Good Fire Workshop
Chico, CA: Saturday, March 1st,2025, 9:30am - 3:00pm
Concow, CA: Sunday, March 2nd, 2025, 10:00am - 4:00pm
Registration Closed
This weekend field workshop is an opportunity for community members to learn about how Good Fire can help mitigate wildfire risk, create community wildfire resilience and protect natural and cultural resources in Butte County.
Participants will gain practical knowledge on how to safely conduct pile burns while achieving essential objectives such as reducing wildfire risk and managing vegetation and natural resources. Participants will also explore the role of Indigenous cultural fire, learning how fire was historically used before colonization, its role in promoting biodiversity and cultural resources, the consequences of fire suppression, and the modern challenges of a fire-deficit landscape. Participants will be led through a fire ecology nature walk to learn about fire-adapted landscapes as well as the impact of the Camp Fire in Butte County and how humans can support post-fire recovery.
Through this event, we aim to help heal wildfire-related trauma, repair relationships with fire, better understand fire as a tool for ecological health, and learn more deeply how Indigenous communities historically used low-intensity fires to promote biodiversity and resilience, and strengthen community connections. By bringing people together around good fire, this event fosters a sense of belonging and collaboration. Learning and working together around good fire that connects participants to each other and to the land. Additionally, this can build the social support necessary for collective fire stewardship. Ultimately, this Good Fire Weekend seeks to create a positive, therapeutic relationship with fire, one that reduces trauma, promotes ecological understanding, and empowers communities to reduce wildfire risks through education, good fire, and social connection.
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
|
3/1 9:30am |
Welcome and introductions |
| Cultural Fire Presentation | |
| Fire Ecology: Impacts from the Camp Fire | |
|
Lunch |
|
| Community Pyrotherapy | |
| Pile Burning & Biochar | |
| 3:00pm | Workshop ends |
|
3/2 10:00am |
Land Acknowledgment |
| Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) | |
| California Indian Basket Weavers (CIBA) | |
| Lunch | |
| Fire History & Pyrogeography | |
| Pile Burning & Biochar | |
| 4:00pm | Workshop ends |
Trainers:
Ali Meders Knight, Mechoopda tribal member, Executive Director, California Open Lands
Ali Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member, mother of five, and traditional basketweaver based in Chico, CA. She has been recognized by the Mechoopda Tribe as a Master TEK practitioner, and works to form partnerships for federal forest stewardship contracting and tribal restoration programs on public lands. She has been a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) practitioner for over 20 years, collaborating on environmental education and land restoration projects with Chico State University, the City of Chico, Tehama County Resource Conservation District, and more. She serves on the Tribal Relations Strategic Planning and Implementation committee for the US Forest Service in Region 5. In March 2022 she testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Environmental Oversite Subcommittee on the merits of TEK and Tribally-led workforce development to restore California forest resilience and address the problem of catastrophic wildfires. In 2009 she helped plan and establish Verbena Fields, a unique 17-acre interactive food forest and interpretive park in North Chico, to educate about the rich ecological heritage of the Mechoopda people through weekly community tending workshops.
He-Lo Ramirez, Mechoopda tribal member, Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria
He-Lo Ramirez is a biologist, environmental educator, type-2 wildland firefighter, land steward, and a cultural practitioner. He-Lo has three associate degrees from Butte College (Sociology, Social & Behavioral Science, & Biology), a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Chico State, a California Single Subject Teaching Credential: Life Science/Biology, and currently is attaining a Master of Science degree in Wildland Management at CSU, Chico. In the past he has researched valley oaks extensively and published research on the ecophysiology and leaf morphology of valley oaks (He-Lo Ramirez et al. 2020). He-Lo currently works in the greater Chico area promoting food sovereignty utilizing indigenous foods, educating Native youth in environmental science, stewarding approximately 8,000 acres of conservation lands in the Chico foothills, and for the last few years He-Lo has volunteered at Chico State as President of the Native American Club and as an intern within the CSU, Chico Office of Tribal Relations to support the local Native community.
