Local students from SUNY ESF are learning how to fight a national challenge: wildfires.
The school, in collaboration with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, put on a day of hands-on training that will allow students to get their Wildland Firefighter Certification.
Andy Vander Yacht, an assistant professor of applied forest and fire ecology, said it’s important to teach the students how to avoid catastrophic fires in the environment.
“Climate change is leading to an increase in the size, severity, frequency of wildfires across the globe, really,” he said. “So, it's become a greater threat, and it's become something that we do need to suppress because it is misaligned with historical fire regimes."
But Vander Yacht said it’s also crucial to learn how to use fire as a tool to restore biodiversity and maintain healthy, functioning ecosystems.
The training took ESF students, Finger Lakes Community College students, and U.S. Forest Service trainees to different stations through the woods at the Lafayette Road Experiment Station.
They learned a number of new skills, including how to deploy a fire shelter, use hoses, identify different tools, and light fusees.
After being certified, Vander Yacht said they’re ready to work.
"As a basic wildland firefighter, they can instantly jump on wildland firefighting and suppressing crews, like with western wildfires. But they also can jump into fire management here in the eastern United States more, doing prescribed fires, using fire for a variety of reasons to accomplish a lot of land management objectives," he said.
And ESF student Ari Hanback is now planning a career as a wildland firefighter after taking Vander Yacht’s course.
"Obviously, fire ecology is very important and after years of fire suppression, it's very interesting to see it coming I guess back into fashion,” Hanback said. “Also they will give me a drip torch, which I think is just cool."
