How did we get here? History of Wildfire in Nevada

Brad Schultz, professor and Humboldt County Extension educator, discusses the role of fire in Nevada, historically. As an expert in rangeland management, he has looked at wildfire from a “big picture” perspective across the state and across the West.

Transcript

Megan Kay: 0:19

Welcome to the living with fire Podcast, where we share stories and resources to help you live more safely with wildfire. Welcome, this is the first episode of the living on fire podcast. I'm your host Megan Kay, the average coordinator for living with fire. And I'm joined by my two bosses, Christina Restaino is here and Jamie Roice-Gomes. o you guys want to introduce yourselves?

Christina Restaino: 0:44

Yeah. My name is Christina Restaino. I am the director of living with fire program

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 0:50

Hi, everyone, Jamie Roice-Gomes, manager of the living with fire program.

Megan Kay: 0:54

Awesome. So we're here today to talk about our interview we did with Brad Schultz. He's the extension educator out in Humboldt County for University of Nevada, Reno extension. And he talked with us a while back about the history of fire in Nevada rangelands, you guys have had an opportunity to listen to the podcast. I've listened to it a bunch because we enjoy and edit it. So I want to start off with your guys's thoughts. Jamie want to go first? Yeah,

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 1:17

I thought it was really interesting. I didn't realize that it was a hotly debated question. When people are talking about the fire history on the range here in the Great Basin? I honestly didn't even consider that.

Megan Kay: 1:29

Yeah. I didn't realize that. I mean, I didn't know anything about the science, history of fire. So it's interesting to hear the latter sort of the evidence that they have, and also just the it's all a lot of it is speculative, because of what you guys will hear about later. What about you, Christina?

Christina Restaino: 1:48

You know, I thought it was really cool how he really talks a lot about how these lands have been managed, you know, perpetually and constantly and you don't really think about the fact like, okay, Native Americans were word having a lot of fire, that they were gathering fuel and burning, for cooking for manufacturing, right. It's like I think more about, okay, staying warm, and making food but not like manufacturing tools and clothing and things like that. And so, you know, that that just perpetual use of fire all the time? And how that really modified the fuel availability on the landscape? And how with the absence of that, you know, what does that mean for the fuels that we have now? Right, we have obviously have so many fuels and this huge fuel issue, but I thought that was really interesting.

Megan Kay: 2:50

Yeah, it seems to me and you guys have a science background. So when you guys were learning about ecology, were humans talked about much. Oh, all the time. All the time. Yeah. So it's not exactly it's not so much? I don't know. It just seems it seems to me like it's still kind of like being understood the the historic impact of humans on the landscape?

Christina Restaino: 3:11

I think it's often simplified. And I think that that becomes you know, it's the same story. Native Americans use a lot of fire the end, right, as opposed to like, well, how are they using fire? And what times of year? Were they using fire? And what were they using? What objectives were they using it for? And

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 3:30

what were they using to build those fires? They were using sagebrush as the main fuel source. I mean, I never considered that. And then I really thought it was interesting when Brad brought up the fact that I mean, think about how many campfires get loose today. I mean, if there is a perpetual use of wildfire out on the landscape from Native Americans, can you imagine how many wildfires have gotten loose then?

Megan Kay: 3:53

Seriously? Super interesting? Yeah, when he just laid out the math, my brain was like, and that's just for Northern Piaute, and Shoshone people, which is like, or just northern pi, that's 25,000 people, that's just one tribe in one area. And, and not the most, like, populous tribe, either. So it's kind of crazy to think, how widespread the use of fire was, you know, before.

Christina Restaino: 4:20

Yeah. And then also, you know, the, the concept of, Okay, then, Native Americans were removed from the land for the most part, we brought in grazing, and we started to develop landscapes. And then the fine fuels were removed because of the grazing, and then we didn't have any fire. Right? So it's like, you have a bunch of fire all the time. You don't have any fire, and now we have so much fire and so, you know, it's the same story you hear in, you know, in the Sierra Nevada ecosystems as well. Right? Where you have this? Well, we had fire, and then we didn't have any fire. And now we have a lot of fire. And so, you know, just what are the different ways that we modify fuels as humans over time. And then I love the point at the end of, you know, we can't not manage our ecosystems for fire for ecosystem resilience for climate change for any of these big, you know, problems and stressors that we have. Because our ecosystems have always been managed and manipulated in some way, whether that be for the positive or the negative. And so we can't just step back and leave them alone at this point, because there's too, it's too complex. Yeah, I love how it ended on that. I do. Yeah.

