Keynote Speakers

The conference will include 3 plenary sessions, each including an international set of keynote speakers who will present on important wildland fire topics and engage with the audience in a question and answer session. All plenary sessions will be livestreamed and recorded for viewing after the event.

Indigenous and Local Ecological Knowledge
Tuesday, October 4, 5:00pm-7:00pm CEST
Panel with speakers and moderators presenting remotely; livestreamed for Florence and virtual attendees
Moderators

Bibiana Bilbao
Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela

Bibiana Bilbao, Professor at Environmental Studies, Simón Bolívar University, Venezuela, is a field fire ecologist with 25 years of teaching, researching, and capacity-building experience. She has promoted the integration of Indigenous, technical, and scientific knowledge into fire management policies in Venezuela and other Latin-American countries, fostering Indigenous cultural heritage and biodiversity conservation. Europe Award 2010 Innovation for Sustainable Development and National Award 2013 for Best Scientific Work and Innovation. She is also a COBRA Collective (CIC), UK member, Co-founder of the South American Participatory and Intercultural Fire Management Network, and an Advisory Board member of the International Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, UK. Recently, Bibiana obtained the “Scientifique Invite” position at the 2022-2023 Programme at Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions (MAK’IT), Montpellier University, France. 

Mary Huffman
Director, Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, The Nature Conservancy, USA

Mary Huffman received her BS in Resource Conservation from the University of Montana, her MS in Botany from Miami University in Ohio and her PhD in fire science from Colorado State University. Her doctoral dissertation focused on connections among traditional fire knowledge, community-based fire management and the fire ecology of Ocote pine (Pinus oocarpa) in Chiapas, Mexico. Mary is a career-long employee of The Nature Conservancy, specializing in prescribed burning and fire management partnerships. Mary would like to acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples who have cared for the world’s ecosystems with fire since time immemorial.

 

Panelists

Community Fire Management and Its Contribution to Forest Landscape Restoration in Ghana

Lucy Amissah, Senior Research Scientist, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Forestry Research Institute Ghana, Ghana

Lucy Amissah is a Senior Research Scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Forestry Research Institute Ghana. She received her PhD in Forest Ecology and Forest Management from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 2014, has a Master’s degree in Silviculture and Forest Management from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Management from the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. She has more than 20 publications related to forest ecology, biodiversity conservation and forest fire management.

Research Projects

  • Plant diversity, environmental factors and their relation to biomass, carbon storage and dynamics in the forests of Ghana.
  • Effects of climate change on regeneration of tree species in tropical forest of Ghana
  • Effects of climate change on survival and growth of tree crops in Ghana.
  • Biodiversity conservation in plantations on degraded forest lands within or outside forest reserves.
  • The role of wildfire in farming systems in the forest transition zone of Ghana

More than 250,000 hectares of scorched land by the end of August 2022 clearly evidence the blatant lack of competence of politicians and technicians entrusted with the  management of our countryside and its important environmental values, who ignore the knowledge, needs and ways of life of rural populations and their traditional practices. 

Already in 1885, González de Linares of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, denounced that: “foresters are undoubtedly over-competent in the general techniques of forest sciences, but less knowledgeable about the complex web of social life and resulting organization of our municipalities”. In 1978, Prof. Pedro Montserrat (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), also wrote: “I cannot conceive fires without grazing and mandatory manuring of pasture regrowth. The effects of fire are very impressive but short-lived; they must be completed by trampling and intense manuring”. 

Ignoring so many recommendations, systematically prohibiting controlled burning in winter to improve pastures, and abandoning livestock management in mountain areas for decades, has led to the current situation of uncontrollable fires. Meanwhile, judicious traditional uses by rural communities have been substituted by “service” enterprises unrelated to the land. Only the rational use of extensive pastoralism, in particular with sheep and goat, which allows for continued and profitable control  of dry biomass in the mountains, fertilizing and seeding the eroded soils up to the most inaccessible peaks and sites, can prevent forest fires and correct their devastating effects on ecosystems and rural society.

Savanna fire management: Indigenous led carbon farming for conservation and employment

Rohan Fisher 
Fire Researcher, Charles Darwin University, Australia

 

Rohan has worked with satellite data and GIS for the last 30 years, initially for CSIRO in Canberra, and subsequently for the Northern Territory government in Alice Springs and Darwin. For the last 18 years, he has worked as a Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University focusing on GIS and Remote Sensing tools in Eastern Indonesia and best practice savanna fire management in Northern Australia. Rohan’s work underpins the delivery of critical fire information to land managers across Australia through the North Australian Fire Information web service. His current work is focused on developing Projection Augmented Landscape Models; using low-tech tools to create dynamic spatial holograms of land and fire.

