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Report charts course for mitigating wildfire risks
Tribal partnerships are seen as key to e ort
BY ERIC GALATAS PUBLIC NEWS SERVICE
As wild re seasons in Colorado and across the American West become longer, less predictable and increasingly destructive, a new report aims to provide an equitable roadmap for protecting communities, watersheds and wildlife.
Rob Addington, Colorado forest program director for e Nature Conservancy, said engagement with tribal nations, who have been successful stewards of lands for thousands of years, will be critical to address the scale of the challenge.
“Developing tribal partnerships and really looking to tribal knowledge, ecological knowledge that many of the tribes hold from their centuries in many cases of working with the land, working with re,” Addington outlined.
Addington pointed out the roadmap represents a paradigm shift in modern forest and wild re management. After decades of re prevention strategies, for example, experts said prescribed burns will be necessary to thin fuel supplies across thousands of acres of dry western lands. e report also called for advanced computer modeling and unmanned drones to improve early