Burn Bot is large, tank-like vehicle that wants to solve the most troubling of fuel mitigation questions – how can you manage more area, across all sorts of terrain, in all sorts of weather, at all times of the year, without overtaxing or endangering local crews, and without smothering communities with smoke?
Mechanical fuel mitigation is not new, nor are air curtain burners (AirBurners, for example) or other mobile burning units (See the Blacklining Machine we wrote about in 2011). Burn Bot is a remotely operated, moving fire box that offers a neat option to burn at scale over extended windows across large areas of open terrain or in strategic or sensitive areas.
And neat is the word – Burn Bot can establish a remarkably clean and straight firebreak or containment line. Burn Bot hopes this will attract those who conduct roadside burns, or fuel reduction under powerlines or near sensitive built up areas such as schools, aged care centres or the other community hubs.
After establishing itself on the west coast in the United States, with a base in San Francisco, a single Burn Bot vehicle has just arrived in south-east Queensland, Australia.
It sparked a fair bit of interest at the recent AFAC2026 Fire and Emergency Services conference trade show in Melbourne where Head of Australia for Burn Bot, Clinton Neumann, pitched it as a bigger and better way to get loads more fuel mitigation completed.
“What we are looking to do is to scale up the amount of treatment that can happen across landscapes, to mitigate the impact of destructive wildfires. One of the constraints of prescribed fire is the weather window, where the opportunity to put in prescribed fire becomes increasingly complex and more limited,” says Neumann.
“Because we can control the temperatures in the chamber and dial it up to suite the fuel bed you are operating in, it really gives you a much broader range of operating conditions. You can burn really uncured, green grass, right through to conditions that would be a bit marginal for open burning. It stretches the envelope at both ends.”
The three rows of propane burners aim to operate between 750 to 800 degrees Celsius, with an upper limit of 1100 degrees Celsius, inside the combustion chamber. It travels at the walking pace of the operator beside it with the remote-control device, with a spotter close by to make it a two-person operation at a minimum. The unit has water sprayers all round to catch any escapes but in most circumstances there is also a local crew present on a tanker.
Photo: BurnBot
In conditions considered less suitable for the Burn Bot (dense forests, rocky ground, steep gullies), the company brings in its other remote-controlled machines including mulchers or traditional hand-held means.
It is early days for considering it for use in suppression work. It would be a brave fire manager who brought it into a landscape already in a wildfire situation, but under some circumstances it could be used for containment lines.
“Potentially, it could be used for defensive firing operations, where you have got a lot of open edge and grassy country. It’s capable of burning 24-7, so overnight work to put in containment lines could be a good use for it.”
The almost absence of smoke is the other aspect that caught people’s attention at the AFAC2026 expo. With such high temperatures in the fully contained chamber, the amount of combustion smoke is minimal.
“Most of the product you see coming out is actually steam from the moisture content in the fuel…We did some comparisons with open burning and with air curtain burners and things like that, and it performs pretty well.”
The lack of prescribed burning smoke is appealing to complex environments, such as in California, which have strict requirements on air quality. “In California, which is the most complex environment we operate in, it is often exempt from any of the air quality permit requirements.”
Burn Bot is pitching its service to a range of potential users – fire and land agencies, state and local government, large private land holders and utilities. The plan is not so much to sell the units, but to offer a full-service fuel mitigation business where the Burn Bot is one component alongside mulching and other conventional methods.
With a big landscape, a limited budget and a diverse set of community objectives, how do we decide where, when and how fuel treatments are best undertaken to reduce wildfire risks?
Decision makers have a set of options – conduct a prescribed burn, mechanically reduce the fuel, introduce grazing, or use a herbicide. When deciding between these possible fuel treatment plans, each option, or combination of options, must be considered so that community objectives for risk reduction can be achieved with the resources available.
This decision point is the focus of a PhD study by Douglas Radford, from Adelaide University, in his article “Optimising fuel treatment plans to reduce burn probability: the importance of navigating context, priorities and trade-offs” in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
Joint winner of the Best Student Paper 2025 in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.Read the full paper.
Radford explains that his work applies multi-objective optimisation to support decision-making for bushfire risk reduction – that is, where and how should we use prescribed burning to reduce risk? The optimisation approach was able to find solutions that improved the effectiveness of fuel treatment plans significantly (80 – 280% improvement).
“An important message here is that what makes a “good” decision will depend highly on how we collectively understand and define what our objectives are, and on how we navigate any trade-offs between those objectives,” Radford said.
“While optimisation and other “tech-based” approaches can help us to explore good decisions, the process of working alongside our communities to define what “good” looks like is values-based and cannot be out-sourced.”
Radford applied his case study to the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. By using a state of the art computational “metamodel” the study was able to run thousands of possible fuel treatments across a large area.
“My PhD project aimed to improve decision-support for land and fire management agencies. Further research will make this work more reflective of the multi-dimensional nature of fire its roles and the values of our communities.”
