Fire challenge unveils next wave of wildfire tools

Innovative projects that pair local communities with fire, technology and environmental industry experts have been announced as winners of the Fire Grand Challenge.

The Fire Grand Challenge is a competition to advance practical tools and approaches for wildfire mitigation, response, and landscape recovery. The organisers say the finalists were selected from a worldwide cohort of teams, with the winners sharing a $200,000 prize purse to support continued development.

The challenge only began in 2025 but received 92 technical applications and over 50 place-based community applications, from 20 countries represented in the teams. The final 12 teams advanced, each pairing a technical innovator with a local community partner, to validate solutions grounded in both leading-edge technology and place-based knowledge.
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Each finalist team received a $50,000 field-testing grant, and for nine months worked alongside land managers, fire experts, and local partners to demonstrate their solutions through controlled burns, flight trials, and rigorous technical assessments. Field tests were conducted in fire-prone landscapes, from the forests of British Columbia to the dry ecosystems of Chiapas, Mexico.

The winners are:

• Grand Prize Winner: Vibrant Planet Data Commons (Colorado, US) and the Kalispel Tribe of Indians (Washington, US). The winning team produced an AI-powered decision support tool to assist community planning for fire mitigation and restoration.

The tech was developed side-by-side with the local community, as Joel Adams of the Kalispel Tribe in Washington state explains.

“Fire is vital for fuels reduction, for bringing back some of our cultural resources. Fire has a huge role in managing land for the Kalispel tribe.”

“Utilising the outcomes and the story that will be told will allow not only myself but the Kalispel tribe to go for other grants, other funding opportunities. I see this as a way to kind of share our experience with other tribes in the northwest region and other regions across the nation.”

The winning teams for the Fire Grand Challenge 2025, Conservation X Labs. Photo: Drew Bird

• Runner-Up: International Savanna Fire Management Initiative (Victoria, Australia) and BIOMASA AC (Chiapas, MEX) – This team used a process called Emissions Reduction Traditional Fire Management (ERTFM), a system adopted from the work of Charles Darwin University researchers working with Indigenous groups in northern Australia. The system promotes early dry season burns, that are less destructive than late dry season fires. The team used geospatial information systems and local knowledge in the field in Mexico, in a model that is more financially sustainable that current practices and has the potential to generate income for local communities through carbon abatement schemes.

• Runner-Up: Flash Forest Inc. (Ontario, Canada) & Grand County Wildfire Council (Colorado, USA) – Forest regeneration technology guided by AI software that uses drones to distribute seed pods for replanting. Five years after the East Troublesome Fire in Colorado, the community expected to see young trees and seedlings – but in parts of Grand County, they were surprised to find little to no natural regeneration. This team field tested post-wildfire reforestation at a large scale, using technology – including drones – to help restore burned landscapes and improve wildfire resilience by planting for biodiversity and more fire-resistant species.

The Fire Grand Challenge has partners including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation, Esri, and Planet, among others.

For more information about the Fire Grand Challenge and the winning teams, visit www.conservationxlabs.com.

Fire Seasons reflected in works of art

The Fire Season collection of books gather a diverse community of visual artists, poets, and writers to look at wildfire as part of more complex topics like grief, climate change, loss, new growth, renewal, changing ideas of landscape, resilience and economy. For anyone, anywhere grappling with the reality of longer, more severe wildfire seasons, Fire Season is for you.

Liz Toohey-Wiese, is a Fine Arts professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia. As a landscape painter, since 2018 her art practice has focused on the subject of wildfires.

“Over the years, this research has taken many forms, including painting post-burn landscapes, interviewing wildfire fighters and fire lookouts, installing billboards, and recently completing my S-100 wildfire fighting course.

“Every two years I also publish an artist book with my collaborator Amory Abbott. Titled Fire Season, the book brings together visual art and writing that engage with the realities of wildfire.”

Toohey-Wiese explains that Fire Season was launched as a means of collective sense-making around wildfires.