Alice Lincoln-Cook, Karuk tribal member, Chairperson, California Indian Basket Weavers Association (CIBA)
Alice has proudly served on the CIBA Board of Directors for eight terms. She is a member of the Karuk Tribe and worked over 20 years as an independent artist, making traditional jewelry and weaving Karuk style baskets. She teaches basketweaving to local tribal members at her store, the Klamath Book Nook in the town of Klamath, California. In addition, she works with local schools and other institutions and at events throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Alice was instrumental in reviving CIBA’s Following the Smoke program, building valuable partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies.
Zeke Lunder, Pyrogeographer, The Lookout
I am a wildfire technology, prescribed fire and wildfire fuels management specialist, based in Chico, California. I have been working at the intersection of wildfire and GIS since 1995, when I got started in fire and forestry, working seasonally with timber marking crews in Lassen National Forest near my hometown. I got hooked on fire after a couple winters burning house-sized piles of logging slash and working on the district hand crew. I was taking geography classes at Chico State and kind of just fell into fire mapping and wildfire intel right at a time when we started bring computers and plotters out to fire camps to make maps onsite. I’ve been making maps and working wildfires ever since — over 20 seasons working in the Planning Section of Incident Management Teams on some of the largest wildfires across the west. My wife Erika and I started our own wildfire mapping and consulting company, Deer Creek Resources in 2011. The next six years were marked by a historic drought and a huge increase in the amount of acres and structures burned per year. Working the night shift, helping map the carnage of the 2015 Valley Fire, in Lake County, while DCR's crews were supporting 4 other ongoing large fires, I realized we wouldn’t survive as a family if we kept up such an intense enterprise. We sold DCR to another Chico, California wildfire contractor, Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression, Inc, in 2017. I pivoted out of DCR's day-to-day operations after the 2018 Camp Fire, but recently stepped back into as Director, leading DCR's prescribed fire and wildfire resilience initiatives. In 2021, during the Dixie and Caldor Fires, Erika and I started a new wildfire media venture, The Lookout.
David Mitchel, PBA Coordinator, Butte County Resource Conservation District
David is focused full-time on planning and facilitating landowner burns, prep days, and training events, as well as using social media to tell the world what amazing things Butte PBAers are doing. David says, "I grew up in rural Mendocino county. I’m a volunteer firefighter for Butte County Fire company 24 Forest Ranch and the vice president of the Forest Ranch Community Association. I enjoy gardening and cooking. I love to go on trips with my wife and our eight year old son. Other hobbies include making biochar and working on my chainsaw skills!" David looks forward to being part of the positive culture shift around good fire in Butte County
Blake Ellis, Program Manager, Chico State Ecotherapy Program
Blake Ellis has spent many years helping others learn about and deeply connect with nature. Blake helped establish community gardens with refugees in Atlanta, Georgia, WWOOFed on organic farms in Taiwan and New Zealand, taught garden education to elementary schoolers, and provided horticultural therapy for adults with developmental disabilities. Following the 2018 Camp Fire, Blake returned to school to become a social worker to better support community recovery efforts. While completing her Master's in Social Work, Blake served as an AmeriCorps Disaster Case Manager with individuals impacted by the Camp Fire and conducted her thesis on the concept of "solastalgia." Solastalgia can be defined as the mental, emotional, and spiritual impacts of environmental degradation or the loss you feel when your beloved home environment is transformed beyond recognition. Her research led her to discover the practice of Forest Therapy, a hopeful intervention to help her community process trauma and grief, rebuild individuals' sense of place, and reconnect to nature. Blake is now a certified Forest Therapy Guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, the Program Manager for the Chico State Ecotherapy Program(opens in new window) with the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve(opens in new window), and an Associate Clinical Social Worker. Blake is also a Type 2 Wildland Firefighter passionate about prescribed fire, supporting first responders, and helping wildfire-impacted communities repair their relationship with intentional fire and wildfire-adapted landscapes. Blake hopes to nurture the health and well-being of Butte County by supporting nature connections and healthy community relationships that might also instill a sense of kinship, reciprocity, and responsibility to protect and steward our local environment.
