Congratulations Kelsey Tarabini – the recipient of the 2026 Early Career Award in Fire Operations
Kelsey, a Bushfire Risk Analyst with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action in Victoria, Australia, was presented with her award by IAWF President Trevor Howard and IAWF Director Sarah Harris at the 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference in Hobart today.
Kelsey’s experience spans fuel management, emergency intelligence, and nationally coordinated research with practitioners and academics.
She contributes operationally as a firefighter and through incident management teams in fire behaviour, mapping, and intelligence roles. Kelsey has served with the South Australian Country Fire Service as a volunteer firefighter and continues service with the Victorian Country Fire Authority. She is also a member of the Australian Army Reserves and former Board member of Women and Firefighting Australasia.
Kelsey represents an emerging generation of fire practitioners integrating science, risk modelling and frontline experience
This award recognizes a promising early-career professional who has demonstrated outstanding ability in any field of wildland fire operations.
Iroro Tanshi’s passion for protecting wildlife grew through the cracks of her childhood in an industrial, oil-producing town in southern Nigeria. Her efforts to protect an endangered bat has led to an international award for wildfire prevention across her community.
While her community had few green spaces, her love for nature was kindled through documentaries. Her environmental science degree allowed her to put what she saw on screen into action, leading her to become a wildfire mitigator and ecologist, and recently being awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize.
Her notoriety came after she discovered a roost of endangered bats in 2016, which hadn’t been documented globally in five years and hadn’t been seen in Nigeria for over 45 years. The short-tailed roundleaf bats have large ears, round button noses, and live on fruit, pollen, nectar, and insects.
Just two weeks after her discovery, a devastating wildfire swept through the forest, causing Tanshi to commit to improving wildfire prevention in the area and launching the Zero Wildfire Campaign. The effort resulted in residents of five villages leading wildfire-prevention efforts in their own communities and the creation of an early-warning wildfire detection system.
“Under Iroro’s leadership, community forest guardians responded to 74 fire outbreaks on farms from early 2022 to spring 2025, successfully preventing any of them from escalating into unmanageable wildfires,” officials with the Goldman Environmental Prize wrote in a blog post. “Her Zero Wildfire Campaign has safeguarded the biodiverse 24,700-acre Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary from devastating wildfires, protecting Nigeria’s stronghold for short-tailed roundleaf bats. At the same time, the program has secured the crops and livelihoods of roughly 27,000 people in 16 surrounding communities.”
Fire, in its essence, is about connecting people with place, past with future, ground to air. The 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference began today in Hobart, Tasmania with a Welcome to Country from Trawlwoolway man Todd Sculthorpe, who asked everyone to think about knowledge that respects and understands fire. Here is his Welcome to the 470 delegates.
Ya pulingina, hello and welcome.
My name is Todd Sculthorpe. I stand before you as a proud Trawlwoolway man, carrying a lineage that stretches back through my ancestors to Fanny Cochrane-Smith, and her parents Tanganutra and Nicerminic and their parents and so on. Their lives, their resilience, and their deep relationship with Country live on in me, and it is with that good spirit and with deep respect that I welcome you all here today to Nipaluna, Hobart.
This land was traditionally the lands of the Muwinina people, they cared for this country nestled between the feet of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington and the shores of Timtumili Minanya/the River Derwent. From as far down the southeastern coast to the Kingborough region and as far north as the Derwent valley they cared for country, introduced vital life-giving burning that has shaped this landscape. As a community we feel their absence deeply because with them went generations of cultural knowledge and a deep relationship with country. But they will not be forgotten by us the Palawa community and because of that they will continue to live on in our hearts and our intentions to respect and care for country.
I pay respects to my community the Palawa people, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, as the enduring custodians of this land Lutruwita. I pay my respects to our Elders past and present and to those that did not survive the impacts of invasion. I extend that respect to any first nations people here today, to your elders and families and all delegates and presenters.