Megan Kay: 5:53

And something that I, you know, when you're learning about, like, wildlife in the ecosystem, you know, it's you understand that animals have, you know, we're animals too, but they you understand that wildlife have that sort of symbiotic relationship where they are managing their little habitats as well. And that's having an effect on the ecosystem. But humans like it, just, you know, I'm learning as well. And my brain is sort of forming, to, you know, adapt to this sort of, like field of study. And just the idea of, yes, okay, humans in the landscape, it's not just that we're apart and separate. It's not just that we should be hands off and let Mother Nature do its thing. It's like we are part of it. And we always have. So yeah, I think that that part really struck a chord with me for sure. And we live in it. Yeah. And if she's building, it's in our best interest to make sure that the outcomes of our land management, you know, strategies are been immediate, mutually beneficial to like all species. So yeah, it was, I mean, that's my little Kumbaya thing, but it's really it's definitely, like I've said, putting the pieces together, you know, because I think there's a lot of slogans and there's a lot of like cliches about nature and stewardship, but then when you actually understand humans roles, just in this context with fire, then you really, it's I think, it's like helps kind of like bind that all together. For me, at least send I hope it will, for the listeners to understand that humans have always been in these landscapes and were a huge part of the resilience, like keeping these things in check, you know.

Brad Schultz: 7:45

So my name is Brad Schultz, and I'm the extension educator for the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, housed in Humboldt County, the city of winnemucca. I've been in this position for 20 years now, starting my 21st year and my program focus here is largely Grange management. I also do some work work with a noxious weeds and agricultural and pasture settings. within that context, I do a lot of work with public lands, grazing issues on quite a few different collaborative planning processes for different grazing allotments been involved with the sage grouse planning issues since it started here in 2001. Been working with Barry perriman quite a bit on fine fuels management, using livestock dormancy using grazing to manage fine fuels to try to reduce fuel carryover, and reduce the size intensity and probability of large catastrophic wildfires.

Megan Kay: 8:37

How would you describe range management?

Brad Schultz: 8:39

So on range lands, your type of land, typically arid lands, not always, but more often than not? arid lands? So you're looking at what ecological processes mechanisms, interactions affect the distribution and abundance of plants, animals, how they interact with soils, climate, the flow of water and nutrients through the system? And then the management side is what specific actions do you take to manipulate those resources to achieve specific goals for the benefit of society?

Megan Kay: 9:16

That is a very getting succinct explanation. And I feel like I understand it better now. So I think I'm excited for listeners to hear that

Brad Schultz: 9:25

and I probably should add people often equate range management with livestock management and livestock management is just one component of range management is not livestock grazing is just one use of or expense, and two are not the same.

Megan Kay: 9:39

So this episode is about the history of fire in Nevada, and I wanted to pick your brain with your expertise, and ask if you could paint a picture of what Nevada's rangelands used to look like pre settlement and compare that to how they look today.

Brad Schultz: 9:51

That's a really complex question without a simple answer, and that's because in Nevada, you have a lot of emotions. mineral gradients, climatically soils and so forth. And those gradients run from the west side of the state to the east side saw summer precipitation increases as you go to the east and it gets a little colder. Also north to south, much colder in the north, very hot in the south. And then you have elevation gradients from less than 3000 feet to almost 14,000 feet in parts of the state. And each of those create a very complex landscape. And all these different factors really determined the plant communities you had out there. So on those lower drier areas that were formerly lakes and so forth, you have what we call the salt desert shrub community, predominantly shrubs, relatively few grasses in except on sand sheets, where you get a lot of rice, grass and so forth, about very arid, very dry, very harsh sites not occupied by a lot of prehistoric peoples most of the time unless there were marshes there at the terminus of the rivers and so forth. Moving up, you get into the valleys, the alluvial fans, you started in the middle of fans up approach these fans you can get to the we will call the sagebrush grass plant communities went on to the hillsides, more sagebrush and grass, higher elevation or cooler, more moisture, much more productive. So a very heterogeneous, very dynamic landscape.