 “The book is not intended to assign blame or propose tidy solutions to this complex and ongoing crisis. Instead, it gathers a wide range of voices—artists, academics, writers, wildfire fighters, Indigenous community members, and people working in logging, government policy, and environmental activism—who contribute their stories, ideas, and questions to a broader conversation.

The next edition of Fire Season will be released in the northern hemisphere summer of 2026, and the call for submissions is currently open with a deadline of April 15, 2026.

They are seeking submissions of visual art, photography, film, performance, material-based processes, academic writing, essays, anecdotes, prose, poetry, or any other printable form of expression. Previous issue had a strong focus on British Columbia fires, but submissions are welcome from anyone, anywhere around the world.

“We tend to favour personal writing over journalistic or strictly scientific papers. For those who work in wildfire-related fields, we invite reflections on what you feel about your profession, what cannot be expressed in official reports, and what you wish the public understood about your work and research. We look forward to hearing from you.”

For full submission details, visit the website www.fireseason.org.

You can also explore the Featured Works section to see examples from previous editions.

Toohey-Wiese spoke about the Fire Season project at the 18th International Wildland Fire Safety Summit and the 7th Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire Conference in Calgary, Canada, in October last year.

Big fires across a big country

2025 was a big year for fire across northern Australia. This graphic shows the full extent of the 10 biggest wildfire events across Australia in 2025.

While much of the attention is usually focused on wildfires in the more populated regions across southern Australia, the fires that burn the most area are further north. The largest was in the Tanami Desert, burning more than 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres), through central Northern Territory. Dozens of lightning strike ignitions coalesced into one enormous conflagration.

The next biggest was through a vast swath of country south of Broome in Western Australia at 1.2m ha (2.9m acres). The combined total, including eight other large fires burnt close to 10 million ha (24.7m acres) in 2025.

Rohan Fisher, Director Landscape Knowledge Visualisation Lab at Charles Darwin University, compiled the summary.

“It’s just a few fires at the wrong time that burn most country. Fire size distribution is fascinating and provides important lessons on how we think about fire behaviour and its management. I am hoping to publish a deeper analysis of this as it relates to our most fire-prone landscapes in the near future,” Fisher said.

UPDATE 4 April 2025 – here is the full report for the 2025 fire year across NAFI burnt area, which covers 80% of the Australian landmass. The 2025 fire year across the North Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) mapping region was characterised by extensive fire activity, with a total of 656,125 km² burnt, making it the second largest fire year in the past decade, exceeded only by 2023.

Fisher’s data for this view is from the Northern Australia Fire Information (NAFI) web service, which has struggled to secure ongoing funding in recent years. NAFI was allocated partial funding in the 2026-27 Federal Budget but faces a funding shortfall for 2026-27.

NAFI wants $4.5 million over four years from 2026-27 but the 2026-27 funding allocated is around $300,000 under what it claims it needs to operate reliably.

NAFI covers 80 percent of Australia and is the only fire information service tailored to the bushfire management needs of rural and remote land managers across such a huge area.

Here is a NAFI video animation for the 2025 fire year in Australia.
View and download mp4 videos of fire spread from NAFI maps for 31 regions across Australia. It is a great tool for communicating about northern Australia fire and for close analysis for fire behaviour fans.

Big-tech companies pool their strengths for wildfire innovations

Four industry heavyweights will combine resources in a $100 million push for advance early detection and coordinated response to wildfires.

Lockheed Martin, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Salesforce and Wells Fargo have formed a joint venture in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and other technologies “to detect, prevent and fight wildfires”.

The announcement of the new venture – Emberpoint – is short on specifics on how the $100 million will be spent or how and where the outputs will be used, but says “agencies and utilities will gain access to proven, state-of-the-art systems without the burden of development costs, enabling communities to benefit from advanced, affordable wildfire prevention.”

This venture is one of many similar initiatives currently active around the world, and it not entirely clear how much is being done in cooperation and how much in competition.

Lockheed Martin and PG&E, for example, are already supporters of the XPRIZE Wildfire, which last week announced its five finalist teams in the Autonomous Wildfire Response Track, an $11 million global competition for teams developing innovative wildfire technology.

