Editor’s note: Julia Berkey is a key partner in the Blackfoot Valley Prescribed Fire Working Group, a Fire Learning Network (FLN) region. She is also a FAC Net member. FLN staff supported the Blackfoot TREX planning team in organizing their first event, and also attended part of the TREX and provided operational assistance. See more photos from the Blackfoot TREX in this Fire Networks blog post from May. Blog cover photo credit: Grady Anderson, Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
On a sunny, warm day in early May, thirty people gathered at the top of a hillside in Western Montana, looking down on the BLM unit they were planning to burn the next day. Ponderosa pines dotted the hillside, with the logging slash and a near-continuous bed of pine needles scattered in between. Geoff, the BLM’s burn boss, had walked everyone through the unit and its history, from planning the thinning to engaging the neighboring private landowners. Now, it was time to burn. Except for one problem: as everyone was standing there, excitedly chatting about firing patterns and holding concerns, Geoff received a call. There was no longer any funding available for the water tender and operator that was critical to pulling off this burn. From across the group, Cindy Super, Mike Schaedel, and I locked eyes. Cindy said, “Give us a minute, we can probably figure something out.”
That was not the first challenge the Blackfoot Valley Prescribed Fire Working Group encountered in planning our first-ever Prescribed Fire Training Exchange, or TREX for short. Formed in 2016, the working group consists of partners including state and federal agencies, NGOs, public universities, and private landowners. Cindy Super of the Blackfoot Challenge and Mike Schaedel and Steve Kloetzel of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) lead the group with substantial cooperation from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) and the newly formed Prescribed Fire Council. We had been dreaming of hosting a TREX for a long time. The (admittedly very) long-term goal of our group is to make the Blackfoot Valley a place where communities are truly living with fire; where a wildfire or prescribed burn is no more notable than a severe thunderstorm. A TREX seemed like a good step in that direction: not only would it get more good fire on the ground, the training exchange would also provide valuable learning opportunities for local burners and motivate the working group to develop agreements that would better allow for collaborative, cross-boundary burning in the Blackfoot Valley.
Planning for the Blackfoot TREX began well ahead of time, in early 2024. Standing on the shoulders of TREX giants, the Fire Learning Network had shared with us plenty of resources to start with: example budgets, tried-and-true agreements, and application and email templates. Many of us had also attended different TREX events across the country to learn what we did and did not want to replicate during our own. The planning team met regularly to adapt these resources to our unique needs in Blackfoot Valley, and we felt confident going into 2025 – when we hit our first speedbumps. The federal funding freeze caused Montana DNRC to temporarily halt all federally funded projects, leaving the Blackfoot Valley TREX with almost no resources. Funding was eventually restored, but for over a month the planning team scrambled to plan for a variety of potential funding scenarios.
The next hurdle became apparent when the planning team realized that, due to the array of partners in the Blackfoot Valley, we did not have a participant waiver that would allow all participants to burn across all landownerships. Although we tested out a new participant waiver developed by the TNC, Forest Service participants were not permitted to sign. This forced us to focus on TNC burn units during our TREX, as they had a pre-existing agreement with the Forest Service that would allow everyone to participate, regardless of their home affiliation. For all other units, org charts were adjusted to ensure that as many people as possible were able to participate, but occasional participants were forced to be “curious non-producers” (they could observe the burn but not participate) if their organizations did not have the appropriate agreements in place.
With all these planning hurdles overcome, we were happy to kick off the inaugural Blackfoot Valley TREX on April 27 of this year. We were incredibly fortunate with respect to the weather, and, coming into our second Tuesday of the TREX, we had completed five burns for a total of 201 acres across Nature Conservancy and University of Montana ownerships. In between burning and mopping up, we visited the US Forest Service Fire Lab, toured the Fire & Fire Surrogate Study, met with the Prescribed Fire Training Center, and studied firing techniques. As a planning team, we were blown away by the enthusiasm and commitment to learning and teaching from the participants.
And so we return to that hillside overlooking the BLM unit. To finish off the two-week training exchange, Mike and Cindy arranged to burn with the BLM, who have been a leading burn partner in the Blackfoot Valley for years. This was their second to last planned burn for the year. By having the TREX show up and supply almost the entire org chart and equipment for the 30-acre, high complexity burn right next to neighboring homes, the BLM partners could focus on planning their 600-acre, aerial ignition burn scheduled for that Friday.
So, when the BLM burn was threatened by the lack of funding to pay for the water tender, the planning team jumped into action: Cindy, Mike and I made phone call after phone call chasing down different funding leads. Finally, it all came together, and we were able to identify a DNRC source of funding for the tender operator, while a Blackfoot Challenge grant covered the cost of the water tender itself. With the final speedbump overcome, thanks to a collaborative approach, it was smooth sailing. The burn went off the next day exactly as planned, the desired fire effects were achieved, and our firing boss trainee got the final signatures in her taskbook. The BLM felt the benefit of TREX as well as years of trust building and collaboration: by the end of the day, they were asking us when the next Blackfoot TREX would take place.
All in all, the first ever Blackfoot TREX was an amazing success. We burned 224 acres on eight units, completed six taskbooks, and gained the trust of partners in the area. We also realized the shortcomings of our existing web of agreements and will work to fill those holes before our next TREX, planned for the spring of 2026. With our second TREX, we hope to build on the momentum of this spring and continue to show the power of collaboration in getting more burning done. From there, we would like to spread TREX out to more locations across Montana.
Our TREX planning team got lucky in many respects – our federal funding was restored in time to pull off the event and the weather gave us great burn windows. But the success of this spring really came from partnership, exemplified by the shared attitude that enabled us to fund the water tender on the BLM burn. Partners start from a place of “yes, how do we make this happen.” We work together to pool our resources and maximize the strengths of each organization. We communicate openly and genuinely care about each other. It is this approach that enabled our TREX to be a success, and we hope it is one that will continue to enable success in the Blackfoot Valley and across Montana for many years to come.
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