You have come here as fire practitioners, scientists, land managers, thinkers, and knowledge holders from across the world. You have come to talk about fire, its behaviour, its fuels, its risks, its science. But here, on this island, fire is more than a phenomenon to be studied. It is a relationship. It is a language. It is a practice of care.
For Palawa people, fire has always been part of how we understand and live with Country. It is not something separate from us, it is something we move with, something we listen to, something we carry responsibility for.
When we speak about cultural burning, we are not simply speaking about a technique or a management strategy. We are speaking about a way of seeing the world, where fire is guided by knowledge passed down over tens of thousands of years. Knowledge built through observation, through story, through practice, and through deep, enduring connection.
Fire, in this sense, is not destructive. It is regenerative. It is purposeful. It is relational.
It clears, but it also reveals.
It burns, but it also heals.
It transforms, but it also connects.
And importantly, it is never applied in isolation, it is always part of a broader understanding of Country: the seasons, the winds, the animals, the plants, and the people.
In Lutruwita, our ancestors used fire carefully and intentionally. They read the landscape in ways that science is still catching up to, understanding when to burn, where to burn, and when to let Country rest. These practices shaped ecosystems over tens of thousands of years, creating mosaics of vegetation that greatly reduced the risk and intensity of wildfires and supported biodiversity.
Today, many of the landscapes you study, many of the fuel loads you model, are the result of disrupted relationships with fire. When cultural burning was interrupted, when people were removed from Country, fire did not disappear. It changed. It built up. It became something more dangerous, more unpredictable. And we have seen the impact of this not just here in Lutruwita and not just in Australia but globally.
And that brings me to where we find ourselves now.
We are living in a time where fire is increasingly framed as a global crisis. We see it in the headlines, megafires, unprecedented seasons, landscapes burning with an intensity and scale that challenges our systems and our understanding.
But perhaps what we are really seeing is not just a fire problem, but a relationship problem.
A disconnection.
A forgetting.
A loss of balance between people, fire, and Country.
If I can offer a metaphor, think of the world right now as a landscape carrying a heavy fuel load. Not just physical fuels, but social, political, and environmental tensions. Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, conflict, all of these are like dry tinder accumulating over time.
And when the right, or perhaps we should say the wrong, conditions come together, those tensions can ignite. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly. Sometimes in ways we expect, and often in ways we don’t.
We are living in a time of unpredictable ignition.
And just like wildfire, once something starts, it can spread rapidly, crossing boundaries, overwhelming systems, and challenging our ability to respond.
But we know, from fire, that unpredictability does not mean uncontrollability.
It means we need deeper understanding.
It means we need better relationships.
It means we need to pay attention to the conditions we are creating.
And that is why conferences like this matter.
Because just as fire moves across landscapes, knowledge must move across communities.
You have come together here, from different countries, disciplines, and perspectives, to share what you know. To respectfully challenge each other. To learn. To innovate.
And in that coming together, there is great strength.
But I would encourage you to think about this not just as an exchange of information, but as an opportunity to build relationships, relationships with each other, and relationships with the places you work.
Because knowledge without relationship can only take us so far.
Todd Sculthorpe, Aboriginal Trawlwoolway man from Tasmania, welcoming delegates to the 2026 International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference.
Cultural burning teaches us that the most important question is not just “How do we burn?” but “Why do we burn?” and “Who are we in relation to this place?”
It asks us to slow down.
To observe.
To listen.
To be guided, not just by data, but by responsibility.
And it reminds us that fire is not just a tool, it is a teacher.
Here in Lutruwita, we are in a time of renewal. There is a growing recognition of the importance of cultural burning practices, and a re-emergence of Aboriginal leadership in caring for Country. But this work is not about going backwards, it is about bringing together knowledge systems.
To offer another cultural analogy,
It is about weaving.
Weaving together Palawa knowledge and Western science.
Weaving together long-term observation and modern technology.
Weaving together community, policy, and practice.
And like any weaving, it requires care, patience, and respect.
Because not all threads are the same.
Not all knowledge is held in the same way.