Radford is confident his algorithms are flexible and can be adapted to a wide range of objectives and constraints and therefore, can be used beyond South Australia.
“These approaches can be tailored to unique communities – human and environmental – in all sorts of contexts.
“We have started applying these tools in New South Wales and following a chance meeting at the IAWF Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference in Hobart this year, we’ve started exploring their applications in Canada too. I’m excited to see where we can go next!”
While many studies have established that fuel treatments are an effective wildfire mitigation tool, the gap in our understanding has been how a range of different treatments work together over many years across large areas to produce a desired outcome.
Research led by Boise State University PhD student Kendra Fallon, now a National Fire Ecologist for the US Wildland Fire Service in Boise, Idaho, looked at the combination of fuel treatments in Californian forests and found that 61 percent of treatment footprints that were intersected by wildfire were effective at modifying the fire behaviour, even under extreme weather conditions.
Joint winner of the Best Student Paper 2025 in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.Read the full paper.
Earlier studies on the effectiveness of fuel treatments have relied heavily on individual case studies that looked primarily at the single most recent fuel treatment in an area recently burnt by wildfire.
The researchers’ fused the Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS) data, which documents all land management activities (treatments), with the data in the interagency Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Monitoring system (FTEM) which flags the overlap of the most recent fuel treatment activity with a wildfire that intersects it. While FACTS includes all management activities, it also includes naturally caused wildfires that have been identified as ‘meeting objectives’. This approach summarizes all fuel treatments (combinations and individual treatments) across over 20 million acres (8 million hectares) of National Forest System lands in California, which has a long-standing record of fuel mitigation efforts.
By combining these two data sets over 1621 cases of fuel treatments between 1950 and 2022, they found 61 percent modified wildfire behaviour; although they note this may be an underestimation given that some of the more subtle signs of wildfire behaviour change are missed by novice observers and not captured in the data
The fuel treatment in these forests was mostly prescribed fire but also included some mechanized fuel removal or rearrangement using hand tools or large machinery, and in some cases, grazing or chemical spraying. Importantly, many areas had undergone more than one type of treatment.
“This bridges the scientific gap on how the sequence or combinations of multiple hazardous fuel treatments, rather than just the last treatment before wildfire, contribute to the treatment efficacy across large geographies.”
Fallon is optimistic that this methodology looking at fuel treatment success is transferable to other geographical areas that lack the extensive set of case studies available in California.
“While we focused our methodology on case studies from California, given the abundance of fuel treatment effectiveness studies in the state, the approach is applicable to other geographies,” she said.
“Motivated by the needs of wildland fire practitioners, this research developed a novel methodology for evaluating fuel treatment effectiveness. As a full-time wildland fire practitioner and non-traditional student, I sought to produce research that bridged the gap between current operational challenges and applied fire science.”
Kendra Fallon, Best Student Paper 2025 Joint Winner, International Journal of Wildland Fire
The environmental benefits of fighting bad fire with good fire have been documented for decades, but researchers are now working to show just how much economic good prescribed burning brings.
A study recently published in the journal Science integrated and analyzed U.S. Forest Service data from 285 wildfires that intersected with prescribed burning and other fuel treatments across 11 western states from 2017 to 2023 to measure how much damage was averted due to the treatments. Researchers specifically used data on wildfire perimeters, locations of fuel treatments, suppression effort, fire simulation outputs, and key determinants of fire behavior.
They found that prescribed burning, along with other forest fuel treatments, avoided the staggering costs of large and severe wildfires. The study specifically found that every dollar the U.S. Forest Service spent on the tactics yielded $3.73 in benefits, saving over $2.7 billion between 2017 and 2023.
“A century of wildfire suppression policies has disrupted fire-adapted forest ecosystems, allowing fuel loads to accumulate, driving larger, more severe, and costlier wildfires,” the researchers said in the study. “Our findings demonstrate that fuel-reduction treatments are a cost-effective strategy to mitigate these impacts.”
Numerous commitments have been made to accelerate the pace and scale of fuel treatments across the United States, but they remain largely underutilized due to public pressure and risk aversion skewing toward fire suppression rather than prevention, according to the study. So, researchers worked to figure out how much of an economic benefit, if any, prescribed burn treatments created.
“The value of fuel treatments is often underappreciated by the public and policymakers, leading to persistent barriers in their broader implementation, including regulatory, funding, and capacity constraints,” the researchers said. “These dynamics reflect a classic public goods problem: despite their broad societal benefits, there are insufficient incentives to invest in prevention measures without clear, credible evidence of their benefits.”
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.”
The historic Beadel House, on the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy complex near Tallahassee, Florida in the United States, was completely lost despite the efforts of the Tallahassee Fire Department. One firefighter was reportedly injured in the fire, according to station officials.
