The long-awaited beaver episode! In this episode, we learn about how beavers are not only champions of wildfire resilience but are also sleeper endurance athletes (climbing mountains to find new watersheds), dedicated anti-capitalists (not giving a **** about the regulatory or material concerns of humans), expert engineers (casually restoring entire watersheds) and pretty handy companions to have in our pursuit of restoring habitat and landscape resilience across the West (and beyond).

Dr. Emily Fairfax and Dr. Sophie Gilbert joined us to talk about everything from nature-based climate solutions to why we should learn to better coexist with beavers to that one time Idaho Fish and Game decided to try parachuting beavers into mountain meadows in Idaho. Rest assured there were also a lot of beaver puns.

Beaver's role in building fire resilience is probably one of the most requested episode topics we've had since starting the podcast in 2020. We got a pretty solid Beavers and Fire 101, but also had the chance to dig in deeper to talk about areas where beavers have made an impact in protecting structures during wildfires, how Sophie's work at Vibrant Planet is helping to prioritize areas where beavers and nature-based interventions (like beaver dam analogs) could make the biggest difference, as well as what both of their visions are for an idyllic beaver-friendly and more fire-resilient world. Also, be sure to stick around to the end of the episode where we speak about the concept of a "Stewardship Economy," or creating a world that is more supportive of community building and stewardship/restoration work that supports both resilience and community—in other words, the things we really need not only in the wildfire space but also in the broader climate/conservation etc spaces.

Here are links to a few of the things mentioned throughout the episode:

Beaver, Bison, Horse Book—The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains

Emily Fairfax's website/research.

A fantastic stop-motion rendering of how beaver's change the landscape and build fire resilience (created by Emily!)

Vibrant Planet's Land Tender— a multi-faceted planning and monitoring platform for treatment area prioritization, risk mapping and decision making.

"Leave It To Beavers," Patagonia's Cleanest Line Blog—Amanda's story about Trout Unlimited and Northwest Youth Corps crews building BDA's in the John Day River watershed.

Today's episode is a special one. We collaborated with the Montana Media Lab—a program of the University of Montana's School of Journalism—to help support their winter "Youth Voices" workshop, which empowers young rural and Indigenous storytellers to learn more about audio storytelling while sharing stories from their communities. This episode features five stories from high school students in Browning and Florence, Montana, all of which are centered around wildfire's presence in their communities.

Story one (timestamp: 6:32) centers on the experiences of volunteer wildland firefighters on the Blackfeet (Niitsitapi) Reservation, as well as on the history of Indigenous burning on Blackfeet Nation ancestral lands. Created by: Trysten Hannon, Callie Wood and Chloe Croff.

Story two (12:29) is a profile of a student's grandfather, who spoke about his experiences as a Chief Mountain hotshot back in the 70s and 80s. Created by: Amanda Andersen-Marxer and Ariel McFadyean.

Episode three (16:34) focuses on the experiences of a few modern day members of the Chief Mountain Hotshots. Created by: Sierra Freedenburg and Danaia Moreno.

Story four (19:49) highlights how wildfires impact wildlife, and provided an opportunity for students to speak with employees at their reservation's fish and wildlife office. Created by: Rihanna ManyWhiteHorses, Shy'lee Kittson and Bailey Gobert.

Finally, story five (24:11) shows the unexpected impacts of having an incident command post pop up at your high school during a major wildfire in your area. Created by: Lily Crawford, Reese Briney and Shiloh Williams.

We owe a huge thank you to the students and teachers who worked hard to make this episode possible, as well as to Mary Auld of the Montana Media Lab, who pitched and coordinated this initiative. We'd also like to thank the instructors for this project—Kathleen Shannon, Elinor Smith and JoVonne Wagner.

This episode was made possible with support from the American Wildfire Experience and Mystery Ranch Backpacks.

For updates on the American Wildfire Experience's 2024 Digital Storytelling Micro Grants Program, follow them on Instagram at @wildfire.experience and @thesmokeygeneration.

In this episode, we had a chance to sit down with author John Vaillant, who recently published a new book about the 2016 Fort McMurray fires in Northern Alberta. The book, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, is an in-depth exploration of the fires, which released in June 2023. We not only spoke about his reporting process in the aftermath of a catastrophic wildfire, but we also touched on some of the book's major themes and how these were, in many cases, paralleled by the 2023 fire season in Canada. 

We even did some deep diving into the oil and gas industry's role in increasingly catastrophic fire seasons, about climate change and how we keep having unprecedented fire seasons—but our processes and protocols aren't catching up with how extreme conditions and fire behavior have become in some cases. 

We also highly recommend  Fire Weather for those who haven't read it yet. You can pick it up from my favorite local bookstore, Village Books, here. 

Timestamps: 

06:00 - Introduction

08:14 - 2016's Alberta Fire Warning of the Future

09:42 - John's Thoughts on the 2023 Fire Season

12:28 - The Shifting Baseline for Fire Fighting Efforts

16:55 - Weather Conditions Affect How Fire Behaves

19:26 - People's Humanity Makes Evacuation Efforts Possible

23:40 - Humanizing the Evacuation Process

25:01 - Interviewing Evacuees

28:18 - This Evacuation Changed Everyone's Lives Forever

29:34 - The Oil and Gas Industry Connection to Wildfire

31:56 - Humans are a Fire Species

35:32 - Society's Wealth Comes From Fire

37:38 - Gaps in Conversation Surrounding Wildfires

40:11 - We Have to Rethink Our Relationship With Fire

42:39 - John's Lessons Learned

44:12 - Houses Are Made From Petroleum Products

46:49 - Firefighting 90s Style Will Not Help Us

48:40 - No Precedent for Recent Fire Events

51:40 - This Requires a Nuanced Conversation

53:45 - Outro