Partner Profile | Wildfires.org

Written by: Jessica Alvarez, Communications & Content Manager

Wildfires.org is a non-profit organization working to pair software and hardware engineers with forest conservationists focused on scaling fuel reduction treatments. Founded in 2022 by software engineer Ilya Volodarsky, environmental planner Andrew Salmon, and a team of volunteer technologists, Wildfires.org is building efficiency tools to reduce the time and cost of planning, monitoring, and implementation of wildfire mitigation activities.

Wildfires.org’s goal is to assist federal and state agencies in treating one million acres a year in California and five million acres a year across the Western US by 2025, as laid out in the recent USDA Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy. Through technology solutions, the organization  aims to reduce the administrative steps behind forest treatment projects and maximize work in the field.

In December of 2021, Andrew Salmon began working on the concept as a consulting project on behalf of Blue Forest while serving as our Director of Implementation. As the project picked up steam, however, Andrew realized that the need was significant and that it would require a full-time effort on his part. While we will miss him being a part of the Blue Forest team, we are very excited about the innovative and cutting-edge tools this new team will develop, as we all continue to work together to combat the wildfire crisis.

According to Andrew, what makes their organization unique is its focus on time and cost efficiency tools. “There are several emerging companies and nonprofits developing ecology tech and creating fine scale resolution biodiversity metrics. That’s not our goal or our skill set,” he explained. “We want to follow the best available science developed by academic institutions and the Forest Service but focus on how day-to-day processes like record keeping, NEPA documentation, and workflows can be simplified. As the age of megafires has arrived and we are seeing increased funding for forest restoration, there’s a ton of opportunity for tools that rethink how we scale while reducing costs and time.”

Wildfire.org’s first prototype, TurboPlan, which is currently in the development stage, will assist environmental planners and resource specialists to move through the NEPA process rapidly. ”On every District of every National Forest in the West, there is a limited  team of resource specialists that have to scale their efforts based on time.  One time-intensive and increasingly expensive component of that planning process is  writing lengthy resource reports for each project. So we have set out to ask- how can we reduce report writing and drafting time as much as possible, except for the necessities, so that they can actually go and verify the areas outdoors that need to be treated,” explained Ilya.

And in terms of collaborating with Blue Forest on the conservation finance piece, both Ilya, a Blue Forest donor, and Andrew are excited about the possibilities.

“All of the new projects that the Forest Service is releasing, anything that’s undergoing or has recently completed NEPA planning, we’re compiling in an easy-to-access database and mapping dashboard. We are also drafting a budgeting tool so combining those two with conservation finance, we can clearly identify project areas that are the most suitable candidates and costs,” said Andrew. “For example, if Blue Forest connected with a beneficiary in southern Wyoming that is interested in supporting a forest restoration project, we can immediately find that project and budget in the database.”

The two agree that ultimately, success for Wildfires.org would be building and developing the tools needed to  help support the Forest Service’s 10-year Implementation Plan. The more acres that the Agency is able to treat using these tools will be the ultimate indicator of success.

The team is actively seeking partners within the Forest Service for pilot projects. They are particularly interested in collaborating with Environmental Coordinators developing fuel treatment projects. We look forward to seeing what this team will accomplish and to continued collaboration and partnership. On behalf of the Blue Forest team, we’d like to thank Andrew for all his hard work at Blue Forest and wish him all the best in this new journey.