Episode 012 - Tom Ward aka Hazel: The Truth About Wildfire

SUBSCRIBE: WWW.EARTHREPAIRRADIO.COM In this episode we explore wildfire with renowned old growth Permaculture teacher and practitioner, Tom Ward, also known as Hazel. With the combination of climate changes and historic forest management, wildfires have reached a new level of threat and explosiveness. But not all wild fires are bad, and in fact, fire is an important element to healthy ecological functioning. So how can we tell a good from bad fire? How did we get to this point? What are some strategies and practices that address this precarious ecological situation that people living in fire-prone ecosystems now face? As someone who lives deeply local on the land in combustable Southern Oregon and who uses controlled burns to manage a landscape, Hazel provides the answers and reveals many truths about fire management history, current conditions, and reveals a visionary perspective on where to go from here with regards to forest management and climate change adaptation. Hazel's links: www.siskiyoupermaculture.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhATikyzLOo Tom Ward aka Hazel full biography: Tom Ward is an Ecotopian old growth permie, well known in the Pacific Northwest as a trouble maker and edge pusher. He lives off the grid in a cabin made of brushwood in the Little Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon and is cooking charcoal and weaving baskets to stay sane enough to keep dreaming of a green future. Tom Ward is a long time resident of the Southern Oregon bioregion first settling here in the early 70's, and has been advising farms and teaching Permaculture for over thirty years. He has degrees in Forestry and Botany from Syracuse University and has taught at Laney College in Oakland CA., D-Q University in Davis CA, and at Thlolego Learning Centre in South Africa among many other institutes and communities. He is presently managing a Social Forestry experimental station in Little Wolf Gulch near Ruch, OR, where he is demonstrating natural building, fuel hazard materials utilization, multiple products woods-crafting, wildlife enhancement and desert forest water management. He joined with Melanie Mindlin and Karen Taylor in 2010 to form Siskiyou Permaculture, a business organization offering courses, counseling and design services. Tom Ward has taught dozens of permaculture design courses, advanced permaculture courses and permaculture teachers training courses in Southern Oregon and Northern California over the last 30 years, as well as occasional jaunts farther afield. He was a frequent guest instructor with the late Toby Hemenway and other instructors in the Northwest. In conjunction with Siskiyou Permaculture, he teaches a weekend PDC each winter in Southern Oregon and advanced permaculture courses at his site in the Little Applegate, including Optical Surveying and Social Forestry. He is the author of Greenward Ho! Herbal Home Remedies: An Ecological Approach to Sustainable Health. Tom gives talks on all aspects of Permaculture with recent topics being Permaculture for the Masses, Social Forestry, Ecological Opportunities and Constraints of the Upper Bear Creek Basin and Becoming Indigenous to the Siskiyous.