A severe storm caused a lightning strike on Beadel House, which contained many historical artefacts and four staff offices. Tall Timbers is a research, conservation and education organization focused on the role of fire and promoting prescribed burning.
Firefighters were able to remove a handful of artifacts before the home burned down, but the research station’s officials did not specify which artifacts were saved.
“If you would like to help Tall Timbers build back, online donations are open,” the research station posted on its website. “Your support will provide Tall Timbers with the funding to rebuild the facilities needed for our growing organization. For questions regarding giving please contact Development Director, Crystal Rice (850) 545-2162 or cdrice@talltimbers.org.”
The International Association of Wildland Fire’s 4th International Smoke Symposium, scheduled for March 23 – next week – at Tall Timbers, is in a different building and will continue as scheduled. The Association sent the following message to registered conference attendees: This loss has shaken not only the Tall Timbers community, but the broader fire community as well. As we are gathering next week, we ask that you keep the Tall Timbers team in your thoughts as they navigate this difficult moment. The event will continue as scheduled, and we appreciate your support, compassion, and solidarity during this time.
A conversation with Trevor Howard, National Manager Prescribed Burning Strategy, AFAC and President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, with AFAC Deputy CEO and Executive Director, Strategy, People and Performance Erin Liston-Abel.
This article first appeared in Fire Australia Magazine, Issue 1, 2026
Could you please tell us a bit about your career in the sector and your current responsibilities as National Manager, Prescribed Burning Strategy at AFAC?
From an early age my ambition was to work in the bush and have a life of adventure. My career started in forestry in Queensland in December 1975. I’ve since worked with land management agencies and rural fire services across the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia in operations and program management. Along the way I completed a degree in anthropology and worked with traditional owners across northern and central Australia. I’ve also been involved in numerous major incidents, as an incident management team member and state agency commander as well as conducting post-incident reviews, preparing inquiry submissions, addressing recommendations and managing organisational change.
After many years in an agency contributing to the AFAC National Burning Project, I joined AFAC in 2022. My role has three focus areas: 1) supporting member agencies with program and operational reviews, and advice on policy, research utilisation, risk management and operational best practice, 2) developing new initiatives to address workforce changes and declining national capability, especially for complex prescribed burning, and 3) engaging with national NGOs and other organisations involved in supporting and using fire for conservation, forestry, agriculture, emissions abatement and Indigenous livelihoods. I’m fortunate to be hosted at the Bushfire Centre of Excellence in Western Australia by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. DFES is a unique organisation leading fire and other hazards across a vast state spanning southern forests, central deserts and tropical savannas, as well as managing a large aerial burning program in the Kimberley and an innovative Cultural Fire Program.
I’m also President of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
Source: International Association of Wildland Fire
Throughout your career, have you noticed many changes in prescribed burning practices?
Several things characterised the 1970s when my career started. Forestry had been the leader in fire science, innovation in equipment and technology, and a professional approach to prescribed burning and bushfire management. The use of fire by farmers, graziers and pastoralists was widespread, and departments of agriculture conducted research into fire, pastures and production and supported primary producers with extension programs. Rural fire services played a similar role in supporting community-based brigades and land managers. Society was generally more aware of rural matters and supportive of prescribed burning, but there was very little understanding or acknowledgement of Aboriginal burning.
While the grass still grows and forest fuels still accumulate, the major changes have been in rural land use, a growing urban interface, organisational arrangements including the decline of forestry and the dominance of fire and emergency services, increasing environmental regulations, and divergent socio-political viewpoints. Many operational practices continue, largely unchanged, but there are now increased constraints requiring careful and sometimes protracted planning and approvals, as well as attracting greater scrutiny. There are many positive changes including an emphasis on safety, equipment design, and multi-disciplinary science including a much closer relationship with meteorologists, some of whom are embedded in agencies to support burn programs. The historical use of fire by local people is now returning to many landscapes with the rightful recognition of Indigenous connections to land and the importance of cultural burning.
With climate change bringing more intense and frequent extreme weather, and as the higher risk weather season becomes longer, how are the emergency services adapting prescribed burning practices?
Adapting prescribed burning to the uncertainties of weather, seasons and climate change is perhaps one of our greatest challenges. On one hand, prescribed burning is becoming even more important for protecting humans, infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems from the impacts of extreme wildfires, while on the other hand increased governance and scrutiny can be a barrier to organisational agility. There’s an ongoing need to optimise approaches to burn programs, burn preparation and operational planning, to maximise windows of opportunity which may occur unexpectedly. There is some progress in this area, but much more needs to be done, including research and development for better seasonal outlooks, forecasts and decision support tools specifically for prescribed burning.
How do different agencies work together on prescribed burns and how important is interagency collaboration?