Megan Kay: 11:24

Can I ask you a quick question before we move on? Can you explain what the role of fire was historically,

Brad Schultz: 11:29

fire was widespread across much of the sagebrush region. The general rule of fire is to reduce woody vegetation, whether it's shrubs or trees, particularly those that don't sprout from the root crown or buds on the roofs after any kind of disturbance. sagebrush is a non sprout are most of our conifer trees are not as Browder's Aspen does bro that require some a few other shrubs do as well. But fire would really reduce those shrubs. Typically the time of year fire burns, mid summer, late summer into the fall grasses are dormant, the growing points are below the ground surface. So the perennial bunch grasses, there were very few annuals present at that point in time. These bunch grasses are largely unaffected by most fires that would burn that time of year. So bunch grasses would increase after a fire. And then over time plant succession, vegetation change that occurs, the shrubs would slowly increase grasses would start to decrease, buyer would come back and return that balance. And across a large landscape. Buyers would occur periodically but at different places at different times. And you will get a very strong mosaic pattern of predominant grasses in some areas, Bromley shrubs and others and most of it being a mix in between. That confers a lot of benefits to the wildlife species that occupy our rangelands in Nevada. There's probably well over 200 species when we look at birds and mammals. And a small set of those are what we call sagebrush obligates. They require sage brush the presence of sage brush at least some point in time, every year within their annual cycle to survive. If you don't have that sage brush the either don't survive, or they have incredibly small populations. On the other end, we have a few species that prefer predominantly grasses that we've considered grassland species, and most are somewhere in the middle that do fairly what good with a reasonably good mix of sagebrush shrubs and grasses together. When you get that mosaic across the landscape, do that that fire mechanism that fire disturbance that occurred periodically, you would end up having this broad mix of different successional classes that would allow all those species to be present. In most places, not confined to very smaller areas of the landscape. How often did fire happen? That is a very hotly debated question. It's very difficult to understand that in Nevada, because the best way to document fire history is scars on trees. And most of Nevada has very few Long live trees. They can document that fire history going back hundreds if not 1000s of years. Another part of that really gets forgotten is most people they're very familiar with lightning. They know lightning causes fires. What everybody forgets about is the role of Native Americans on the landscape. Native American populations were overly height, large in Nevada 25,000 or so give or take, depending on which anthropologists you want to look at. Probably confined to certain areas where water was available year round, along the main rivers, perennial tributaries marshes and so forth, but they use fire every day of the year. 24 hours a day, because fire was was used not just for cooking, but manufacturing their clothes, their tools, the impediments they need, they needed to survive and so forth. If you had one fire supporting four people and a population of 25,000 people, he probably 3000 6000 campfires burning every day. Think about how many campfires escape now, you have a lot fewer, and the emphasis on putting them out. And none of them were in 24 hours a day. So you probably had some escape fires from that. But they also use fire to manage vegetation. For hunt, to hunt animals. furs were a primary source of clothing, and so forth. So they use fire very extensively to manage landscapes as well. Undoubtedly, some of those got very large, but they and they use them every year. Exactly how big fires got, how often they got away, how much they burnt, how they burn it, it's really quite speculative. But I would expect that with the very patchy environment you had with your vegetation, and so forth, more grasses, some areas, more shrubs and others to fires, even when they got large, or burn much patch here. May Berg in the grasslands, they're probably more likely to go out at night. Where nowadays when they burn at night, often burning in heavy fuels, shrubs, and so forth. So it isn't enough fuel to carry those fires through the night and burn the next day. And so they were likely to go at night because of like temperatures and humidity, temperature and humidity even a little bit of humidity recovery. We just didn't have the large fuels base. And while drying might be the one to grasp was an exception, because it can be a very large plant, with a large roof, ground and so forth. But there's really a lot of unknowns within that Native American fires were probably concentrated in certain areas, because their populations are concentrated. And the farther you move away from that there's probably less influence, and then the lightning would have been a greater role. The full extent of that is really an unknown.

Megan Kay: 17:21

84% of wildfires nationwide are caused by people. If you're planning on heading out and enjoying public lands, visit Nevada fire info.org and learn how you can recreate responsibly and do your part to prevent wildfires. So that mosaic pattern you're talking about, it seems like that was a key part of the landscape and its ability to withstand fire and not, you know, to experience periodic fire without devastating wildlife and habitats. Yeah, I

Brad Schultz: 17:57

would, you know, and none of this is really definitive knowledge. It's based on a lot of as a mix of anecdotal and small scale studies and looking at patterns and so forth. But when you had that diverse landscape, fuel loads, very fuel continuity carried and most large fires are accompanied by at least light to moderate and heavy winds. And when you have that pie diversity of fuel continuity and fuel loads, your winds are going to, they often get quite square what we call squirrely and so forth change direction a lot. So that's going to push fire differently than when you have one continuous fuel. If you want to go out and look at the Martin fire when it burned a couple of years ago across the ye desert, that was one continuous stand up sagebrush for mile after mile, very high cover 20 30% Carter or more, no brakes, no cotton discontinuity in that fuel. So it allowed one very long, wide broad front of fire to move across the entire southern part of the ye desert. If that had been broken up with 100 acres of fine fuels here are predominant grasses here 1000 acres there, it would have changed the pattern of that fire front end would have undoubtedly resulted in a very different burning pattern, probably more unburned islands. There are some large unburned islands out there now, but it probably would have been much different.