The venture has a strong US focus, but given the corporate reach of the four partners, the potential benefits could flow beyond those borders into other wildfire regions.

“It’s time to change the way we think about wildfires and bring the best of American technology and know-how to this growing threat to lives and property. Devastating wildfires are on the rise and this new partnership brings four leading companies in the aerospace, electrical power, tech, and financial industries together to address this national problem,” said Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and CEO Jim Taiclet.

 “Building on Lockheed Martin’s leading-edge capabilities in space and ground-based sensing systems, autonomous air and land drones, and command and control systems, EMBERPOINT™ aims to combine these skills along with those of our partners to address what is a true national security mission.”

Taiclet was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying Emberpoint had $100 million committed to the venture from partners.

Other partners were more definitive in the scope.

 “This partnership underscores our commitment to ending catastrophic wildfires,” said PG&E Corporation CEO, Patti Poppe.

“We plan to seek regulatory approval to pair Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s on-the-ground experience with our partners’ advanced technology, and properly scale how we identify risk, prevent incidents, and protect the people and ecosystems we serve for the benefit of all society—while staying fully focused on providing safe and reliable energy to our customers. Today’s announcement marks the next step in a broader, multi-phase effort to end catastrophic wildfires.”

Lockheed Martin is a global defense technology company with a significant involvement in wildfire work, particularly with its Sikorsky aerial firefighting aircraft (BlackHawk, FireHawk) and its ongoing development of an autonomous helicopter as part of the Rain.aero venture. It is headquartered in Maryland but claims 350 facilities across the US and worldwide.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation based in Oakland, California, has 16 million customers in north and central California. It will bring “deep wildfire mitigation experience, with proven layers of protection and a track record of deploying effective risk management programs across geographically-diverse communities.”

San Francisco based software company Salesforce will contribute its skills in “integrating disparate data streams into a unified, real-time response engine” using the power of its messaging app Slack and its AI building platform Agentforce.

Wells Fargo, the US-based multinational financial services company, is helping to fund the venture through a capital investment.

Canadians, Kiwis bolster Australian fire efforts

A group of 74 Canadian Arduous Firefighters and Incident Management Teams from Alberta Wildfire and British Columbia Wildfire Service have just arrived in Victoria, Australia, to help fight ongoing bushfires across the state.

These crews are a part of 1300 interstate and international firefighters and IMT personnel brought in to support local crews in a week that has seen record breaking heat across southern Australia.

Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner Tim Wiebusch said there were multiple out-of-control bushfires burning across Victoria, including the Carlisle River fire in the Otways and the Walwa and Dargo fires in the state’s north-east.

Although the extreme temperatures had slightly eased in southern districts – along with some of the fire activity – the northern parts of the state and into New South Wales were still facing persistent heat. So far this bushfire season, more than 400,000 hectares of land has been affected.

The number of people on deployment has fluctuated over the days, but as of earlier this week 342 interstate support personnel were in Victoria in addition to the internationals:

  • 38 from Western Australia
  • 31 from Australian Capital Territory
  • 127 from New South Wales
  • 34 from Northern Territory
  • 12 from Queensland
  • 100 from South Australia

Wiebusch said the Canadians would stay for a month “bringing a very welcomed boost in capacity to allow us to rotate and rest local teams.”

“The Canadians will help manage and fight remote fires in the Wonnangatta and the Wabba Wilderness in regional Victoria. Amazing commitment to travel significant distance and be away from family and friends for this long period…We can’t thank you enough.”

The Canadian teams will join New Zealand crews already on these fires.

Canadian deployment to fires in Victoria, Australia, January 2026.

Alberta Wildfire has deployed 37 personnel, including 20 firefighters and 17 wildfire management specialists, to Australia for 30 days to support wildfire response efforts.

Alberta, British Columbia and Australia share a long-standing partnership in fighting wildfires, with 1410 firefighters and support staff deployed to Canada in the last three years.

This map shows the incredible, and in some cases unprecedented, temperatures in southern Australia on Tuesday 27 January.