Each jurisdiction has made significant progress with interagency collaboration and interoperability. With land management agencies having diverse portfolios, including nature conservation, recreation and visitor management, marine parks and wildlife regulation, fire management is just one activity. Likewise, fire and emergency services deal with multiple disciplines and hazards as well as protracted year-round events including cyclones, floods and bushfires, so resources and capacity can be stretched. Working together is not an option, it is essential. We see the benefits of interstate and international resource sharing, well-managed year-round by the National Resource Sharing Centre. Resource sharing for prescribed burning is the next frontier which could bring enormous benefits, not just in managing fuels and protecting communities and the environment, but in the sharing of expertise across jurisdictions.
How is Indigenous cultural fire knowledge incorporated into prescribed burning practices?
While both prescribed burning and Indigenous cultural burning are concerned with putting fire into the landscape, Indigenous burning involves a unique connection to Country that has been informed by thousands of years of traditional beliefs and values, shared understandings of human-environment relationships, the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, and the responsibility for ongoing stewardship. Like a doctor prescribing medicine for a particular ailment, prescribed burning is often purpose-driven, planned and formulated according to empirical science and derived models.
The commonalties are also important. The significance of Indigenous fire stewardship has become widely accepted, while the effectiveness of prescribed burning has sometimes been questioned. Prescribed burning though, despite its association with western science, is founded on the same principles, real-world observations and evidence base that Indigenous cultures worldwide have learned from and relied upon. Fire can be used as an effective tool, fuels and wildfires can be managed, and a well-managed landscape is a healthy, productive and resilient habitat for humans and other species.
In northern Australia, for example, after decades of disruption to Indigenous burning, and destructive large scale late dry season wildfires, vast areas are now back under traditional stewardship. With land title changes and incentive schemes such as carbon credits, the north is being transformed. Across Australia, fire and emergency services and land management agencies are actively working with indigenous Australians to enable and support their aspirations in fire management, access to Country and cultural burning needs. Much progress is being made. As these relationships further mature, so too will the two-way learning accelerate and deepen. Even though the journey has just begun in some parts of the nation, Australia is on a new, positive and irreversible path to a future informed by the wisdom and experience of the past.
How do lessons learned from past burns influence planning going forward?
The AFAC National Burning Project was a valuable initiative that is still providing value. Workshops were held across the country to gather knowledge on best practice for strategic planning, program planning, operational planning and burn implementation. This initiative produced numerous publications, documenting evidence, knowledge, case studies and lessons learned from all regions of Australia. The final book in 2020 remains an authoritative text which not just drawn upon by AFAC members. Others including Indigenous organisations with carbon projects are applying the principles to demonstrate the rigour in their program management.
Each agency and jurisdiction has processes for post-incident reviews and the management of lessons learned. While primarily for bushfires and other incidents, these processes are applied to prescribed burns each year, although much more could be done. Through the AFAC Prescribed Burning Network, some agencies are sharing case studies which will assist with learning and improvement across the sector as well as efforts to communicate with the public about the professionalism and efficacy of burning.
The most valuable learning takes place in the bush. Competency based training programs are important, but experience in the field, especially under the guidance of highly experienced practitioners, remains essential for career development. The decline of forestry and other workforce changes have been accompanied by a loss of knowledge, which is becoming critical nationwide, affecting the delivery of burn programs and the more complex operations. AFAC has been working to address this and is seeking funding for a masterclass program that will take experienced practitioners and expose them to unfamiliar environments and operations in different jurisdictions, while being mentored by sector veterans. Program graduates with ongoing support as a community of practice will provide future leadership and expertise.
Are there innovations or new technology being used to improve the planning or delivery of prescribed burning?
Technology for prescribed burning has continued to change, from the Indigenous firestick to the drip torch to the aerial incendiary. The 1960s saw revolutionary advances in prescribed burning technology with the pioneering of aerial burning. Today, aerial ignition remains an essential tool to conduct prescribed burns and for other bushfire suppression strategies. Other major users include non-government conservation organisations, the pastoral industry, and Aboriginal corporations and Indigenous ranger groups across vast areas from Cape York to the Kimberley. Satellite remote sensing and end user applications such as the North Australia Fire Information website have supported planning and monitoring for these activities over the last couple of decades.
Drones are the emerging platform for delivering prescribed burns, allowing operations to be conducted in a safer and more targeted and timely manner. As for burn planning and monitoring, the use of artificial intelligence is likely to be the next revolution, if its power can be harnessed and integrated with fuel conditions, weather models, observations and decision support systems as well as human factors, workflows and organisational cultures. I recently attended a conference in Canada, and one of the exhibitors had developed a robotic and remotely controlled snake that could slither along a fire or burn edge at night, checking for hot spots, and applying water and additives up to a kilometre from the operator. There are more innovators than ever before, and the next revolution could be just over the horizon. While the gadgetry is important, fire management including prescribed burning remains primarily a people business and we must continue to invest in human capability.
Canada is lifting its commitment to prescribed fire with the establishment of a new national training program funded by a large injection of philanthropic money.
