Joel Arellano, Indigenous Land Stewardship Specialist at the Climate Science Alliance, traveled to Chumash lands in November 2023 to participate in a TREX training hosted at the UC Santa Barbara Sedgwick Reserve. Hear about Joel’s experience and how this training uplifts the Alliance’s fire stewardship programming on today’s blog!
In November 2023, Climate Science Alliance Indigenous Land Stewardship Specialist Joel Arellano attended the 2023 Santa Barbara TREX at Sedgwick Reserve, with the goal of gaining experience and knowledge to apply to the Alliance’s Southern California Interagency Fire and Fuels Cadre and future Stewardship Pathways work. The training event was hosted by UC Santa Barbara and its Natural Reserve System in partnership with the Nature Conservancy. TREX, short for Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges, are held to bring together fire practitioners, trainees, and the community to provide hands-on instruction, lecture, and application of methods revolving around fire management.
Throughout the multi-day training, Joel met and worked side-by-side with fellow Indigenous fire-culture bearers and professionals, building new relationships and exchanging information on future collaborations with Native practitioners from as far north as territories in Canada. Together, participants worked as teams to utilize lessons learned during the week into application and accomplish goals of putting good fire on the land.
This training allowed Joel to complete tasks in his National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) position task book (PTB), which is a key component of the qualification process for specified NWCG positions. The PTB provides an observable, measurable, and standardized means to evaluate and document trainee proficiency.
This opportunity was made possible through the support received for the Stewardship Pathways program. The Alliance is excited to leverage partnerships as part of our Collaborative of Native Nations for Climate Transformation and Stewardship (CNNCTS) project to continue to expand opportunities like these under Stewardship Pathways.
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