Extreme temperatures across southern Australia, January 2026. Source: Bureau of Meteorology.

Parts of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all exceeded 48°C /118F, which is rare for these states, even during severe summer heatwaves.

Significant, long standing temperature records were broken on Tuesday, highlighting just how far from ‘typical summer weather’ these temperatures were:

• Walpeup and Hopetoun both reached 48.9ºC yesterday, which was Victoria’s hottest temperature since observations began.

• New South Wales’s second hottest temperature on record was tied when Pooncarie reported 49.7ºC/121.7F.

• South Australia’s fourth hottest temperature on record was reached in Renmark, as it reached 49.6ºC/121.3F.

Thermal data acquired by the Copernicus EU Sentinel‑3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer highlight the severity of the ongoing heatwave across Australia, with extreme land surface temperatures (LST) detected over large regions.

In Willcania and Broken Hill, recorded land surface temperatures ranged between 58 and 60 °C (136-140F), whereas Adelaide appeared cooler, with temperatures of 45–48 °C, likely due to its proximity to the sea.

Australia’s record heatwave as seen from space, January 2026. Source: European Space Agency.


Credits: Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA 

A guide to the basics on future fire and climate

View from the Warner Lookout Tower looking at the north section of the Emigrant Fire, September 2, 2025. Photo from Willamette National Forest, InciWeb.

Science is showing how climate change is increasing catastrophic wildfires around the world, but a new study claims we still lack the basic information to make more precise conclusions about fire and its future impacts.

Warming, on its own, may not increase the overall fire risk as heat is only one of the many influences on fire. And as impressive as the climate models may be, the real work is still to be done on using the model outputs to make real-life decisions that affect our daily lives.

We know a lot about fire. And we know a lot about climate. But there is so much more to the puzzle. A group of scientists from around the globe have collaborated on a paper that is a guide for piecing the puzzle together – from the published papers and the modelling, to creating tangible, useful projections on future wildfires.

The trend in the number of journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire.
The trend in the number of journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire. Graphic: Francesca Di Giuseppe

Lead author Assoc Professor Hamish Clarke, from the University of Melbourne, says that a more realistic alternative to reading absolutely everything published on the subject is to read this new paper in Science Advances: “Gazing into the flames: A guide to assessing the impacts of climate change on landscape fire.”

“It may seem obvious that climate change is making bushfires worse, but the truth is more complicated,” he explains.

Clarke led the global team of researchers to develop a guide to looking at climate change impacts on wildfires and they conclude that it is no longer going to be sufficient to just look at what wildfire researchers are saying.

“It’s clear it will take more than just experts from one field to accurately project what’s to come. Some of the disciplines we point to may be obvious – atmospheric physics, botany, ecology – but it’s also about other areas like health and medical sciences, economics and paleo science.

“More than this, it’s the knowledge that lies outside academia too, like emergency response agencies, land management agencies, Indigenous knowledge, and communities with lived experience of fire.”

The paper attempts to pull the fragmented pieces of knowledge together.

“The solution isn’t just collecting more and more. We need specialists who can join dots, summarise, synthesise, curate, find and make meaning in iterative dialogue with others. We can’t leave this task to AI, although computers can certainly help.”

It is difficult to keep up with all the published articles on wildfires and climate change.

Top 20 countries with the most journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire.
Top 20 countries with the most journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire. Graphic: Francesca Di Giuseppe

Readers can save themselves the effort of reading every paper on fire and climate change and check out this paper. “We try to guide the reader through some of the main currents in the scientific literature, with a focus on what we need to do to develop better assessments of climate change impacts on fire.”

Assoc Prof Clarke’s paper was co-authored by Francesca Di Giuseppe from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast UK, Lynn Johnston from Natural Resources Canada, Jennifer Marlon from Yale University, Trent Penman from FLARE Wildfire Research at University of Melbourne, Andy Pittman from ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and Climate Change at University of New South Wales, Guido R van der Werf from Wageningen University Netherlands, and Mike Flannigan from Natural Resource Science Thompson Rivers University Canada.