The new $CAD 8 million Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program (CPFTP), is co-developed by the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan Campus and the Weston Family Foundation.
Launched this week, it aims to address what it has identified as a gap in Canada’s ability to use and scale prescribed fire as a land management and ecological restoration tool and has taken inspiration from similar programs underway or in development in the US and Australia.
The program founders are working off the belief that prescribed burning is vastly underused in Canada and is widely constrained by the limited availability of training, mentorship, and opportunities to gain operational experience in the field.
May 5, 2018 – Prescribed fire practitioners working on a prescribed fire at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site to maintain and restore grassland habitat. Photo: Jane Park
The program will educate and train practitioners across Canada through regional hubs, tailored to Canada’s diverse and varied landscapes.
“Canada’s ability to expand the use of prescribed fire has been constrained by a lack of coordinated training and clear pathways to operational experience,” said Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais, Assistant Professor, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science at UBC Okanagan and Director of the Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program.
“This program provides the leadership and structure needed to establish national standards, deliver regionally grounded training, and build the capacity required to apply prescribed fire safely, responsibly, and at scale.”
Wildfire Today spoke with Dr Bourbannais about how the program will work.
There are established prescribed burning training programs in the US, and others in development in places like Australia. Is this Canadian program modelled on any of these?
We conducted a comprehensive review of prescribed fire training programs in other countries while developing the framework for the Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program / Programme canadien de formation en brûlage dirigé. Programs in the United States and Australia offer valuable examples, and as our program evolves, we will continue to learn from them and explore opportunities for collaboration on training and curriculum.
At the same time, it’s essential that a Canadian program reflects the needs, priorities, and fire management realities of our own regions and partners. While there are important lessons to draw from international models, our focus is tailoring the program to Canada’s diverse landscapes, governance structures, and operational requirements.
How will you include cultural fire in the program?
A central part of our mission is to support Indigenous-led fire stewardship in Canada. We recognize that prescribed fire and cultural fire are not the same thing, and that many of Canada’s fire-adapted ecosystems have been shaped by Indigenous cultural fire practices. That history and knowledge will be reflected across the program, both in national-level content and regionally delivered courses which will be co-developed with Indigenous partners.
The program is being shaped with guidance from national Indigenous organizations, including the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the Thunderbird Collective, and the National Indigenous Fire Safety Council, who serve as key members of our advisory committee. Our goal is to ensure the program is accessible to Indigenous-led fire organizations and communities, and to support their leadership in revitalizing cultural fire. We will also work closely with regional Indigenous partners and Nations so that training reflects Indigenous knowledge, priorities, and perspectives, and to help create space for Indigenous-led cultural fire work to thrive.
Will the training be specific to Canada’s geographical regions or is it more general?
Our program will use a hybrid approach for delivering training. The theoretical parts of prescribed fire, like fire weather, fire behaviour, burn planning, communications, and fire ecology, will be offered online in English and French to reflect Canada’s two official languages. This will allow learners across the country access to core knowledge in a flexible way.
Because Canada is so big and ecologically diverse, the hands-on components will be regionally grounded. Field-based training, including operational prescribed fire, ignitions, holding, and fire effects monitoring, will be delivered through five regional hubs: West, North, Central, East, and Atlantic. Each hub will have a regional lead and a training and outreach facilitator who work closely with partners to make sure the training reflects local conditions and needs.
At the same time, we know that the absence of national standards and qualifications for prescribed fire roles has been a barrier to scaling the use of prescribed burning in Canada. Over the next few years, we’ll be working with partners to address those gaps, while still recognizing the importance of regionally-based training.
How will you include the best and latest prescribed burning science into the training?
The University of British Columbia Okanagan is a national leader in wildfire and prescribed fire science. Hosting the program within a university allows us to update course content rapidly as new research, tools, and lessons emerge. Our five regional hubs will play an important role in keeping training grounded in real-world conditions. For example, they will support ongoing fire-effects monitoring and fire ecology research with local partners, so we can integrate region-specific outcomes and ecosystem responses into the curriculum.
Who can do the training?
The Program will be offered through continuing education and professional development at UBC Okanagan, which makes it broadly accessible to a wide range of participants. While the training will support the needs of wildfire agencies, it is also designed for diverse groups, including Indigenous Nations and communities, fire practitioners, land managers, fire departments, NGOs, industry, and landowners.
Because people come to prescribed fire with very different backgrounds, the Program will offer training pathways for different roles in prescribed fire. These will range from introductory and awareness-level opportunities for those who are new to fire, all the way up to the competencies required to lead complex prescribed fire operations.
Who pays for an individual’s training?
Over the next two years, we’ll be working with partners across the country and the Weston Family Foundation to develop a long-term sustainability plan for the Program, which will include establishing a fee structure for the different courses. As the program grows, we expect that funding will come from several different sources, including organizations sponsoring their staff, individual registrations, and continued partnership support.
When does the training begin?