The tropical savannas of northern Australia are among the most fire-prone regions in the world. On average, they account for 70% of the area affected by fire each year in Australia. But effective fire management over the past 20 years has reduced  fire frequency across much of northern Australia. The success in northern Australia is the result of sustained and arduous on-ground work by a range of landowners and managers. Of greatest significance is the fire management from Indigenous community-based ranger groups, which has led to one of the most significant greenhouse gas emissions reduction practices in Australia. This presentation outlines the nature of fire regimes in the savannas of northern Australia, describes the work being done to manage them and some of the supporting tools.

Only the rational use of large herds of sheep and goats can prevent forest fires in Spain

Jesús Garzón
President, Trashumancia y Naturaleza and Concejo de la Mesta Association, Spain

Jesus Garzon (Madrid 1946), has worked in nature conservation since 1966, mainly on threatened species in Spain, taking action to prevent their decline. From 1972 to 1984 he lead the IUCN/WWF International Project for the Conservation of Nature in Western Spain, which culminated in 1979 with the creation of the current Monfragüe National Park. From 1984 to 1987 he was Director General for Environment in the Government of Extremadura. Aware of the importance of traditional grazing for the sustainable conservation of ecosystems and the valuable Iberian biodiversity, since 1992 it has directed projects to promote transhumance in Spain, striving to recover traditional livestock walking through the National Network of drovers´ roads, 125,000 km length, to ensure the ecological connectivity and the adaptation of biodiversity to climate change reducing the risk of uncontrollable forest fires. Currently he chairs the Transhumance and Nature Association.

More than 250,000 hectares of scorched land by the end of August 2022 clearly evidence the blatant lack of competence of politicians and technicians entrusted with the  management of our countryside and its important environmental values, who ignore the knowledge, needs and ways of life of rural populations and their traditional practices. 

Already in 1885, González de Linares of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, denounced that: “foresters are undoubtedly over-competent in the general techniques of forest sciences, but less knowledgeable about the complex web of social life and resulting organization of our municipalities”. In 1978, Prof. Pedro Montserrat (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), also wrote: “I cannot conceive fires without grazing and mandatory manuring of pasture regrowth. The effects of fire are very impressive but short-lived; they must be completed by trampling and intense manuring”. 

Ignoring so many recommendations, systematically prohibiting controlled burning in winter to improve pastures, and abandoning livestock management in mountain areas for decades, has led to the current situation of uncontrollable fires. Meanwhile, judicious traditional uses by rural communities have been substituted by “service” enterprises unrelated to the land. Only the rational use of extensive pastoralism, in particular with sheep and goat, which allows for continued and profitable control  of dry biomass in the mountains, fertilizing and seeding the eroded soils up to the most inaccessible peaks and sites, can prevent forest fires and correct their devastating effects on ecosystems and rural society.

 

Integrated Fire Management: the key role of indigenous and traditional communities in the Dialogue of Knowledge

Lara Steil
Forestry Officer (Forest FireManagement), Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations

Lara Steil is a Forestry Officer (Forest FireManagement) at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations –FAO since July 2022. She graduated in Biology Science and held a master’s degree in Biotechnology and a PhD in Sanitation. From 2005 to May 2022, she was the coordinator of the interagency department at the National Center for Prevention and Fighting Fires in Brazil (Prevfogo/Ibama). Over her 16-year career in fire management, she has been promoting national and international cooperation and the development of activities related to integrated fire management with indigenous and rural communities. She is also involved with the paradigm shift from zero fire to integrated fire management through the development of public policies.

Integrated Fire Management (IFM) approach incorporates the ecological, socio-economic and technical aspects of fires in a holistic way to meet the goal of resilient and sustainable landscapes and human livelihoods. Indigenous and traditional practices and knowledge are shared generation after generation in a dynamic process of continuing observations and direct interdependent relationships with ecosystems, modelling and maintaining these environments. The public policies and the agencies have a long-lasting emphasis on fire suppression actions instead of integrated fire management approach, generating negative impacts on ecosystems and communities. Initiatives in Brazil, Venezuela, Australia, Bolivia, to mention a few, show how the traditional knowledge can build better and smarter fire management actions. Brazil developed an adaptive process to work together indigenous people and incorporate their knowledge in the agencies’ strategies and in a national policy on IFM. It is time to bring communities as key stakeholders on fire management, empowering them by recognizing the importance of their own knowledge. Promoting the dialogue of knowledge by putting together the experience, knowledge and best practices of researchers, practitioners, indigenous and traditional communities has the potential to reduce vulnerability of people and landscapes for a better environment and a better life.