The global cost of wildfires can be invisible and long-term: UN report

The costliest wildfire event of the year – the January fires in and around Los Angeles that directly claimed the lives of 30 people – burnt a relatively small 23,000 hectares (56,000 acres) but caused at least USD 53 billion in damages.

Of those damages, only USD 40 billion was insured, according to the global reinsurance company Munich Re.

Wildfires burned through 390 million hectares (964 million acres) in 2025 – equivalent to 92% of the European Union’s land area.

In 2025 the total cost of damages caused by all types of natural hazards has been calculated by Munich Re at USD 224 billion, of which USD 108 billion was insured.

In a clear demonstration of the disparity between cost of damages and other measurable impacts, the year’s second most expensive disaster, Myanmar’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake in March, had damages of around USD 12 billion; however its human cost was more than 4500 lives, with thousands more injured.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has published the figures to show how the global reinsurance industry’s balance sheet forms a basis for how disasters are discussed, compared, and remembered. But while these numbers make the news cycle – and draw much-needed attention to rising disaster risks – they capture only part of the story.

The UNDRR notes that beyond the insured damage to homes and businesses lies a far larger set of costs – borne by communities, ecosystems, health systems, and future development – that rarely appear on balance sheets. These invisible costs affect recovery long after the flames are extinguished, and determine whether societies emerge more resilient or more vulnerable to the next shock. 

Wildfires rank among the most economically destructive hazards globally, and the costs are rising. Between 2014 and 2023, wildfires caused an estimated USD 106 billion in economic losses and USD 74 billion in insured losses globally – far exceeding losses in the previous decade, as found by the 2025 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2025). The United States accounts for most of these impacts, with nine of the ten most expensive wildfire events since 1970 occurring in the US, even before accounting for the January 2025 California wildfires, GAR 2025 shows.  

The countries most affected by wildfire in terms of land burned are overwhelmingly in Africa: during 2025, wildfires burned through nearly 390 million hectares worldwide (an area almost as large as the European Union), with over half of the total area (nearly 246 million hectares) in  Africa. These lands in Africa, mostly uninsured, are home to millions who suffer losses to their subsistence livelihoods, as well as the destruction of priceless environmental and cultural heritage. 

Australia recorded one of the largest proportions of land affected by wildfires during 2025. But unlike many other fire-affected regions, Australia benefits from long-standing, high-quality loss data, allowing wildfire impacts to be assessed over decades rather than inferred from isolated events. The report notes this as “area lost” but much of the fire in Australia is in the northern savannah regions that benefit from regular, low-intensity fires.

(The following graphics show the Percentage of wildfire burn in 2025, and the Total hectares burnt. Hover over the graphic for more details.)


The UNDRR concludes that global wildfire costs appear concentrated where assets are high value and insured – which is almost certainly not where impacts are greatest. 

From the perspective of insurers and reinsurers – the institutions that offer insurance to insurance companies to cover megalosses – 2025 stands out as a year of exceptional wildfire losses. 

GAR 2025 calculated that total losses from those fires – including insured, uninsured and long-term indirect costs – are even higher, and likely to exceed USD 250 billion, making it among the most expensive disasters on record. 

But most expensive doesn’t necessarily mean most destructive. What insured loss figures obscure is the duration and breadth of wildfire impacts.

“Even when data exists, it is often focused on direct impacts and not enough on indirect impacts. This is a major gap in how disaster risk is understood,” according to Kamal Kishore, head of UNDRR.

Extreme fire warnings for southern Australian heatwave

Bushfire central Victoria, January 2026. Photo: CFA District 12

Update, 13 January – The searing heatwave across southeastern Australia in early 2026 set the stage for an outbreak of bushfires in Victoria and New South Wales. The heatwave was one of the most intense on record as temperatures soared to 111°F (43.9°C) in Melbourne, Victoria and as high as 109°F (42.8°C) in Sydney, New South Wales. The hottest locations in Victoria included Wudinna, Tarcoola, and Walpeup, which recorded 48.2°C (118.7°F), 48.1°C (118.6°F), and 46.5°C (115.7°F), respectively.