We already have training pilots scheduled to begin in the fall of 2026. Over the following two years, our goal is to run pilots in all five regions, and we expect to be offering the full suite of training by 2028.
For more information about the program and to sign up for a newsletter, visit the website rxfire.ca / rxfeu.ca
April 11, 2023 – Driptorch, a tool used by fire practitioners to apply fire, on a prescribed fire in the Kootenays (BC). Photo Mathieu Bourbonnais
In 1961, from 20 to 24 January, a series of large, destructive bushfires burned in the forested south-west region of Western Australia.
A subsequent Royal Commission investigated causes and made recommendations to enhance controlled burning that had profound implications, not only in the tall eucalypts of the south-west WA, but across Australia for many years.
Guest writer John O’Donnell looks back on the anniversary of the 1961 fires and sees lessons for today.
The 1961 south west Western Australian bushfires provided a classic, rare case study where the recommendations of a Royal Commission and lessons learnt by firefighters were taken seriously by the government, and land and fire management agencies, in particular the Western Australian Forests.
Over time, virtually all of the and recommendations and lessons learnt were implemented. This resulted in significant decline in the annual area burnt by bushfires, and consequent bushfire losses.
Of all the major bushfires in Australia’s history, the author believes none has left such a deep and lasting legacy as the 1961 bushfires in Western Australia. They were not the deadliest fires Australia has seen but they were among the most influential. The 1961 Dwellingup fire in particular became an important case study for how bushfire was understood, managed, and mitigated in the decades that followed.
Sadly, in many bushfires in Australia, the bushfire mitigation and suppression lessons are not adequately captured nor retained over long periods.
Dwellingup, Western Australia, 1961.
A defining moment in fire management
The 1961 bushfires swept through vast tracts of forest in Western Australia, igniting between January and March across Dwellingup, Pemberton, the Shannon River region, and Augusta-Margaret River. The fires razed towns like Dwellingup and Karridale, destroyed 160 buildings, and caused an estimated $35 million in damages. Remarkably, no lives were lost – a testament to the skill and bravery of firefighters and the resilience of local communities.
What set these fires apart was not just their scale but the response they triggered. The Western Australian government convened a Royal Commission, led by Forester G.J. Rodger, to investigate the causes and recommend reforms. The inquiry’s 27 recommendations were not only logical but transformative, laying the foundation for a new era in bushfire management.
Prior to 1961, prescribed burning in Western Australia was limited and largely ineffective. Forest management focused on narrow buffer zones around assets, allowing fuel loads to accumulate dangerously across vast areas. Technical limitations-poor weather forecasting, lack of trained personnel, and rudimentary fire behaviour knowledge hampered efforts to implement broader burning strategies.
The result was a tinderbox. When lightning ignited multiple fires under extreme weather conditions, suppression efforts were quickly overwhelmed. Smoke rendered tower-based detection systems useless, and outdated equipment failed under pressure. The fires spread rapidly, culminating in the destruction of Dwellingup.
Capturing the 1961 bushfire teaching event and lessons
The Royal Commission’s findings resulted a comprehensive overhaul of fire management in Western Australia. Key reforms included:
Enhanced Equipment and Communication: Investment in modern radios, improved tanker trucks, and standardized pumper units.
Fire Behaviour Research: A dedicated program to understand fire dynamics and develop safer prescribed burning techniques.
Prescribed Burning Programs: Systematic fuel reduction became central to fire mitigation, with rotational burning schedules tailored to forest types.
Spotter Aircraft: Replacing unreliable tower systems, aerial detection improved response times and fire mapping.
Interagency Cooperation: Agreements between government bodies, local councils, and volunteer brigades fostered unified fire strategies.
These reforms were not merely theoretical. They were operationalized, tested, and refined over decades, resulting in a dramatic decline in bushfire extent and severity across the region.
Reinforcement of 1961 bushfire teaching and lesson capture in 1978 and 2023
The effectiveness of the 1961 reforms was reaffirmed in subsequent fire events. In December 1978, 27 fires ignited over one weekend due to lightning strikes. Thanks to regular fuel reduction and improved detection, crews contained all fires swiftly – most using only hand tools and knapsack sprays.
Similarly, in November 2023, 26 fires erupted south-east of Perth. Fuel-age mapping revealed that 20 of these were burning in areas treated within the last four years. Firefighters prioritized the remaining six, successfully containing them with minimal damage. These case studies underscore the critical role of fuel management in wildfire control.
The role of prescribed burning and fire systems
Prescribed burning emerged as a critical component of the Western Australia’s fire strategy. Research showed that under severe weather, fuel older than five years in jarrah forests and seven years in karri forests could carry uncontrollable crown fires. Burns less than a year old could halt fire runs, while areas with fuel less than five years old allowed for effective suppression.