Rewilding, Ecological Restoration, and Fire Management
Wednesday, October 5, 4:30pm-7:00pm CEST
Panel with speakers and moderator presenting in Florence; livestreamed for virtual attendees
Moderator

Alexander Held
Senior Expert, EFI Resilience Programme, Germany

Alexander Held holds MSc in Forest Science from Freiburg University, Germany. He started as a fire ecologist at the Fire Ecology working group of the Max-Planck Society, got a number of operational qualifications in the US and South Africa. He moved from fire ecology to fire management and worked with the Global Fire Monitoring Center GFMC in Europe and southern Africa. Later, Alex worked with the South African Working on Fire Program, from its early beginnings till 2012, when he joined the European Forest Institute EFI. At the EFI, Alex works on forest risks and forest resilience, where the exchange of expertise and knowledge, mutual assistance and cooperation in Europe is the tool to create more resilient landscapes. His expertise is in fire ecology and fire management, silviculture and wildlife management.

Panelists

How do forests survive alongside flammable open ecosystems?

William Bond, Emeritus Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa 

William Bond has explored the ecology, biogeography and evolution of open (non-forested) ecosystems. He has studied both physical and biotic controls on the distribution of these systems using a variety of tools, from remote sensing and global vegetation models, to field research and glasshouse experiments. He has argued that animal herbivory and fire, interacting with climate,  are important in shaping the global distribution and structure of terrestrial ecosystems. His work has policy implications challenging plans to afforest large areas of open ecosystems for carbon capture. He is an Emeritus Professor in Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town and served as Chief Scientist for the South African Environmental Observation Network from 2014-2018. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Mosaics of closed, fire-sensitive forests and open fire-dependent ecosystems are common in many parts of the world. The open ecosystems have long been interpreted as products of deforestation but diverse lines of evidence point to ancient origins long before humans. There is widespread concern over the survival of fire-sensitive forest in a flammable matrix leading to diverse measures, including fire suppression, to protect forests. But if both systems are ancient, how did forests survive in the fire-dependent open ecosystems? Here I discuss recent research on the stability of forest/grassy ecosystem mosaics, and factors accounting for stability. These include local topography, variation in grass flammability, animal activity and recovery of fire-tolerant forest margin species. Grass-fueled fires seldom penetrate more than a few meters into intact forest margins. However extreme fires, burning under extreme weather conditions, must have occurred in the past for open ecosystems to have carved into forests. The future of mosaics of alternative open and closed biome states is uncertain. Forests might shrink if extreme weather conditions promote extreme fires or expand if rates of tree recovery and sapling growth are promoted by warmer climates and high CO2

Is fire a good tool to manage and restore tropical open ecosystems?

Alessandra Fidelis
Associate Professor, Department of Biodiversity, São Paulo State University, Brazil  

Alessandra Fidelis completed her B.Sc in Biology at the Universidade de São Paulo (1999), M.Sc. in Ecology at the Technische Universität München (2004) and PhD at the Technische Universität München (2008). She was a post-doc researcher from 2009 – 2011 at the Universidade de São Paulo and in 2010 at the Universidad de Alicante. Currently, Dr. Fidelis is a professor at the Department of Botany at the UNESP Rio Claro (São Paulo). She has research interests in vegetation ecology, fire ecology, population biology, community ecology, above- and belowground biomass and carbon dynamics, effects of disturbance, grassland dynamics and plant functional types.

Tropical open ecosystems are mostly fire-driven, having evolved millions of years before present in the presence of fire. However, fire is still seeing as detrimental and thus, not used as a management tool. In several tropical open ecosystems, fire has been excluded because of the fire zero policies. As a consequence, many open ecosystems have shifted from open to encroached and forest systems. This change of state led to losses in plant and animal diversity, as well as in their capacity to store carbon. The UN Restoration Decade claims we should restore 350 million ha until 2030. However, several tropical open ecosystems are misclassified as degraded forest and thus, planting trees in these areas has been the main aim of several restoration practices in the tropics. Restoration of tropical open ecosystem should take into account that these systems are ancient and may require longer to be restored; they also rely on a viable bud bank that should be considering when planning restoration and finally, these systems must be resilient to disturbance (e.g. fires). Thus, these areas should be long-term monitored and evaluated to be considered successfully restored.