After days of multiple fires at the highest level of Emergency Warning, today only 11 active fires remain, with all under the Watch and Act level or lower. More than 500 structures, including 180 homes, were impacted by the raging fires in Victoria alone as of January 12. One person, a cattle farmer, died in the Longwood fire.

The summer heat and long-term lack of rain has rendered vegetation dry and ready to ignite. By January 11, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image, many dozens of fires were burning across Victoria (south) and New South Wales (east).

January 11, 2026, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image, many dozens of fires were burning across Victoria (south) and New South Wales (east).
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, acquired on 9 January 2026, shows the area south of the town of Longwood in northern Victoria. Extensive dark burn scars mark areas already affected by fire, while active fire fronts appear in bright red tones.

The main highway connecting Sydney and Melbourne remains closed where several bushfires rage on the eve of brutal conditions forecast across Victoria for Friday 9 January.

Friday’s fire danger will be the worst across Victoria since Black Summer in 2019-20. Catastrophic and Extreme Fire conditions have been forecast across the state.

The Country Fire Authority’s Greg Murphy was direct in his summary of what the state was facing ahead after already experiences several days of intense heat and wind, with several houses already lost.

“Our job is to help people tomorrow. We might not be able to. That’s difficult to say, but it’s real.”

VicEmergency said that fire and weather conditions forecast on Friday will make bushfires burning in the north-central and northern part of the state extremely dangerous for people who live, work or are holidaying in these areas.

This time of the year is peak summer holiday season across southern Australia with beaches, national parks and forests crowded with holidayers from around Australia.

All national parks in the designated Catastrophic Fire Danger areas will be closed to visitors on Friday – this includes popular destinations in the Grampians, Otways, parts of the Murray and Goulburn Rivers, and many attractions on the Great Ocean Road. Events and holiday programs have been cancelled along with train and bus services in the most extreme regions.

The maximum of 42C (107F) on Wednesday is forecast to be repeated on Friday in Melbourne with high winds, with some regional areas as high as 46C (114F), stretching the limits of any bushfire suppression capabilities, with the high possibility of bands of thunderstorms and dry lighting crossing the state. New South Wales will get the same treatment into Saturday.

For up to date emergency information go to:

https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/

Bushfire central Victoria, January 2026. Photo: CFA District 12
Bushfire central Victoria, January 2026. Photo: CFA District 12

New skills and expertise for IAWF Board

The International Association of Wildland Fire is pleased to welcome three new members to its Board of Directors for 2026. Their diverse skills and expertise will help guide the organization into the future.

Joining the Board from 1 January 2026 are:

Mika Peace

Dr Mika Peace is a fire weather researcher in the High Impact Weather team at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. She joined the Bureau in 2002 as an operational meteorologist and has worked in a range of roles in forecasting operations, training and commercial services and research as well as embedded in fire agencies.

She completed her PhD using coupled modelling to explore fire-atmosphere interactions at the University of Adelaide (2010-2014) through scholarships with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and the Bureau.

Mika’s research expertise focuses on bushfire case studies and running high resolution fire-atmosphere coupled simulations using ACCESS-Fire. She partners with fire agencies and land management groups to investigate and document fire and atmosphere interactions during major bushfires, to develop understanding of how the atmosphere in three dimensions drives fire behaviour.

She was a ‘Subject Matter Expert’ after Black Summer preparing submissions for the Royal Commission and the State Inquiries. She has a publication record as lead author in international meteorological science journals.

Mika regularly presents nationally and internationally at conferences and workshops, media interviews, STEM events in schools, Women in STEM and Women in Maths and science events in the community.

Shawn Bethel

Shawn Bethel has over 40 years of wildfire management experience combining 20 plus years in operational wildfire management agency roles and 20 years working in private sector wildfire mitigation technology.

During his wildfire operations career in British Columbia, Canada, Shawn was a wildland firefighter, senior trainer, helicopter operations specialist including rappel crew and helicopter hoist rescue, air tactical group supervisor, Type 1 Incident Management Team member and Senior Provincial Wildfire Protection Officer.

