San Pedro Martir Hotshots w/ Chris Ives and Felipe León

Today on the show:

We have Chris Ives with the San Juan Hotshots and Felipe León on the show to talk about how firefighting is done in Ensenada Mexico with the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (CONAP) Brigade Forestal Sierra San Pedro...

Chris Ives is a Squad Leader with the San Juan Interagency Hotshot Crew in Durango, CO. He grew up in Montgomery, New Jersey, and then attended King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where in 2005 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History with a focus in Secondary Education.

After graduation, Chris worked building and maintaining hiking trails at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico. His experiences at Philmont lead him into environmental education and natural resource management fieldwork. He spent the next six years working
for various conservation corps and private forestry programs throughout the US and Canada. In 2011, Chris decided to try a season of wildland fire fighting as a hotshot in Arizona. He has been in fire ever since, working with hotshot crews, fuels programs, and a wildland fire module. During this time Chris also earned a Master of Science in Forestry degree at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff. For his thesis, Chris examined Fire Moss (several species of moss that naturally colonize burned areas) as a tool for post-wildfire ecosystem restoration.

In 2019 Chris began his work offering wildland fire trainings in Mexico. In addition to his work in Mexico, he volunteers his time working on other initiatives such as a yearly women in wildland fire panel discussion he co-facilitates at NAU. He also continues to provide training and development support to conservation corps programs and the Philmont Conservation Department during the winters, including a job application workshop for Native American youth interested in careers with government land management agencies.

When traveling to Mexico, Chris met up with Felipe on the Parque Nacional Sierra de San Pedro Martir... After talking about fire and forestry management, these two guys decided to team up and create the "San Pedro Martir Hotshots" - An unofficial crew of U.S. wildland firefighters who travel to Mexico in the off season to provide training, equipment, and PPE to the firefighters of the Brigade Forestal San Pedro...

Its a pretty damn amazing program that they teamed up to create, and these guys are doing a much needed mission for the folks in Mexico...

We take a lot of things for granted with wildland fire here in the United States... Well, we take just about everything for granted .

So, lets help out our brothers south of the boarder by spreading the message to the right folks in international conservation efforts with this episode!

You can find Felipe Here:
National Park Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/SanPedroMartir

Brigade Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/BrigadaForestalPNSSPM

My photograph Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/LeonAngelFoto

Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-GfUcBI-A4&ab_channel=Miguel%C3%81ngelSicilia&fbclid=IwAR0O6LrG4UlhrvciGgqZHGO3VyC202ilVz94H1Fjwq6MmwszrfJLsmJ3uak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd_N4baaHUM&ab_channel=CONANPmx

You can find Chris here:

NAU Forestry Seminar series presentation
This is a link to a seminar presentation I gave last year at Northern Arizona University on our work in Baja:
https://youtu.be/oWYTh_YUJHQ

There is a portion toward the end of the recording where I showed a clip from a Charlie Rose interview with Fred Rogers. It didn’t show up on the recording, but you can watch it yourself using the following link at the point in the presentation when I refer to it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=djoyd46TVVc&t=308s It’s from 4:49-6:35.

You guys know the drill...

Stay safe, stay savage!

Enjoy!

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Updates!

We have received some unfortunate news regarding some injuries and complete losses of property with some of our folks in the field. Please check out our new landing page to help these firefighters get back on their feet again:

https://anchorpointpodcast.com/help-a-wildland-firefighter

We launched a Patreon!!! If you guys would like to support us, head over to our Patreon Page!

https://www.patreon.com/theanchorpointpodcast

The new website is live! Be sure to check our the "Resources" page for some folks in the industry that are doing incredible things for us!

http://anchorpointpodcast.com

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