can as often as possible. A lot of people are citing I posted about this and I think about all the time they Refer to the Mr. Rogers quote about look for the helpers. And I always just think too, like, be the helpers, you know, Absolutely, look for the helpers. Don't ignore in. In the scope of all the bad things we get. Yes, look for the good people, but also be the good people. That's like really all we can do. And this idea from that of carrying the light, that like, no matter how hellish the world feels, the only solace I've had for myself over the pandemic and different things in the world feeling darker and darker, is that every time I feel dismayed at the world being the way it is. Why is it so mean? Why is it so cruel? Why is it so unjust? I think to myself, well, the only thing I can do is try to be what I wish it was.

[Alie Ward]

Which is the idea also of someone sitting in the road being scared of someone else who's scared of them.

[Amy Christensen]

It's.

[Alie Ward]

That's. I feel like everyone's just like a shelter dog that's looking for the next blow. And so, yeah, it's just defense on defense on defense and cruelty on cruelty and hoarding, on hoarding and greedy because no one feels like other people will have their back. So it's just every person for themselves.

[Gavin Jones]

And I think a profound thing about this scene in the book is that the fears of the father are justified. The fears are legitimate and real. This could be an ambush. We could be in danger. We could be fucking idiots for stopping to help somebody out, but you do it anyway. And that is like, that's. I'm sorry I'm losing my mind, but it's a scary, sad time for so many people and it's only gonna get scarier. And I think we in. In searching for compassion for ourselves and others, there's a lot of totally true stuff out there about, like, only do what you can. Don't be beating yourself up. Don't overextend. And that is all true. But I hope that we're moving to a place where those of us who are capable, if you are able to strengthen yourself and then do the scary, risky thing of helping and offering to help and trying. I think it's like, that's the Only thing that's going to change the world.

[Alie Ward]

There's a hell of a 2025 already, dude.

[Gavin Jones]

The first week.

[Alie Ward]

And so that's the secret this week is we had an A. Oh.

[Gavin Jones]

The secret is that your husband is becoming terminally mystical. And you are. You have one of the top science podcasts in the world. And you are unfortunately married to an absolute kook.

[Alie Ward]

Listen, I think trying to find meaning and trying to find.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, a charred page of a book fell out of the sky. Darling, you must understand that.

[Alie Ward]

Had the words among the ashes.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah. From one of the most meaningful books in my life about an apocalypse. Also, everyone listening to this should read Octavia Butler.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, Octavia Butler. Parable.

[Gavin Jones]

Go read the whole Sower Parable.

[Alie Ward]

Sower series, which is set a few miles from where we live in Altadena.

[Gavin Jones]

She literally wrote it in Altadena. About Altadena. About this year. Basically. It features a fascist president who make America great again. Is the thing. Is his slogan.

[Alie Ward]

That's his actual slogan in the book.

[Gavin Jones]

It's like. Which I think was Reagan's or something like that as well. But she is. We've been talking about this too. The curse of reading. If you consume literature and history, suddenly you start having these prophetic visions that come true all the time because you have accessed and consumed the shared wisdom of all the people that came before you.

[Alie Ward]

Pattern recognition becomes like so much more of a blow when you have that much more data.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

To correlate.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, it also can make you feel very lonely when everyone else is like, what are you talking about? What are you seeing? Or. Or I don't. Nobody can has any idea why this stuff is going on. Actually, you're like, we do.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Gavin Jones]

We cannot do it.

[Alie Ward]

We can do something else to end it on an up note. Help who you can. Even in small gestures, taking in our neighbor's packages right now.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah. Checking in with each other a lot.

[Alie Ward]

Checking in with people.

[Matt Kristof]

There are.

[Alie Ward]

You don't have to save the entire world yourself. You don't have to come up with some grand plan to reverse climate change on your own. But you could definitely check in on people.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah. Check in on people.

[Alie Ward]

Offer to lend. You got a pickup truck. Offer to help someone move something heavy if you can. Or lend it. Just stuff like that. Anyway.

[Gavin Jones]

So much.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Gavin Jones]

So much. And just be adaptable, be flexible. Lead with love, carry the light.

[Alie Ward]

And maybe. Maybe we're in a simulation.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, absolutely.

[Alie Ward]

And it's getting goofy as hell.

[Gavin Jones]

Well. And what I said to you about that. Even if we're in a simulation. The love is still real.

[Matt Kristof]

Love's real.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Well, thanks for telling the secret.

[Gavin Jones]

Thanks for inviting me on. For your secret telling. I love you and I love your show.

[Alie Ward]

Our show.

[Gavin Jones]

Well, our show. Yeah, our show. Sure. Our show.

[Alie Ward]

Get an emergency kit.

[Gavin Jones]

I actually don't know if that's true. You might have invented this show before we were married, so legally. I just don't want you to feel weird about that.

[Matt Kristof]

It's.

[Gavin Jones]

I think of it as your show. I don't think of it as our show.

[Matt Kristof]

It's.

[Alie Ward]

But it's. But it's communal property in California, baby.

[Gavin Jones]

I guess. Who knows?

[Alie Ward]

I don't know who would get gone the difference doesn't make.

[Gavin Jones]

You'd be with me the rest of your life. You're stuck until I'm dead.

[Alie Ward]

So we never know how long we've got, darling.

[Gavin Jones]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, well, that's it for this week. I'm gonna go sleep because I have a headache. And next week, fresh episode for you. I'm already mostly done with it, but I just couldn't pull it off tonight.

[Gavin Jones]

Very exciting.

[Alie Ward]

Oxygen mask. Put Euros on.

[Amy Christensen]

Yeah.

[Gavin Jones]

Hey, put your respirator on first.

[Alie Ward]

I'm doing it. Thanks, babes.

[Gavin Jones]

Thank you. Love you.

[Alie Ward]

Love you. Bye. Bye.

[Amy Christensen]

He leaned on his cane and lowered himself into the road where he sat among the ashes with one hand over his head.

[Alie Ward]

Where'd you get those shoes?

[Amy Christensen]

DSW has all the shoes you need for whatever you're into. You know, like running shoes that give new meaning to personal best, or everyday sneakers that make coffee runs look cool. Basically, DSW has all the best styles from the brands that always get it right, like Nike, Brooks, Timberland and more.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, yeah.

[Amy Christensen]

Did we mention they also happen to be the perfect price? Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store. And dsw dot com.