Western land trusts and our communities face increasingly intense and frequent wildfires as a result of climate change, past land management practices and expansion of the wildland urban interface. Land trusts have expressed the need to educate their staff, share insights and knowledge with colleagues and collaborate with their communities on how to address the increased threat and impacts of wildfire to their conservation lands. During an initial listening session held at the beginning of the year, the Land Trust Alliance heard from land trust partners across the west that there is a shared need for a space where land trusts could learn, share and discuss their challenges and success surrounding wildfire.

Would you like to receive updates and notifications about our new Wildfire Resilience Network? If so, please fill out the short form below! If you have any questions, please reach out to Sean Roome at sroome@lta.org.

In response to this need, the Alliance has developed a new peer-to-peer network called the Wildfire Resilience Network (read more in Fire Ready, from the Spring 2025 issue of Saving Land). The WRN will provide a space for land trusts to learn from experts, share experience with and support other land trusts and discuss the challenges and successes related to living with and managing wildfire. Meeting topics will include how land trusts prepare for and respond to wildfires, post-fire recovery, conservation easement issues, community engagement and more. As wildfire impacts land trusts in a variety of ways, the WRN is geared towards land trust staff from all levels of experience. The WRN is also designed to be nimble and responsive to the needs of western land trusts when dealing with wildfire, and will include a support system in which land trusts can connect with, and offer advice and assistance to, land trusts and their communities as they manage their responses to wildfires in real time.

We are currently targeting quarterly, 75-minute meetings consisting of a combination of expert presentations, group discussion, roundtables, breakout sessions and peer mentorship. We will also form a planning committee to assist in the development of each session and are currently seeking volunteers who may be interested in shaping this new network.

Together we will ensure our land trusts, our communities and our land are all better equipped to face the growing challenges associated with increasingly frequent and catastrophic wildfires.

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