Wildfire Wednesdays #151: Passing the Torch - Fire Learning for the Next Generation

Happy Wednesday!

Firefighters are a paradox in many ways - in children’s books and the eyes of their fellow community members, they are Local Heros dressed in brightly colored Nomex, wielding axes and hoses, off to save the day, the forest, or the town; however, this image often glosses over the years of training, rough conditions, high barriers to entry, and low wages that reflect a firefighter’s reality. These elements of the job can lead to difficulty recruiting and retaining trained fire personnel at a time when the demand is high and rising. This week’s newsletter is an in-depth look at one program aiming to teach and equip local New Mexico youth to be the next generation of fire managers.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Thank you to Andrew Pearson and Sarah DeMay of the Forest Stewards Guild who contributed their written reflections and photos to this Wildfire Wednesday.

Fire Learning for the Next Generation

The Forest Stewards Youth Corps

Not everyone is given the opportunity to travel across vast stretches of beautiful New Mexican landscape while getting paid, receiving extensive job and career training, and contributing to wildfire readiness and risk reduction in this fire-prone state, but for the Forest Stewards Youth Corps (FSYC) crews, that prospect is their reality for 13 weeks every autumn.  

For the past 30 years, the FSYC program has been a source of employment and education opportunities for New Mexico youth. The goal of the program is to put the forest first for the long haul, a key part of which is building the next generation of responsible forest stewards. By providing hands-on training and professional development, the program helps kickstart both interest and careers in forestry and natural resources management. The fall FSYC program, which focuses on fire and management of fuels (the flammable organic material which burns during wildfires), was established in 2018. It builds on the success of the FSYC summer program by providing recent high school and college graduates aged 18-25 with training and certification in topics related to forestry and wildland fire such as NWCG Basic Wildland Fire Fighting certification, Wildland Fire Chainsaw Use, Forestry and Timber Management, and more. 

Crew members learn about chainsaw safety, use, maintenance, and tree felling during their initial immersive two-week training.

The fall program kicks off with two weeks of intensive and immersive training, often hosted at the headquarters of longtime partner Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions in Thoreau, NM, during which crew members gain a strong and holistic foundational knowledge of wildland firefighting, safe chainsaw operation, leadership dynamics, and how to thrive as a member of a team. Once equipped with this crucial knowledge and experience, the crews return to their home locations (all crews are hosted by either a US Forest Service (USFS) Ranger District or Pueblo of Jemez Natural Resources Department (NRD)) to begin the landscape and community restoration and fire resiliency work for which they were trained. 

Benefitting the Land and the people who manage it

These crews provide an invaluable benefit to their host unit and to state fire management efforts as a whole: USFS Districts are chronically understaffed, a reality which sometimes leaves them without the personnel necessary to accomplish high-priority projects on the public lands in their charge. Pueblo of Jemez NRD similarly has a small staff and thousands of acres of forest to manage. FSYC crews’ time, funded by the New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps Commission, provides some relief from the immense budgetary pressures of personnel hiring, onboarding, and training seasonal staff so that the agencies can focus on making work happen on time and on the ground.

A crew member looks at the cloud of smoke rising from the North Joaquin Prescribed Burn.

One of the crucial but labor-intensive projects that requires a lot of training and capacity is prescribed burning. Prescribed fire or intentional burning is the controlled ignition of fuels such as downed branches, shrubs, grass, and needles under specific conditions and in a predetermined area to protect communities, water sources, and wildlife habitat by minimizing the material available to burn in future wildfires, reducing the likelihood of future ignitions moving from the forest floor to the tree tops, and benefiting the land through nutrient cycling. Intentional fire has been implemented across the world for millennia and is used as a tool on both public and private lands across the west to reintroduce fire to our fire-adapted landscapes.  To learn more about a successful collaborative approach to fire management and intentional burning for community and resource benefit, read about the All Hands All Lands Burn Team approach. 