Deli Saavedra
Head of Landscapes, Rewilding Europe, Spain

Originally from Catalonia, Deli Saavedra (1968) became part of Rewilding Europe in 2012. He studied Biology and holds a PhD which focused on the Eurasian Otter. He has worked as a consultant in nature conservation during the last twenty-five years, coordinating the reintroduction of endangered species (black vulture, Eurasian otter) and the planning and management of protected areas. He has collaborated and researched on protected areas planning (Costa Rica, Hungary), private conservation (Venezuela, Australia) and endangered species (Poland, Morocco, Ethiopia), and has been consultant at the Territory and Landscape Foundation (Catalonia) and the Observatory for Biodiversity and Ecological Processes in Rural Areas (Spanish Government). He has been director of SolucioNat (ltd.), dedicated to bird control and management activities in natural areas.

He has written a book about the reintroduction of the Otter in Catalonia and another one about birds and mammals of northern Ethiopia. He is the president of Sol Solidari (foundation for environmental cooperation in Africa) and member of the Reintroductions Specialist Group of IUCN.

Bringing back ecological functions, as natural grazing by large herbivores and fire regimes, can promote ecosystem resilience and decrease the probabilities of extreme wildfires.

Land abandonment is an ongoing process happening in Europe on a big scale during the last decades. In Southern Europe (but recently everywhere), this process contributes greatly to extreme wildfires, with catastrophic consequences for nature and people. The old agroforestry mosaic is disappearing, and in many areas, despite huge subsidies, the old practices will never come back.

Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation, a management strategy based on the understanding and the recovery of the ecological processes at landscape level. The aim is to bring back natural processes to allow nature manage itself. Obviously, there is a limit to the restoration, being the boundaries mainly socioeconomic.

Bringing back herbivory and fire regimes can shape more resilient and diverse ecosystems. There are serious challenges to overcome in order to apply such rewilding recipes at landscape level, but also some opportunities to explore.

Rewilding is not the only approach, and it does not work at all the areas and scales, but it can help to create landscapes more resilient to disturbance and able to store more carb

Advances in Fire Ecology, International Research, and Management Applications
Thursday, October 6, 4:30pm-7:00pm CEST
Panel with speakers and moderator presenting in Florence; livestreamed for virtual attendees
Moderator

Paul Hessburg
Senior Research Ecologist, USDA-FS, PNW Research Station, Washington, USA
President, Association for Fire Ecology

Paul Hessburg is a Senior Research Ecologist with the USDA-FS, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and Affiliate Professor – UW-School of Environment and Forest Science, OSU-College of Forestry, and WSU – School of Environment. His research explores wildfire and climate change effects on landscape dynamics, the structure and organization of historical, current, and future landscape resilience, decision support modeling for forestry applications, and the ecology of forest reburning. He holds a PhD from Oregon State University, a BS from the University of Minnesota, is married with grown kids, and he and his wife Mary enjoy many outdoor pastimes and delightful grandchildren.

Panelists

Davide Ascoli
Professor, Department of Agriculture, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, and Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF), Italy

Davide Ascoli works as a researcher and professor in forest sciences at the University of Torino, Italy. He teaches integrated fire risk management, silviculture and forest mensuration. He carries out studies on fire ecology, fuel and fire behavior modelling, pyrosilviculture, fuel management and prescribed burning, and forest ecology in Mediterranean, temperate and alpine forests. He is subject editor of the iForest journal and he coordinates the Fire Management working group of the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF).

Climate oscillations, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), are fundamental components of the climate system that force in-phase geophysical and ecological dynamics that interact synergistically through space and time. This talk explore the breadth of knowledge on how climate oscillations synchronize fire disturbance and large-scale plant flowering, fruiting and seeding in several Earth’s biomes. The spatio-temporal matching of fire and timely plant reproduction may set up adaptive benefits and might explain the persistence in fire prone ecosystems of plant species without specific fire traits (resprouting, seed-banks) but that display variable and synchronous reproduction. An example is Picea glauca competing with serotinous species in crown fire regimes of Northwest-American boreal forests. Here, the transition from la Niña to El Niño phase of ENSO increases the probability of large-scale fire disturbance at year T and synchronized reproduction of white spruce at year T+1, allowing its timely reproduction in a favourable post-fire environment. Adaptive benefits due to synchronous large-scale reproduction driven by climate oscillations goes beyond fire ecology. It appears that climate oscillations may “bridge” proximate and ultimate causes of variable and synchronous reproduction increasing offspring fitness through either economies of scale or environmental prediction. However, the future of such interaction is uncertain. Abrupt global warming will affect Earth’s climate oscillations so profoundly as to perturb fire regimes and plant reproduction dynamics.

