Hey, Kelly. It's been great to meet you today. Can you tell me a bit about your background and what you do for the Forest Service?

Yeah. Great to be able to chat with you today. So, yeah, I'm a district fire management specialist here on the Fishlake National Forest. I work on the Richfield Ranger District. I manage the fuels program there, prescribed fire and fuels. We do a lot of fuels reduction projects, prescribed fire, kind of, working with partners. And so I do a lot of planning and implementation of those projects.

With the recent fire letter of intent are you anticipating drastic changes, or, you know, back to the ten AM policy, are you reverting back to that?

I think what we're looking for is, again, aggressive initial attack. When it makes sense and where we can be safe, we're gonna use full suppression tactics, whether it's direct or indirect attack.

When we talk about prescribed fire, we're using prescribed fire right now, and we've used managed fire this season. But we're gonna be a little more cautious this year. We're just trying to make sure with some of the changes in the system right now, just wanna make sure we're safe and that we're focused on active suppression. We're gonna reevaluate next year where we're at. So where we're at with overall restructuring discussions?

Where are we at with conditions? Do we have a good moisture year? Do we not? What do the fuels conditions look like?

You know, we've heard a lot about the workforce reshaping.

Right.

You know, what changes do you see that for the fire season?

I'm not expecting a whole lot of changes at the district levels and at the forest levels. We do know that DRP did have some impacts though, but I guess my encouragement at this point is to reach out to those folks and assess their interest and availability, and then encourage them to come back and be available for this season.

And we know the secretary has been very supportive. There's a recent memo that just came out from the secretary on preparing for the upcoming fire season, and she's encouraging us to use all the resources. You talked about having tools at our disposal to use all those tools, including personnel to to to be effective and be prepared for the season. For non fire personnel, that, it means during certain levels of preparedness, we're gonna ask everybody to participate in the fire program. So kind of the way I think about it is when the fire bell rings, if you have the ability, and the quals to participate in the fire, we're gonna ask you to do that.

You named safety and fire response as your top priorities. I guess, can you tell me what this means as far as the other work of the Forest Service?

Yeah. So in addition to we've gotta get to this restructuring effort. That's a key piece that we're focused on as well. But we've got, a large number of executive orders that have come down.

I think we've had seven executive orders dealing with energy production, and critical mineral development. So we have refocused energies internally. We filled vacant positions, lateral moves to focus on the geology expertise that we have. Then we talked a lot about active management.

You know, as we look at the forest condition that we have out there, we have many forests that are much more dense.

We've had catastrophic wildfire. So we need to actively manage our forests to protect communities, to manage for forest health, and also deal with insect and disease issues. You know, we're updating the insect and disease research data that's gonna come out this summer. So we'll look when we did the last data sets in 2017, we saw states that within the next, you know, in 2017, we were looking ahead fifteen years. And in many states, we were anticipating fifteen to twenty percent of the stands would be dead within fifteen years. So significant mortality. So if we can do things to actively manage to reduce the threat of mortality, and protect communities, increase forest health, that's gonna be be a big focus.

I guess I I have one more question.

You bet.

The 1039s, I know we were able to hire, you know, some prior 1039s back and and, things like that with the hiring pause.

Right.

Do you see a opening in the future for bringing in, you know, like for 1039s and seasonal employment like recreation and things and a few of those?

Yeah. So right now, given the hiring freeze, I don't see that happening on recreation and other programs. What I do see though is we have money in the system that in many cases has come from partners. And if some of those partners are willing to bring staff on for us, so it could be the states. We have seen some states step up and bring on employees, seasonals, that work for us and work with us. So I think those are the opportunities we need to look at. So what partners exist that we can leverage their interest and use funding that's in the system, whether it's funding that we've received directly or from partners to bring those folks on.

So I think that opportunity is gonna present itself.

That's all the questions I had.

Well, thanks, Kelly. I appreciate it. It's great visiting with you, man.

Been great meeting with you.

Thank you, sir.

Yes. Thank you.

Alright.