Building careers and local capacity

In 2024, the FSYC crews joined with the USFS, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and All Hands All Lands to implement the North Joaquin Rx, a prescribed burn outside of Jemez Springs, NM. As many of the FSYC participants’ first real-world fire experience, the burn provided an opportunity to learn in real time how to work within a crew structure and within the burn organization as a whole, participating in holding operations (making sure that the fire doesn’t burn outside of the predetermined boundaries) and firing operations (lighting the fire in a controlled manner) for the duration of the entire 1,701 acre burn operation.

Crew members refill drip torches with fuel mix as part of firing operations.

This burn also provided a unique opportunity for the youth crews to work with and learn from FSYC alumni. Forest Service fire engine crew members from three different Ranger Districts all got their start as wildland fire professionals as members of the Guild’s fall youth crews. At a time when firefighting resources are stretched increasingly thin during severe fires or during the most fire-prone times of the year and the need for dedicated and trained personnel is high and rising, this clearly demonstrates the positive and long-term impact that FSYC crews have within local communities and the wildland fire workforce.  Building careers for local youth in forestry and wildland fire in New Mexico is a win-win situation: fire crews have better retention when they can hire locally, and wildland fire is a career option within rural communities where jobs are often otherwise scarce.

Collaboration is key

Snow White’s companions said to “whistle while you work”, a sentiment the fall FSYC crews take to heart as they bring some levity to a photo and a work day spent thinning the forest.

In addition to hands-on fire fighting and lighting, FSYC crews also learn-by-doing about collaborative work and relationship building. Throughout their season, crew members interface extensively with federal and local agency staff, private landowners, and Tribal land managers as they plan and discuss important collaborative land management projects. One landowner who stewards 45 forested acres adjacent to Santa Fe National Forest land worked closely with the Espanola-based FSYC crew to complete fuels reduction forest thinning work. This project provided a dual benefit to the community by reducing fire risk near the National Forest boundary and decreasing fuels for a new housing development nearby on the outskirts of Santa Fe. Treating large tracts of land like this that are not under the public domain, a reality made possible by FSYC crews, is an example of the work which is crucial to maintaining a healthy and sustainable wildland-urban interface. 

Looking back on another successful FSYC Fall season, it's encouraging to see so many young New Mexicans picking up the torch of conservation and improving their communities daily. Equipped with in-demand certifications and transferable job skills, these young crews are growing their own roots alongside the very forests they call home. 

But wait, there’s more!
Additional Youth and Employment Development Programs in NM

FSYC is not the only program seeking to equip local youth and young adults with the knowledge and skills to join the land stewardship workforce and contribute to their communities. Several other programs from across the State are:

  • Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps hosts Adult and Youth Crews, Local Placements, and more. Learn about their programs here.

  • Rocky Mountains Youth Corps 18+ program, in addition to their other youth programs, offers young adults a diverse set of hard skills training opportunities. Read about their fire experience in this 2021 news article.

Additional Resources

Research and Tools from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium

Grant Opportunity: 2025 Wildfire Risk Reduction Program

Click on the image to view and download the full grant application package.

New Mexico Counties is pleased to announce the 2025-2026 Wildfire Risk Reduction Program. The grant program assists communities throughout New Mexico in reducing their risk from wildland fire on non-federal lands. Funding for this program is provided by the National Fire Plan through the Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management for communities in the wildland-urban interface and is intended to directly benefit communities that may be impacted by wildland fire initiating from or spreading to BLM public land. 

 Funding categories include:

  • CWPP updates up to $25,000/project

  • Education and outreach activities up to $20,000/project

  • Hazardous fuels reduction projects up to $100,000/project

Applications are due to the local BLM field office for signature(s) by Friday, March 7, 2025. You can access the application package here or by visiting https://www.nmcounties.org/services/programs/ where you can view the application and checklist. For additional information, contact Hannah Kase Woods, Government Relations Specialist at hwoods@nmcounties.org or by calling 505-820-8102 (office) or 253-269-8025 (cell).