Marc Castellnou
Strategic Fire Analyst, Catalan Fire and Rescue Service
Associate Professor, University of Lleida, Spain

Marc Castellnou has served as Incident Commander, Hotshot Units Chief and Strategic Wildfire Analyst for the Government of Catalonia Fire Services since 1999, and as Director of their Prescribed Burning program since 2001.  Marc is also an Associated Professor at the University of Lleida in Spain and is founder and past President of the Pau Costa Foundation. He received a Forestry degree in 1996 and a Master degree in fire behavior and fire ecology in 2002 from the University of Lleida. Marc has filled various international fire specialist positions, including:  Senior Expert European Forest Institute (EFI), 2014; Technical expert for the European Civil Protection Mechanism; member of the European Mission on Chile wildfires in 2017; and member of the Independent Technical Commission for Portugal fires in 2017. In 2015 he received the International Association of Wildland Fire Safety Award and in 2017 the Montero de Burgos award for fire ecology public communication from the Official College of Forestry Engineers in Madrid.

Since 2018, the first year we saw fires in all European countries at once, the fire intensity and occurrence have increased. Portugal in 2017 was the first 6th generation type firestorm, followed by Greece, Sweden, and the UK in 2018, Greece, Italy, France, and Spain in 2021, and all of western Europe in 2022. Those extreme fires have exposed the fire problem to our society and risk management agencies in every European state. Unprecedented EU-funded research and programs call for a science-based approach and are driving the effort to understand, prepare and act to avoid the increased number of extreme wildfire events (EWE). Meanwhile, forest management shortage and environmental policies are rapidly creating a fuel build-up problem. Climate change is adding to the problem by inducing longer and more intense fire seasons. The climate anomaly in Atlantic high pressure blocking flow accelerates its occurrence and length, increasing dry and hot weather spells into western populated, forested, and once summer moist Europe. The long history of fire management in Mediterranean countries is not used, and the northern countries are repeating mistakes, building up a fire paradox and taking funding resources from forest to fire and rescue services. Short-term views are imposing policy programs investing in more firefighting resources. However, the fire ecologist and fire managers are proposing more fire and forest management, especially bringing back the millennial-old agroforestry mosaic. We present examples of recent events and their dynamics and propose a fire ecology approach to cope with European fire regimes’ significant changes. We propose policy changes to increase landscape resiliency based on the agroforestry approach. We advocate for more fire to vaccinate our landscape against fire storms. Finally, strategic management of the landscape is proposed to ensure biodiversity protection, carbon sequestration, and to be able to fight fires.

The 2019-20 Australian fire season: recovering biodiversity, healing country

Rachael Gallagher
Associate Professor, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Australia  

Rachael Gallagher is a plant ecologist and conservation biologist investigating how fire interacts with existing threats such as disease and invasive animals to impact plant diversity. Following the unprecedented 2019-20 Australian fire season, Rachael was commissioned by the Australian government to conduct a comprehensive national assessment of the recovery potential of the Australian flora, investigating impacts across 26,062 plant species. Her team’s work prioritising plant species for recovery actions after the fires has been widely applied to inform planning, management, and extinction risk assessment at the State and Commonwealth level across Australia. Rachael has worked in plant science since 2004, initially at the National Herbarium of New South Wales and subsequently as an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow (2017-2021) at Macquarie University, Sydney. She has been Associate Professor at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University since 2021 and continues to work closely with government and industry to create applied solutions for managing plant diversity in an increasingly dry and fire-prone world.  

The 2019-20 fire season was a major environmental turning point in Australia. The extent and severity of the fires was fuelled by widespread drought conditions, and more than 10 million hectares of the landscape were burned. While Australian ecosystems are adapted to specific fire regimes, the recovery of the unique biodiversity of the continent is contingent on interactions with pre-existing threats, such as disease and invasive animal impacts. In this talk, I will outline the Australian response to recovering biodiversity and healing country after the 2019-20 fires, detailing the novel frameworks we used to assess impacts and prioritise actions. I will demonstrate how Australian scientists operationalised these frameworks across more than 27,000 species of plants and animals, combining spatial data on distributions and threats, information on species traits, and expert elicitation to prioritise management actions. Showcasing the application of these frameworks and approaches is intended to aid in their use in other parts of the world, where managing the recovery of biodiversity will be needed in an increasingly pyric world.

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