And not all voices have been equally heard.
So as you move through this conference, I invite you to think about what you are contributing to that weave.
What knowledge are you bringing?
What knowledge are you open to receiving?
And how are you ensuring that the relationships you build here are grounded in respect and reciprocity?
Because the challenges we face, whether they are wildfires, climate change, or broader global uncertainties, cannot be addressed by any one group alone.
They require collective effort.
They require humility.
They require us to recognise that no single system of knowledge holds all the answers.
Fire, in its essence, is about connection.
It connects the ground to the air.
It connects the past to the future.
It connects people to place.
And in many ways, this conference is a fire in itself, a coming together of energy (physical and intellectual) and potential.
So, my question or my challenge if you will indulge me is, what will you do with that energy?
Will it burn quickly and fade?
Or will it be tended carefully, like a cultural burn, creating space for new growth, strengthening connections, and leaving the landscape healthier than before?
That choice sits with all of us.
Before I close, I want to return to where I began, with my ancestors.
Fanny Cochrane, Tanganutra, Nicerminic.
They lived through times of immense change, upheaval, and loss. They witnessed the disruption of Country and culture in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend. And yet, through them, knowledge endured.
Connection endured.
Responsibility endured.
I stand here because of that endurance.
And I speak to you today with that same sense of responsibility, to ensure that what we pass on to future generations is not a landscape of crisis, but a landscape of care and of respect.
A landscape where fire is understood, respected, and used wisely.
A landscape where knowledge is shared, not siloed.
A landscape where people come together, not just in times of emergency, but in ongoing relationship.
So in that spirit of care and respect, I welcome you to Nipaluna.
I welcome you to Lutruwita.
I welcome you to this gathering.
May your time here be meaningful.
May your conversations be respectful.
May your learning be deep.
And may the knowledge you carry forward help create a better, more balanced relationship with fire and with the world we all share.
Numerous Southeast US states are currently experiencing historic levels of drought, fueling wildfires that have caused one death and have destroyed over 120 homes.
Over 50% of the southeast region, from Virginia to Mississippi, is experiencing exceptional-to-extreme drought levels, with the entire region under at least a moderate drought category as of Thursday, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. Portions of the region have experienced the driest period between September and March since record keeping began in 1895.
Florida currently has the most active wildfires in the U.S., with 13 fires burning over 28,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The volunteer fire department in Hilliard, Florida, on Friday announced the line-of-duty death of firefighter James “Kevin” Crews, who experienced a medical emergency while fighting the Old Divie Highway Fire.
“Our department and our community have lost a hero,” said Hilliard Volunteer Fire Chief Jerry Johnson. “Kevin was the epitome of courage and dedication. His sacrifice will never be forgotten. We are focused on supporting his family and our personnel during this unimaginably difficult time.”
Numerous structures in Georgia are also threatened, with 87 homes burned in Brantley County, the most destroyed by a single wildfire in the state’s history, and 35 other homes in Clinch and Echols counties.
“We have over 800 homes that are in harm’s way right now,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said at a press conference on Friday. “The Georgia National Guard has six air assets available to help with fire suppression. The Department of Natural Resources’ response teams are deployed, as well as the Insurance Commissioner’s Office.”
Forecasters expect the region’s very dry conditions to persist, with minimum relative humidity of 20-30%. Wind is expected to remain light in the coming days, outside of sea breezes that develop near the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Dead trees littering some forests after 2024’s Hurricane Helene are adding to the already abundant fuel.
A wildfire forecasting system powered by artificial intelligence was around 30% better at identifying dangerous fire conditions in advance than the models currently used, according to new research.
The Australian and New Zealand researchers’ study, published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, trained a machine learning model on historical weather and fire data from three different fire-climate regimes across Australia, specifically the subtropical Sunshine Coast, peri-urban Brisbane and temperate Hobart areas. They then tested it against Australia’s current wildfire risk system, the fuel-specific Fire Behaviour Index.
