We are in the throes of a devastating year for fire in California, as well as much of the western United States. Yet fire need not be a universally maligned force. For millennia, California’s indigenous peoples used fire as a tool in practices of traditional burning. Fire can be used as a tool to eradicate invasive weeds, help restore native plant communities, and reduce the intensity of wildfires when they occur. Landowners and communities are increasingly recognizing this, and coming together to share tools, resources, knowledge, and labor. And federal agencies are turning to Native communities for consult on the use of fire in land management practices. This webinar will explore both “good” fire, as well as approaches for recovery. We’ll hear perspectives from members of prescribed burn associations on the application of prescribed burning on private land, farmers dealing with fire-borne toxins and utilizing mycoremediation to aid in recovery, and Native Californians on fire ecology and their long-standing relationship with using fire to tend to the land.
Photo Credit - Resource Conservation District of Butte County
Save the date!
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
12:00 - 1:30pm PDT
Presenters:
Wolfy Rougle, Butte County Resource Conservation District and Butte County Prescribed Burn Association
Wolfy Rougle is a Forest Health Watershed Coordinator with the Butte County Resource Conservation District (RCD) and the coordinator of the fledgeling Butte County Prescribed Burn Association. Wolfy owned Springfed Organic Farm and Nursery in Cottonwood, CA for 12 years, bringing vegetables and nursery starts to the Redding, CA farmer's market and operating a winter farmshare. Wolfy believes that agriculture and wildness are interconnected and neither can be fully healthy without the other. Human-led fire is a language agriculture and wildness can use to communicate with each other.
Cheetah Tchudi, TurkeyTail Farm/Butte Remediation
Cheetah Tchudi has been working in the fields of agriculture and mycology for 15 years, after graduating with a BS in those fields from the Evergreen State (WA) College. As an undergrad, Cheetah received a grant from Western Sustainable Agriculture and Education (WSARE) to conduct mycology research. In 2008, Tchudi began TurkeyTail Farm in Butte County, CA, raising lamb, pork, chicken, duck eggs, mushrooms, and herbs. In 2018, The Camp Fire devastated Tchudi’s Farm. The resultant toxins from the fire motivated Tchudi to establish a nonprofit, Butte Remediation, which has two goals: 1) to research and to provide baseline information on fire borne contamination; and 2) to provide no-cost fungal bioremediation services to underserved Camp Fire survivors. Butte Remediation’s ultimate goal is to create open source methods of remediation for future use.
Edward Willie, Pomo/Walaiki/Wintu
Edward Willie, a true native of California (of Pomo, Wintu, Paiute, and Wailaki ancestry), is a native ecologist with 40 years’ experience teaching Traditional Ecological Knowledge, fire ecology, herbalism, permaculture, and ancient skills to people of all ages. Also an artist (drawing, painting, and sculpture), he has in recent years been a core organizer of the annual Buckeye Gathering, a gathering in support of ancestral arts.
Moderator:
Evan Wiig, Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF)
Evan is a community organizer with a passion for sustainable agriculture and local food systems. From California cattle ranches to Brooklyn community gardens, Evan has spent the past decade mucking chicken coops, reviving his local Grange hall, writing on issues of food and ag, and in 2011 founded The Farmers Guild, which in 2017 merged with CAFF to better serve and represent the diversity of family farms throughout the state.
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