Megan Kay: 19:24

That's a good segue into kind of talking about what the range and the vegetation and the wildlife look like today, as opposed to historically with that mosaic pattern.

Brad Schultz: 19:36

In many ways. It's quite different today than it was prior to settlement by Europeans. One of the first things that happened with European settlement was the massive introduction of livestock to the Great Basin. Initially cattle and then followed by sheep, we have livestock numbers, many orders of magnitude greater than today. They graze these air is what we call season long. From the time the plants turned green in the spring in the snow melted the entire growing season and clearing the the fall and sometimes the winter grass plants while they have many features that tolerate grazing. No grass plant is capable of surviving grazie that occurs the entire growing season every year, year after year. parallel with that was the introduction of invasive annual grasses that originated from Europe and Eurasia probably as a contaminant in the green sea that was brought over and seated on the early farms. cheatgrass. Later Medusa had now been knocked out bargo grasses, another one that's coming, but predominant, cheatgrass is when everybody's familiar with these slowly started to spread across the landscape. Probably initially following all the infrastructure that was developed, this allowed them to move across the landscape, and then that started to interact with a lot of the other natural non human disturbances out there.

Megan Kay: 21:05

So cattle production, you outlined how important that was to the change. But what about fire and fire suppression and like humans, just humans, suppressing fire, because they're building houses in their head, they have settlements,

Brad Schultz: 21:21

just settlement and the whitebridge, raising it decreased the amount of flying fuels, and fine fuels are where most ignition would occur in the summertime. From lightning, Native American burning completely went away by about 1900. Probably even earlier than that. It was it was almost non existent. So that source of fire was gone. settlers, there was some burning periodically. But the the European attitude towards fire was fires generally bad on the landscape. We don't want to burn things, past history from where they came from. It's a reflection of that. And it's also they're seeing their forage potential forwards go away for a couple years when fires burn. So

Megan Kay: 22:11

there was that it was like a matter of survival. They're like we can't that's our food source, and stop the fire from

Brad Schultz: 22:18

so human caused fire initially went way down. And so you didn't have the sources out there, he didn't have the fine fuels to ignite as easily and to initially carry a fire, particularly in non windy conditions, where you get a lot of small fires. And our large fires, even prior to settlement were probably a very small part of the total number of fires, but they probably burned the most acreage. But you didn't happen every year, every five years, every 10 years, that that's really an unknown will probably never be answered.

Megan Kay: 22:52

So how often is fire happening now it seems like it's there's a ton of fire.

Brad Schultz: 22:58

So in your lower elevations where cheatgrass has become predominant, fires much more frequent than it used to be. Some areas I've seen some areas burned three or four times, since I've been hearing that a month ago. And that was really common, or what most of our fires were these cheatgrass driven fires before about 2000 2005. Since about 2005, I've seen an increase in our large fires in our mid and upper elevations deter sagebrush driven shrub driven. Most these areas have at least a decent understory of perennial grasses today. And they often come back largely as perennial grasslands. But those areas typically a lot of them have been burnt and probably over 100 years, maybe even much longer. And it's a combination of the historic livestock grazing that reduce those fine fuels early on, followed by a very intensive fire suppression area era, starting in the 1930s. That lack of fire, that lack of disturbance never set the shrubs back never decreased them across very large expanses, hundreds of 1000s of acres, million acres or more at times, and those shrubs have slowly increased, you're getting 2025 30% shrub cover. And every one of those sagebrush plants has about 300 different volatile oils in it that are highly flammable. So a sagebrush plant is three foot tall, can easily put off probably at nine to 15 foot length flame, especially when it's windy. And if you have two to four feet between plants, and you get some wind, it pushes that flame over from plant to plant. And when you've got 50 miles like he had on the Martin fire of continuous sagebrush like that is highly flammable. In a very dry year with a good understory of a bunch grasses and most of it, that fire can move incredibly fast and incredibly far very quickly.