The machine-learning model outperformed the current forecasting model by 10% to 30%, depending on the scenario, the researchers found. The AI-based model also doubled potential financial savings compared with the Fire Behaviour Index.
An immediate limitation was the frequency with which the current model updated wildfire data compared to the new machine learning model. Current systems could only compute wildfire forecasts hourly and release a risk rating to the public only once a day. But the machine-learning system could update its information every 30 minutes, providing near-real-time insight.
“Wildfires don’t wait for the daily forecast. If fire weather conditions can change within hours, our warning systems need to move just as quickly,” lead author Alberto Ardid said in a Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury press release. We originally developed the model as a proof of concept in one region. However, in this new study, we tested it across multiple regions to see whether the approach works under different fire weather conditions.”
As we come into the north-flowing warmth of the North American spring, the impacts of snow drought and heat dome are prepping wildland fuels for what may be a transition to a “super” El Nino.
Yet it is spring, and reading the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook for April through June we note that there is something assuring in the calm, expert insights from nearly a dozen analysts from Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (Mexico), the National Interagency Fire Center (United States) and Natural Resources Canada.
This is not to downplay a winter with extraordinary fire activity — for the U.S., the latest national Situation Report counts 22,000 fires year-to-date (150 percent of the 10-year average) and nearly 1.8 million acres burned (190 percent of average).
Moving into the spring, the Seasonal Fire Assessment identifies numerous regions likely to see above-normal fire activity (and some will be very active), but overall there are broad regions enjoying what may be a truncated spring green-up with the potential to transition too quickly into what many fear will be a quite literal (and potentially tragic) barn-burner of a summer.
In the Seasonal Fire Assessment, released April 15, the authors observe that what North America faces is both global and as local as the dry dirt under our feet: “The critical factors influencing significant fire potential for this outlook period are global climate patterns related to sea surface temperatures, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, and large scale, longer-term soil moisture deficit.”
It’s the soil moisture deficit that’s a challenge to overcome … with the current Drought Outlook for mid-April highlighting the drought in the US West (with growing dry holes in the central Rockies) and in much of the Southeast.
A 12-week drought animation, closing out on April 14, illustrates the expanding deficit, with at least 70% of the U.S. in drought since the beginning of February.
This drought impact has already been noted in a Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory for the Southeastern United States, issued April 16 for the southern Appalachians, Piedmont and coastal Southeast — basically, a swath from New Orleans to Cincinnati, Ohio to Washington, D.C., to Florida.
The Southern Area analysts caution that “normal” fire conditions may not moderate the extraordinary dry fuels …
Typical fire weather thresholds may not apply when record high fire danger and record heat align – critical conditions may occur with RH 5% above and winds 5 mph below regional thresholds
Do not be fooled by fuels that appear to be green – fire will spread readily under current conditions
Back to the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment, we note that the above normal activity for the southeast U.S. is also appearing in Mexico’s active fire season.
As summarized by the analysts: “Considering current temperature and precipitation patterns, national drought status, and seasonal forecasts, wildfire activity is expected to escalate across most of Mexico during April and May.”
While they note that spring is “projected to be comparatively less warm due to slightly above average rainfall, which will enhance soil moisture and effectively modulate fire intensity.” With the potential for warmer and moister conditions, they also note the impacts of variability: “the transitioning to ENSO-neutral in May keeps the potential for extreme dry or wet events … a highly unstable and wetter than normal spring is expected compared to previous years, though significant heat will still characterize the season.” Moving into June, fire activity will move north into northern Baja and moderate in the south.
Moving north, the U.S. is likely to parallel the seasonal north-ward green-up, with notable exceptions:
In June, above normal potential will continue in much of the Southwest, while also expected into much of southern Nevada, southern Utah, and the Colorado West Slope. Above normal potential will also expand across much of northern California and the Inland Northwest. In the Southeast, above normal potential is forecast to persist for South Georgia and Florida, while also expected for portions of East Texas and Louisiana.
