The Fire Program uses education, outreach, and boundary spanning partnerships to foster the resiliency of communities and landscapes to wildfire at scale. A team of six wildland fire specialists helps seek regionally relevant solutions that make sense in the diverse ecological and social contexts of their areas.
Our broad program goals are to foster:
- Fire resilience: Whole communities have the capacity, resources, and tools they need to cope with and adapt to stress and disturbance while maintaining key functions and values.
- A culture of adaptation: Locally adapted solutions support people’s values and ecosystem health. Ongoing engagement, learning, and relationships among people, place, and fire support desired fire cultures.
- Fire-adapted ecosystems: Appropriate patterns of wildfire occur and support key functions and processes in a diversity of ecosystems.
We recognize the need to serve communities that face disproportionate wildfire risk, have had less access to mitigation and recovery resources, and possess diverse assets and capacities for adaptation. We also support the burning practices and relationships with fire that Tribes and Indigenous peoples hold.
We acknowledge that Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary's River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. All Extension programming throughout the state of Oregon happens on traditional homelands. To learn more, visit OSU's Land Acknowledgement webpage.