Megan Kay: 24:43

Something that is interesting to me when we're talking about the history of fire is and I keep going back to what you were talking about. It's a lot of it is largely speculative because we it's not like other ecosystems where you can study tree rings and scars. I'm just curious as to because this is is sort of an ongoing field of study and topic, how much does understanding the history of fire play into current land management and how it's evolving?

Brad Schultz: 25:12

Well, I think, with the history of fire in the Great Basin, in the sagebrush press so tells us is you need some amount of periodic disturbance, it's going to reduce the shrubs for some period of time, and maintain the bunch grasses or allow the bunch grasses to fully occupy the site. But in today's world, it's really not so much about fire as understanding disturbance and how it affects that shrub grass relationship, you're not going to use fire the same way it occurred prior to settlement. We've got new players that more people on the landscape more infrastructure that we don't want to burn, we've got an invasive species that can respond to it. So it's not appropriate every place. But disturbance of some type is is still going to be needed to maintain that shrub grass balance, so that we have what we call resilient plant communities. By resilience. We're talking enough bunch grasses on site, that when a fire or some other disturbance happens, they immediately occupy the site, they remain on the site to competitively exclude those undesired species, and keep them from taking over more and more the landscape. fires, I think has a different role in some areas. We have that good bunch of grass understory, and you can control it. One thing I don't think we've looked at is using fire outside the timeframes we've normally done it. I think a lot of these sagebrush areas, if you could get the right equipment out there, and helicopters drip torches, in December or January, when you've got six inches of snow on the ground. You can burn a lot of small areas, half acre quarter acre couple acres, and a very patchy environment and have absolutely no effect on that herbaceous understory and the soil. That hasn't been looked at at all. But I think there's tremendous opportunity for that it might provide opportunities in those areas where cheatgrass is the predominant understory species have thought about that as much, but there probably are potential opportunities there as well.

Megan Kay: 27:32

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Christina Restaino: 27:58

So Brad, the narrative that we hear a lot is that there's too much fire in the range of ecosystems now, right, and there's too little fire in the forest ecosystems. Can you talk about that a little bit? Are there? Are there kind of zones within the region ecosystem where there might be too little fire versus too much fire?

Brad Schultz: 28:22

I would say definitely yes. I think a lot of our mid and upper elevations have probably that and especially those who have been burned in the last 100 or more years have probably had too little fire. And when you talk about fire, you can't just talk about the presence or absence of fire, but you have to talk about the size of it. And we're not talking about large scale fires, we're talking about a lot of small and small has different connotations to different people, a few acres here, if you wait is there 100 acres there, and maybe some in the in the 1000 2000 acre, but it's and then it's also the configuration of that, you know, 1000 acres square, as much different effect on how a landscape is used and the animals that use it, then 1000 acres, that's a long corridor, say 300 feet wide on average. So as you know, if you can't just say fire, it's how fire occurs. The size of it, the relationship with one patch is burned to another. Fire Fire is a very complex, it's not an off on switch.

Christina Restaino: 29:32

And also what happens where the fire occurs, the effects, what conditions is it burning under? What's the severity of fire, how does it influence the soil, etc. Right. So there's a lot of complexities to what the fire does to the landscape. But it does seem like in our CI grass invaded ecosystems, that's where we're seeing this rebirth cycle happening too close together

Brad Schultz: 29:59

without it out and eat a lot of those areas as buyers probably on a 50 to 75 year return interval, and you're talking three to five, maybe 10 years now, and you'll never get probably the bunchgrass is coming back. And definitely not the sagebrush and the non sprouting tread, you're actually seeing an increase in shrubs like horse brush and rabbit brush that sprout right after fire. They have butts on the crown or the roots, they get regrow stems, and then they fire is very positive on them. They respond to it very well. And they're generally undesired species at a high abundance.

Megan Kay: 30:38

Yeah, I mean, the just in the Reno area like that caught on fire. That was, I feel like that that hill up in Colorado Springs like every five to seven years, that seems like

Brad Schultz: 30:50

No, and I would add to it just because an area may have burned frequently prior to settlement. Does that mean fire is the best disturbance mechanism for managing that landscape? Now, a lot of things have changed

Megan Kay: 31:03

what other disturbances mechanisms are there that are commonly

Brad Schultz: 31:09

insects and pests? We have a defoliating loss that occurs periodically throughout the Great Basin, the Euro, Vermont, and it can defoliate vast areas of sagebrush,

Megan Kay: 31:21

what is the de-foliate mean? Take the leaves off. Okay, well, that makes sense.