The western U.S., is expecting a summer-long impact from the dire lack of snow water equivalent (SWE). The combination of a record snow drought followed by record heat dome has left key watershed regions at 9 to 53 percent SWE of normal.
Canada, however, is likely to benefit from a winter snowpack more robust than the U.S., with fire activity increasing in June — though the analysts note “minimal skill” in some of the outlooks, due to the movement from La Niña and into ENSO-neutral conditions.
For June, much of the country [Canada] shows at least a moderate probability of positive temperature anomalies, but these are particularly evident throughout British Columbia and Labrador as well as areas surrounding Hudson’s Bay. Precipitation outlooks offer no clear signal and minimal skill. That, combined with likely ENSO-neutral conditions supports higher fire potential in June throughout British Columbia and areas surrounding James Bay, west of Hudson’s Bay, and extending into the eastern Northwest Territories. Near-normal activity is expected in the rest of Canada in June.
After June, the impact of ocean-warming may lead us into a “super” El Niño, with the El Niño outlook moving from moderate to strong to very strong over the next few months.
Beginning in June, there is 79 percent likelihood of some stage of El Niño ocean warming. By August, the probability rises to 90 percent, with 63 percent likelihood of Moderate to Very Strong conditions. For much of the U.S, outlooks suggest warmer than normal temperatures and variable precipitation effects. An analysis from Severe Weather Europe expands the impacts and predicts “global weather disruption” for 2026 into 2027.
For now, the North American seasonal fire assessment maps offer a view of our immediate fire future, April through June. Of note: in the three months of continent-wide fire assessments, only two relatively small regions in Canada indicate below-normal fire activity.
Federal officials are considering a rule change that would make wildland firefighters conducting prescribed fires eligible for hazardous duty pay.
The Office of Personnel Management recently posted the proposed rule on the Federal Register, which specified that prescribed burns conducted by General Schedule employees would trigger Hazardous Duty Pay, while Federal Wage System employees would get Environmental Differential Pay.
“The proposed new differentials would apply to GS and FWS employees participating as a member of a firefighting crew engaged in activities on the fireline directly involving the implementation and control of prescribed wildland fires,” the proposed rule said. “This rulemaking would authorize a 25 percent differential.”
Hazard pay has historically not been eligible for GS employees when the “hazard” in question has already been taken into account in the position’s description, like firefighters fighting wildfires, according to the Office. That largely changed for firefighters in 2021 when a special exemption was added, allowing wildland firefighters working on a wildfire’s fireline to receive hazard pay. The proposed rule change follows the same logic, allowing a GS or FWS employee working a prescribed fire’s fireline to receive hazard pay despite the classification of the employee’s position.
Previous research has shown that wildland firefighters conducting prescribed burns are often exposed to carbon monoxide, trace metals, and particulate matter at levels that exceeded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s recommended exposure limit, which may cause both short-term and long-term negative health impacts. Some of the personal protective equipment that wildland firefighters use has been found to increase the risk of cancer, due to the equipment shedding carcinogenic compounds and harmful chemicals when exposed to high temperatures common on firelines.
Firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters has been pushing for the rule change since 2022 and said it was another success in the fight to adequately pay and protect the nation’s firefighters.
“We truly appreciate the agency staff and leadership who pushed to acknowledge that ‘good fire’ is still hazardous work,” the organization said in a social media post. “We still have a long way to go, but this is a big win for the boots on the ground.”
This mentoring program connects a mentor and mentee with a shared birthday, and a common desire to help colleagues. The outcome was an online resource for the greater wildfire community.
I was just a year into my role as science communications specialist with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange, which is part of the Joint Fire Science Program’s Fire Science Exchange Network.
I had mentored young professionals in my many years with the National Weather Service. In the IAWF mentoring program I was randomly paired with Max Levy, who at the time was working on a wildland fire hand crew for the state of Idaho.