To maintain safe fuel levels-below 8 tonnes per hectare in jarrah and 15 tonnes in karri – rotational burning schedules were implemented. These were informed by ongoing studies into fuel accumulation, fire intensity, and ecological impacts. Aerial burning techniques, pioneered jointly by the Forests Department and CSIRO, further enhanced efficiency and coverage.
Prescribed burning was just one component of a holistic fire management system. Other innovations included:
VHF/UHF Radio Systems: Replacing HF radios, these systems improved reliability under adverse conditions.
Structured Training and Command Systems: Ensuring readiness and coordination during emergencies.
Wildfire Threat Analysis: Prioritizing protection of high-value areas through strategic buffers and integrated planning.
Together, and with other measures, these measures created a robust framework that protected lives, property, and ecosystems for decades.
A warning from the past
Since the early 1990s, prescribed burning rates have dropped, leading to increased bushfire extent. Peet and Williamson (2025) warn that the forest estate now resembles its pre-1961 condition-dense, fuel-laden, and vulnerable.
This graph from the Bushfire Front (below) starkly illustrates this trend: as prescribed burning decreased, wildfire area has increased. Without ongoing commitment to fuel reduction and fire science, the hard-won gains of the past risk being undone.
Conclusions
The 1961 Dwellingup fire was a tragedy, but it was also a turning point. It taught Australians that suppression alone is insufficient, that science and planning are essential, and that communities must be prepared with a “Plan B.” It demonstrated the power of coordinated response, informed policy, and sustained commitment.
In south-east Australia, it is essential that such a critical lesson and teaching event is examined and all possible lessons captured, including optimised fire mitigation programs.
The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service has ambitious goals: to treat an additional two million acres of hazardous fuels on national forests and grasslands annually; and to support partners by treating an additional three million acres of hazardous fuels annually on other federal, state, tribal and private lands.
To achieve these goals, the use of prescribed fire needs to expand significantly; an increase in prescribed fire is dependent on growing the workforce capacity. Agency administrator workshops are one way to expand that capacity.
This article is published in the latest issue of Wildfire magazine.Read the full edition here.
The benefits of experiential learning (learning by doing) have long been recognized by the wildland fire community. In wildland fire in the United States, this is best exemplified by the position task book system of training; trainees are assigned a book of the many tasks necessary to be fully successful in a role, and they perform those functions under the watchful eye of a fully qualified mentor. Experiential learning is one of the quickest methods to expand the capability of the workforce.
The desire to increase workforce capacity through experiential learning led to the establishment of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (Center) in 1998. The Center’s mission is to maintain a national interagency center of excellence for prescribed fire, with an emphasis on actual field experience, to increase skills and knowledge and to build confidence in the application of prescribed fire.
Participants igniting the burn unit under the supervision of instructors / mentors at the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana in May.
Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.
Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Center originally focused on actual prescribed burning qualifications through 20-day field sessions. During those 20-day trainings, participants traveled to several remote sites to take advantage of prescribed burning and learning opportunities with a variety of agencies, fuel types, and challenges such as the wildland-urban interface. The training locations were in areas where hosts had well-established burn programs with broad prescription windows and high levels of interagency cooperation.
In 2002, the Center began hosting workshops on prescribed fire specifically designed for agency administrators to develop knowledge, skills and confidence in oversight of a prescribed fire program. An agency administrator is defined by the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group as “the official with the delegated authority, responsibility, and qualifications for decision making on incidents or prescribed fires within a particular administrative unit. The managing officer of an agency, division thereof, or jurisdiction having statutory responsibility for incident mitigation and management.” Examples of agency administrators are federal line officers, state forest officers / delegates or fire managers, tribal chairpersons, fire chiefs, police chief, sheriffs, mayors or county representatives.
Regarding wildland fire management, either prescribed fire or fire suppression, the agency administrator is the responsible person representing a particular agency. With prescribed burning the agency administrator has administrative responsibility and delegates the responsibility of technical fire operations to the burn boss. Agency administrators must be prepared to make critical and informed wildland fire management decisions related to land and assets under their span of authority.
“I strongly believe this should be REQUIRED for new line officers in the USFS within the first two years. The mix of hands on, situational, and classroom learning really made this a dynamic and effective course to learn more about both [prescribed burns] and the role of the [agency administrators] in [prescribed burns].”
Prior to 2022, the Center’s activities were primarily in the Southeastern United States and included two agency administrator workshops annually. The 2022 National Prescribed Fire Review called for the Center to expand westward by January 2023. The agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, May 1-7, 2025, was the third session held in the western United States. Other workshops were in Bend, Oregon, in May 2024, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 2024.
“I recognize that communication between line, fuels and the rest of the district is critical to success.”
Workshop participants are selected from numerous agencies across the United States including the Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Defense as well as partners such as states and The Nature Conservancy, a global non-profit dedicated to conserving land and water.
The workshops help agency administrators develop the core competencies necessary to hold decision-making authority for wildfires or prescribed fires. Participants learn about:
• Risk-informed decision making.
