NCSAF Luncheon

New Directions in Wildland Fire Management
Wednesday, February 20, 2008, 11:30-1:00pm
(Please note that this is a change from the original calendar date of Feb. 14)

Location TBA

Presenter

Jaelith Hall-Rivera
Wildfire Policy Analyst, The Wilderness Society

Presentation Description

Wildland fire management costs are skyrocketing - predicted to consume nearly half of an otherwise declining USFS budget in FY09. The long-standing practice of hitting every last fire with every possible resource simply is not sustainable.  This budget “crisis” is creating fertile ground for new approaches to fire management., including a different approach to suppression called “risk-based suppression” or “Appropriate Management Response”, and expanding the practice of managing fires for their ecological benefit, restoring forests’ and rangelands’ natural relationship with fire, called Wildland Fire Use.  These tools are cornerstones in a new alternative to aggressively snuffing every last flame.

 Jaelith Hall-Rivera, from TWS’s Fire Team, was invited to audit an advanced firefighting training course for a week in Tucson last year. She returned with some insights on how fire seasons might unfold differently in the future, and would like to share them with you.  We are excited to invite you to a presentation on these new directions in fire management. 

Make no mistake, most fires will continue to be aggressively fought - and rightly so. Safeguarding lives will always be the number one priority. Still, it will be instructive to watch the season play out and see how well these new directions are taking root. 

Presenter Biography

Jaelith Hall-Rivera is a native of rural, small-town Iowa and has lived in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and now Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the forestry program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and she received two master’s degrees from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, one in public affairs with an emphasis in environmental policy and natural resource management and another in environmental science, in 2001. While in school she worked on a variety of public lands issues, including trust land management in Arizona, forest policy, and endangered species, and published articles in both scholarly and professional journals. After time spent at a wetlands conservation organization and as an environmental consultant, she spent almost five years at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), where she analyzed a variety of natural resource programs and helped to produce reports on Columbia River salmon, desert tortoise recovery, the Endangered Species Act consultations and recovery programs, transportation impacts on habitat, and wood utilization. As wildfire policy analyst, she works closely with TWS’s Forest Team and Appropriations staff in shaping and leading our pro-active, solution-oriented policy and appropriation work on the Hill.

Please RSVP to Terri Bates, batesmt@verizon.net 703-538-1134 by noon on February 19th.

CFE Credits = 0.5