To help ensure this six-month mentor-mentee partnership would work for both of us, we were encouraged to have a get-to-know-each-other meeting. That meeting took place on May 29. You are probably wondering about the relevance of the date to the mentoring program and this story. Well, toward the end of our initial productive meeting, during which we agreed to work together over the next six months, I happened to mention that it was my birthday. Remarkably, Max said it was his birthday too. I said we couldn’t be twins because I already have a twin sister, but we could be triplets. And Max countered with the incredible fact that he too was a twin – having a twin brother. What are the odds we would be randomly paired, hold a meeting on our shared birthday, and find out we both had twin siblings? I remember saying we definitely had to work together. And that is exactly what we did.
In our initial meeting, Max indicated he was very interested in community preparedness and resilience. He already had a solid knowledge base on the topic but wanted to expand on it. He also wanted to learn, in general, about experiences others had on wildfires. I knew this was going to be one of my favorite aspects of the mentoring program because I would be learning just as much from Max as he would learn from me.
My background was not in community preparedness and resilience, but I did serve 22 years as an incident meteorologist working on wildfires across the United States. Another aspect of our partnership that I was excited about was that we agreed on the importance of helping other young professionals. One of the goals of the Joint Fire Science Program is to ensure we support the next generation with their growth and knowledge of the fire and forestry community. Even though I worked with the fire and forestry community in my roles with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange and the National Weather Service, my eyes were opened at a National Cohesive Strategy Workshop as to just how many entities are connected to this community. Max felt strongly we should ensure young professionals are aware of all that is out there for them as they decide on potential career paths. Thus, our goal was to create a resource document with relevant information for a variety of users by the end of our six-month commitment.
Max and I would typically meet once or twice a month, catch up on life and work, share wildfire stories, and talk about the resources we were adding to our document. The document was filled with relevant resources on several topics that would benefit the fire and forestry community, especially young professionals.
Our six months went by quickly and our document was complete. But the story does not end there, thanks to Max’s leadership. Max wanted to take our project to the next level and turn our resource document into an online web resource. And so, our partnership continued beyond the required six months.
Over the next four months, amongst life conversations and career advice, work was done to create the Wildland Fire Resources Library
The library is a centralized hub for the wildland fire community, providing access to valuable resources, opportunities, and information. The content focuses on building community resilience and providing a starting point for young professionals to gain further knowledge of the fire and forestry community. The core topics that can be found on the site include community resilience, fire information, smoke monitoring, climate and weather resources, student assistant programs, employment opportunities, wildfire training, and fire and forestry groups.
We welcome your thoughts about the resource we have put together.
I am grateful the IAWF offers the mentoring program. Young professionals, now more than ever, would greatly benefit from your leadership and guidance. And it will be a wonderful learning experience for you too.
Working with Max has helped in my role with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. For that I am extremely lucky and glad I do not have to consider Max as a mentee, but rather a friend.
I am also happy to report Max worked on a helitack crew for the Washington Department of Natural Resources this season, and I look forward to hearing and sharing more wildfire stories with him.
Please check out the IAWF mentoring program and consider making a difference. It can be every bit as good as our May 29 experience!
The IAWF has an open period for applications twice a year. After the applications are received and reviewed, the IAWF matches the mentors and mentees based on interests and geographic location. The program encourages both face to face mentoring and online remote mentoring, depending on the location of the participants, who can be anyway around the world. A mentoring opportunity is also offered during IAWF conferences.
Eric Evenson is the science communications specialist for the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. Evenson spent 33 years with the National Weather Service, which included stops in Maine, Montana, Missouri, Idaho, and Vermont. For 22 years, Everson served as an incident meteorologist, communicating critical fire weather information at large wildfire incidents. As an incident meteorologist, Evenson was part of the training cadre and mentored trainees. As a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont, Everson was part of the fire weather team communicating and coordinating with the local fire and forest community.
In addition, Everson served as the National Weather Service liaison to the fire science working team of the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission. Everson has always enjoyed sharing and communicating scientific information to the fire and forest community and is excited to continue that work by serving those in the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange region.