Shawn served on the BC Wildfire Service wildfire protection leadership team responsible for monitoring wildfire risk, prevention, preparedness, suppression, response, and recovery providing emergency services on 2000 plus wildfires annually.

For 10 years, Shawn led the Province of British Columbia’s International Cooperation Program to provide training and consulting services globally. In this role, he developed multiple resource sharing agreements with wildfire agencies around the world. Shawn helped manage the USA/Canada cross border agreements and the Northwest Compact.

Shawn has project leadership experience with operational teams conducting international training and consulting projects in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay, Ecuador, Greece, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Ghana, and South Africa. Shawn managed two separate wildfire management technology transfer projects, funded by the Canadian Government 1998-2004 in Malaysia and Argentina. He served on the Canadian Fire Management Team’s Post Wildfire Evaluation Project, for the devastating Peloponnese and Olympia fires, at the request of the Government of Greece in 2007.

Shawn continues to have direct involvement in the international wildfire community, leveraging industry knowledge and experience in the development, promotion and application of wildfire technologies that support wildfire management and mitigation efforts globally. Shawn lives with his wife and two sons on Vancouver Island, British Columbia where they live on a hobby farm in the beautiful Cowichan Valley.

Bob Bale

Bob Bale is the Nature Conservancy-Minnesota Fire in the Forest Program Manager and Indigenous Peoples Burning Network staff member.

Bob manages a prescribed burn program in Northern Minnesota focused on agency and tribal partners cooperative training, planning, funding, operations and public outreach.  Bob is an active staff member of the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, fostering partnerships rooted in respect and trust with Indigenous practitioners.

As a TNC Coda Fellow, Bob was a guest of Tanzania National Parks to facilitate the completion of Serengeti National Parks fire management plan Bob was also asked to modify Tanzania National Parks fire management planning process that was subsequently adopted and applied to their remaining savanna national parks.

Bob founded a conservation non-profit operating across 12 US states and The Bahamas. He led fundraising, donor cultivation, grant writing and partnership building. He sought to cultivate an organizational culture emphasizing equity, diversity, and High Reliability Organizing (HRO) principles.

Bob serves on the steering committee of the Minnesota Prescribed Fire Council and has served as co-lead of the Minnesota Forests Fire Learning Network.  His professional education includes an MA in Geography and Planning from West Chester University and a BA in Political Science from Pennsylvania State University .

 

At the same time, the IAWF extends its heartfelt gratitude to departing Directors, whose terms have concluded. Their dedication and contributions over the years have been invaluable to the IAWF’s mission.

With appreciation, we recognize the contributions of Joaquin Ramirez and Naomi Stephens to the IAWF Board over many years.

Board of Directors – International Association of Wildland Fire

A chief for the new US Wildland Fire Service

Brian Fennessy, Chief of Orange County Fire Authority

Brian Fennessy has told his colleagues at the Orange County Fire Authority that he is retiring as head of the agency in January to become the first Director of the newly created United States Wildland Fire Service.

In a memo to all OCFA firefighters and professional staff reported by the Homeland Security Today US website, Fennessy said he had “tentatively accepted” the new role to commence on 12 January 2026. The announcement is being broadly reported in the media but does appear to be announced yet in official government channels.

As he transitions to the new national role Fennessy attributed his selection to “our collective success at OCFA”.

“The creation of the USWFS represents a historic opportunity to strengthen interagency coordination, modernize capabilities, and elevate the profession of wildland firefighting,” he wrote to his colleagues.

Fennessy became chief of the OCFA in April 2018. He began his career in 1978 with the US Department of Agriculture’s United States Forest Service and the US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management working as a hotshot crewmember, hotshot/helishot/helitack captain and ultimately crew superintendent.

In 1990, Fennessy joined the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department (SDFD) and ultimately became Chief of that Department in 2015.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) officially opened up applications for its US Wildland Fire Service Director position in late September.

The position was advertised as being based in either Washington, D.C., or Boise, Idaho, with a salary of $191,900 to $225,700.

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