Brad Schultz: 31:28

So they eat the leaves. And sagebrush is actually a very grazing intolerant plant. It's most of the bugs that produce new growth from year to year are on the outer edge of the stems. So if you defoliate that part of the plant, you kill it very easily. And, and there are some large tracts of Northern Nevada that just in the last five to 10 years have been defoliated by these insects. And if they have a good bunch grass understory, those bunch grasses occupy the site, you have good resilience, and you have the ability of sagebrush to slowly return to a site. If you don't have bunch grasses in the understory, that's when you start to get the the annual grasses. Some of our intense, prolonged droughts that occur periodically, can dramatically reduce or even kill off sagebrush in some areas, generally, not large tracts, but it does happen. And the other extreme, we tend to think wet years are very, very good and very beneficial, but you can get too wet. And that can also be a disturbance. If you get saturated soils. For too long, in some areas, you can kill a lot of sagebrush that way as well. So there's those latter two flooding, droughts typically occur at smaller scales, but they're also present on the landscape.

Megan Kay: 32:50

And then so in other ecosystems, prescribed fire is used, is there, what other disturbances, you know, human trying to mimic natural ones, but like what, what other ways can humans or land managers, you know, create these disturbances to try to restore these resilient landscapes?

Brad Schultz: 33:10

Well, looking back at the pre settlement area, something nobody thinks about today's if he had 25,000 Native Americans on the landscape, and they burned fires 24 hours a day in their camps? What fuel did they use? sagebrush was our most predominant fuel potential fuel on the landscape. How much sagebrush did they harvest? And how did that affect that shrub balance, grass ratio, and I've only really heard one other person talked about their harvesting of sagebrush and order entry here and in the winter market area. But I think that's something really worth looking at, and perhaps are Malawi, to some degree mimics that herbicides have been attempted. I forget the name of the one that's used quite often. But it's a granule granular herbicides, they spread under underneath the plants and over time in some settings, either slowly reduced, killed off sagebrush or not, generally not every plant, but it dramatically reduces the amount of sagebrush that's out there. And one of the benefits of that herbicide is generally a slow acting, so you don't change a lot fast. And we don't have a lot of bunch grasses in the understory. That's probably better than taking too much sagebrush out too fast. But what it really comes down to is any treatment, thinking about it strategically, all the different uses that are out there, the potential adverse impacts that could happen and identifying the best locations for each type of treatment, no one type of management treatment is appropriate every place, they all probably have some utility someplace. And then we often tend to want to do things once and have everything turn out for a lot of the management going forward is going to be multiple different actions, a series of different actions, some might occur simultaneously, some might be sequential. And then how does that sequence in that timing differ from one ecological site to another? It may not, it's undoubtedly not going to be the same place. And those are complexities that take a lot of thought and understanding of the overall ecology the area, before you can really figure out what is most likely to be most appropriate. It's about probabilities. There are no 100% guarantees, other than if we do nothing, we're gonna end up with something that we don't want

Christina Restaino: 36:05

Brad's point that our, our our biggest mistake is not doing anything at all right. And so, you know, because essentially, what happened, you know, is there was all this kind of manipulation of the landscape with grazing or logging in the forest. Right, so So you have these, like, significant impacts happening, but you're not thoughtfully managing for adaptation, ecosystem health resilience alongside those disturbances that you're introducing. And so then you get all out of out of sync. And so, you know, we need to continuously manage and interact with the ecosystems that we live in, and that surround the areas in which we live. Because we are so ingrained and part of the system that if you just leave them alone entirely, that's not a sustainable path for us.

Brad Schultz: 37:04

These these lands have been managed, used by people. Since way before European settlers got 10s of 1000s of years, as far back as Native Americans go, which maybe 30,000 years or more in different areas. And we're using starting to use a concept today. The term I've heard recently is outcome based match. Well, that's the same thing that Native Americans were doing when they were here. They were managing landscapes for outcomes they wanted based upon their needs. So it's really not a new concept. Or it's never been put in those terms before. But it's, you know, it's outcome based management. And that's deciding based on the capability of what your lands are, what resources you want them to produce. And then what suite of management actions does it take to achieve those outcomes?

Megan Kay: 38:19

Thank you for listening to the living with fire podcast You can find more stories about wildfire and other resources at living with fire calm. The living a fire program is funded by the University of Nevada, Reno, extension, Nevada Division of Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service.