As I was applying to be a mentor for the next round of the IAWF mentoring program, I reflected on what a great member benefit the program is, one that is valuable to mentees and mentors alike.
Eric Evenson reinforces this in his article, in which he describes his mentorship experience with his mentee, Max Levy. Evenson is the science communications specialist for the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. Levy was working on a wildland fire hand crew for the state of Idaho when the two were randomly matched through the IAWF. Evenson describes how he and Levy immediately made a deep and surprisingly personal connection.
I think of mentoring as an act of helping people draw out, reinforce, or affirm their ideal selves and it was fun to read about Evenson and Levy’s relationship that grew out of the IAWF program.
I am increasingly interested in the experiences of mentees, because that perspective seems to be less prevalent. A quick review of the leadership literature reveals that mentoring programs are mostly talked about from the mentors’ perspectives. Coincidentally, I have had conversations with friends and colleagues contemplating whether or not to seek a mentor, which led me to start thinking about what advice I should offer a person seeking a mentor. I knew what advice I had offered in the past but also wanted to see what the current wisdom is among the experts.
I unexpectedly found a fascinating article on the National Institutes of Health website, summarizing the book The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM, edited by Angela Byars-Winston and Maria Lund Dahlberg. I also discovered a cool resource called Mentoring Statistics You Need To Know – 2025 by Grace Winstanely with the organization Mentorloop.
I would counsel any person seeking a mentor to have a solid idea of their needs and motivations beforehand.
Evenson’s Wildfire article, combined with my foray into current thinking on mentoring and mentorship, helped me focus on four key pieces of advice to offer anyone thinking about the benefits of having a mentor.
First, know what you are looking for from a mentoring relationship before seeking a mentor. Are you looking for psychological and emotional support? Help with problem solving? A role model?
Career guidance? Help with goal setting? Skill development? Sponsorship? While mentoring is often idealized, one does not have to look very deeply into the popular business and leadership media to learn that mentees are often left disappointed by the experience. Unsatisfying mentorships are often rooted in the fact that the mentor and the mentee had different expectations of what the relationship might achieve. Knowing that, I would counsel people seeking mentors to have solid ideas of their needs and motivations beforehand.
I recently experienced this when I asked a friend and former colleague to mentor me in an area in which I want to update my knowledge and gain some confidence. My friend, who I expected to readily accept, instead had questions, including “What do you hope to accomplish?” and “Why me?” We typically approach potential mentors because they have life experience and acquired knowledge that can help us grow and accomplish goals. The catch is that experienced and knowledgeable people we trust and admire are very often busy, and busy people want to know that your request will be an effective use of their time. Anyone approaching a potential mentor should be ready to make a case for the desired mentoring arrangement.
I must admit that my friend’s screening questions surprised me, but I soon thought “That’s so smart; my friend has a big job, a young family, lots of interests, and not much spare time.” I imagine that not only did my friend want to make good use of limited time, but also to know that my friend was the right person and would not let me down. I’m glad I was ready to make my case, and I have a new mentor!
My current mentor is 20 years my junior, so the second piece of advice I would offer is to embrace the possibility of mentoring relationships that may seem to be unconventional. In my case, the conventional wisdom that mentors are always the senior individual is not the case. I’d offer that any extended, reciprocal, relationship can evolve into an effective mentoring partnership and that such a partnership can prove mutually beneficial. I think it’s important to remember that the research tells us that most mentorships do not result from a formal ask but evolve from other relationships.
My third piece of advice has been, and will remain, to purposefully seek mentors in both technical disciplines and the interpersonal and human relations dimensions of our work. It is important to understand that the two may not overlap. In other words, you may need more than one mentor.
And finally, I would counsel that anyone, regardless of organizational role or level, can benefit from having a mentor. I always enjoy encountering leaders who are simultaneously mentoring and being mentored. While we often think of mentors as experienced senior leaders and mentees as up-and-comers with potential, the research I’ve seen consistently shows that senior leaders benefit from being mentored.