• Wildfire response and incident management processes.
• Wildland Fire Decision Support System / Integrated Fuel Treatment Decision Support System and other decision support tools.
• Fuels management and prescribed fire processes.
• Fire prevention, mitigation, and education processes.
• Social, political, economic, and environmental impacts of wildland fire management activities, including prescribed fire.
• Effective communication.
• Collaboration with partners and stakeholders.
• Fiscal management.
“I learned the importance of Leader’s Intent to support and grow my fire program.”
(According to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, the Leader’s Intent is a statement that outlines what people must know to be successful for a given assignment including tasks, purpose and end state – how things should look when successful completed.)
The objective of agency administrator workshops is that upon completion the agency administrator will:
• Demonstrate the knowledge and confidence necessary to grow or sustain a safe and successful prescribed fire program.
• Demonstrate an understanding of national policy, agency administrator responsibility, accountability, and authority to approve all prescribed fire management actions.
• Identify the principles, policies and procedures to effectively provide oversight of a prescribed fire management program.
A key strength of the training program is the instructors’ proficiency with prescribed burning. The cadre of instructors includes agency administrators and prescribed fire practitioners, who, as a group, have more than 550 years of experience in every aspect of a successful prescribed fire program.
The cadre – composed of federal employees, cooperators and private consultants – is organized into two groups: one focuses on development of exercises, burns, and logistics; the other concentrates on providing mentoring and presentations. The groups interact seamlessly to coordinate instruction and facilitate learning moments as they arise. (A cooperator is defined by the National Fire Coordinating Group as a federal, tribal, state or local agency that participates with other agencies in planning and conducting fire or emergency management projects and activities.)
An important element of the agency administrator workshop is the opportunity for mentoring between the cadre and the participants. Mentoring is a critical consideration in all aspects of the workshop including the formation of the agenda, the selection of the instructors and even the selection of the facilities. The instructors are fully committed to this concept and have arranged for every opportunity to stay involved with the participants including at meals, breaks and social hours. Small group formation is continually reorganized to maximize one-on-one mentoring opportunities and peerto-peer interaction. The overall design of the workshop maximizes the opportunity for mentoring.
The curriculum is designed around several foundational elements including risk management, overcoming constraints, effective internal and external communication, protocol and policy on escapes, burning in the wildland-urban interface, building successful programs, air quality and smoke, liability, land management plans, fire management plans, burn plans, landscape wide application, program monitoring, review and approval responsibility, accountability, oversight and developing partnerships. While the curriculum is consistent, it is also highly adaptable. On the first day of the workshop, participants provide their expectations for the workshop and the instructors then tailor agenda items to the expectations.
Each workshop includes two prescribed burn days. Each burn day has a specific set of objectives designed to give agency administrators hands-on experience. The objectives of the first burn day are to provide the participants with a better understanding of the burn-day organization and the roles and responsibilities of the agency administrator, burn boss, and firing boss. The objectives of the second burn day allow participants to experience simulated pressures, time constraints and the need for flexibility that employees experience on every burn day. This is achieved by allowing the participants to plan, organize and implement a small, prescribed fire with minimal input from the host unit or instructors.
A classroom presentation during the agency administrator workshop in Missoula, Montana, about how to build an action plan.
Photo courtesy of the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center.
Attrition at the agency administrator and burn boss levels leads to loss of institutional knowledge and experience. Land-management agencies need a system for transferring institutional knowledge and experience to new agency administrators and less experienced burn bosses, especially with respect to complexity analysis and burn-plan review processes. The workshops are one tool to facilitate the transfer of that knowledge and experience.
Workshops are planned for; Jan. 29-Feb. 3 in Florida (location TBD); and May 14-19 in Redding, California.
“It was obvious why each cadre member was selected. They were experts in their field with decades of experience, and they each had a passion for both their work and teaching others.”
Steve Miller
Steve Miller served on the board of directors for IAWF from 2017 through 2023, serving as vice president in 2022. Miller has worked in fire since joining the Texas Forest Service in 1985. Since 2018, he has been employed by the US Forest Service, as the director of fire and aviation management for the eastern region.
Prior to joining the USFS, Miller spent 31 years working for the State of Florida. He has a passion for prescribed fire and teaching, having served as adjunct instructor for the University of Florida and the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point.
Erin Myers
Erin Myers joined the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center cadre in 2023, after completing the agency administrator workshop in 2022. Myers became a Florida state certified burner in 2005 and primarily assisted private landowners with prescribed fire planning until 2020, when she became a refuge manager with the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System in Southwest Florida.
In 2018, Myers started training to become a public information officer for wildfire and prescribed fire. She works closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Zone 3 fire team in South Florida, assisting with prescribed burning on multiple refuges as either a public information officer, FFT2 or agency administrator. Myers loves sharing information about the benefits of prescribed fire on the landscape with partners and communities.