Mentoring is a vital leadership and career development tool, as reflected by its popularity. According to Mentorloop, most US Fortune 500 companies, including all US Fortune 50 companies, have mentoring programs and 76 per cent of people surveyed think mentors are important.
IAWF members are so fortunate to have access to a formal, industry specific mentoring program as a free member benefit, and I hope members are taking full advantage.
Mike DeGrosky is a student of leadership, lifelong learner, mentor and coach, sometimes writer, and recovering fire chief. He taught for the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University for 10 years. Follow Mike via LinkedIn.
The United States Department of Agriculture’s recent announcement to make sweeping structural changes to the nation’s Forest Service has brought confusion and uncertainty countrywide, ahead of what’s expected to be a very active wildfire year.
Kelly Martin, a decades-long fire veteran in the Forest Service and National Park Service, was initially sympathetic to the USDA’s alleged goal of moving more federal resources and support to the state level. Officials plan to transition the Forest Service to a state-based model in the western half of the nation, while maintaining the Service’s historical regional approach in the East. Leadership’s stated reason behind the move was to strengthen local partnerships and simplify the chain of command.
Martin, who is also a former president of the International Association of Wildland Fire, said states have long played a critical role in allocating scarce forestry resources for fire preparedness and response, and, on its face, this reorganization would ease that burden.
“In an ideal world, the states and federal agencies would all be working with and talking to each other, but no one is compelling us to have to work together,” Martin said. “This idea of pushing decision-making down to a collaborative process between the state and federal government, to me, makes sense.”
For that state-federal collaboration to actually work in practice, however, Martin said Forest Service directors would need to be required to work with state-based land management agencies to align the highest-priority projects. Officials have so far made no mention of such a requirement as part of the reorganization. Martin also said that while resources for preparedness and response have surged over the past few years, projects focused on land management and hazardous fuel reduction, which are critical to preventing future catastrophic wildfires, haven’t had nearly the same momentum, and nothing mentioned in the reorganization so far has addressed that disparity.
Research into wildland fire is also at risk of being severely impacted by the reorganization. Officials will close 57 of the Service’s 77 research stations across the country and consolidate them into a centralized office in Colorado. Numerous stations are located in university laboratories or at experimental forests where researchers analyze environmental changes over long periods of time, including wildfire risks and impact.
That move appears at odds with the current administration’s stated goal to focus on state needs, since a hyperlocal understanding of an environment’s relationship to fire is critical for understanding wildfire risk and prevention, according to former Forest Service researcher and current Tall Timbers Director of Fire Research Morgan Varner.
“Anytime we retreat from places where there’s a lot of wildfire or a lot of prescribed fire, which this plan does, you’re compromising our ability to conduct really relevant research,” Varner said. “That boots-on-the-ground has always been a unique aspect of Forest Service R&D … Local researchers are members of those communities, they know the managers in that area, they understand the challenges of people there, and how wildfires affect the economy, the loss of that relationship is the real cost of this.”
Fire and Aviation Management Deputy Chief Sarah Fisher claimed multiple times that the Forest Service reorganization would have no impact on current wildland firefighting resources, specifying that the current Geographic Area Coordination Center (GACC) structure and reporting coordination with the National Interagency Fire Center would continue.
The loss of research that supports fire prevention and response appears to contradict Fisher’s claim.
“When USDA moved key offices to Kansas City during the first Trump administration, that 80% of their staff either retired, resigned or changed jobs,” Varner said. “That’s the hidden cost of the lab closures … When you try to move people around, many of them are just not going to go.”
Martin acknowledged the risk of public lands being sold off but also said seeing such speculative risks is easy in any major reorganization. What’s harder is to steer the reorganization in a way that benefits forests and addresses long-held issues in the agency. The current unknowns make forming any conclusions near impossible, she said.
“It’d be a real tragedy and a real shame if a ‘dismantling’ came to be,” Martin said. “There’s a lot of trust that still needs to be rebuilt … and I think there are innovative and novel ways to address the problems that face our forests today.”
