Healthy Forests Create Watershed-Wide Resilience: An Interview with Madelyn Guillaume
Black oak trees in the Stanislaus National Forest on a misty autumn morning
“Change is going to happen, and we can’t just shelter our forest from that change. We need to create and work towards a landscape that is adaptable and resilient to these changes that we know are coming. It’s not an if; it’s a when, and it’s looking more and more soon than previously understood.”
Madelyn Guillaume is a Forest Health Project Manager with TRT. She works in the Stanislaus National Forest on the SERAL (Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape) project. Her work, alongside many others, creates resilience for Sierran forests at risk of catastrophic megafire. In this interview, Madelyn shares more about her personal connection to ocean and forests, how good fire is a welcome part of living in California, a family experience with catastrophic fire in Paradise, and how healthy forests contribute to watershed-wide climate resilience.
I'm curious if you can talk about your family’s experience with fire and how that experience shaped the work that you're doing today?
During the 2018 Camp Fire, my parents lived in Paradise, right along the ridge the fire started below. So, they were evacuated early in the morning, and in just a few hours their house was completely ash. We lost everything. The rate of the fire spread was so fast that it deeply impacted that community. In a way, they are still unable to come back at the level that they previously existed in.
That fire signaled a big shift in how people perceived wildfire; it started a big social dialogue about what we are doing with megafires and how we are going to manage this new issue that we're seeing.
I started thinking about how I wanted my work to happen and where I felt most impactful in my relationship to the environment and my surroundings. Eventually, when my mom moved out here to the Stanislaus National Forest—a dense forest similar to Paradise—it sparked a small bit of concern in me like, “oh, is my mom going to have to live through another wildfire?”
Madelyn holding the cone from a grey pine
With that, I started trying to educate myself more, and I was taking classes at the community college in the area. That really helped open my eyes to the need for fire and how manageable, low-intensity fires can help limit megafire potential, just through decreasing fuel loads and all the things. Learning that there is work to be done, there's preventative work for these catastrophic megafires, was eye-opening for me. I felt like, “oh, I want to do that.” Then, I found TRT through Columbia College and started as a field tech and moved my way into this role.
Can you talk about your educational background in marine biology and how this also played a role in your desire to transition into forest health work?
At the time of the Camp Fire, I had just graduated from Humboldt State University with a Marine Biology degree. For a little while, I was kayak guiding to figure out what I wanted to do in the world of marine biology. I was also very heavy into scuba diving and all of that stuff.
Around that same time, catastrophic wildfires were starting to have these rippling effects in the ocean and in all of our waterways. We were starting to see how the fire effects moved through the landscape, even without having fire there. So I felt some of the marine biology work would be in-effective long-term, because we were trying to slap a band-aid on an issue that could not be solved by a band-aid.
We were trying to fix the symptoms and not the problem—the problem essentially being climate change and human use and all these issues that we're still dealing with. Whereas, the forest health work transcends generations. We are creating and maintaining healthy forests for future generations, and that's really important.
Madelyn walking through a TRT-managed fuel reduction unit in the Stanislaus National Forest
Like you mentioned, there is a connection between fire, forests, and water. I see this work creating climate resilience throughout entire watersheds, but sometimes it is hard to see at that scale. How does fire and it’s after effect ripple through the Stanislaus and the Tuolumne River watersheds, which both extend to the Central Valley and the Bay Area?
Water quality is impacted in the watershed after a large wildfire rips through the area. We see higher erosion in the area. There's a higher sediment load that extends out into the floodplains that then impacts the habitat for our fish, and that then impacts the food chain for migratory birds. The ecosystem is all connected, so when we have one very unhealthy aspect, eventually that unhealthiness extends out into other parts.
If we did experience a huge wildfire, air quality would definitely be a factor for the Bay Area and the Central Valley too—the smoke doesn't settle here, it settles in the Valley.
Aside from the water quality, I think we are also protecting recreation, camping, fishing, and hunting sites. A lot of people from the Bay Area and the Central Valley come up here for recreation, for their vacation and to escape their busy lives. If this land is no longer here, they lose all of that. They'll have to go even further.
Locally, catastrophic wildfire also destroys wildlife habitat, sensitive plants, and culturally important archaeological sites that are found in these forests.
This recently felled tree will stay in place to provide the ecosystem with nutrients and habitat while contributing to less forest density.
How do you see this project, creating more resilience in your own community?
We've been suppressing fire for the past 200 or so years and that has created the unhealthy, overly dense landscape that we are now working with. We have multiple species dependent on fire. We're trying to reinstate fire so the landscape can return to a state similar to before we started interfering at the level of fire suppression.
I think the actual fuel reduction work creates a healthier forest that we can reintroduce prescribed fire back onto. That means that if a lightning strike happened in this area, the chance of that creating a catastrophic wildfire is drastically decreased after the fuel reduction and controlled burns happen.
We aren't able to protect this landscape from lightning strikes. Those happen, fire happens—it is a natural occurrence. We are trying to create a healthier landscape to allow for that reintroduction of healthy fire, because it is a requirement here; this landscape needs fire.
We are also considerate of climate sensitive species, and we have certain retention measures or reduction measures to allow for those species to be better supported moving forward. Hopefully we can help create a resilient forest in the face of climate change.
We have to be adaptable to change. Change is going to happen, and we can't just shelter our forest from that change. We need to create and work towards a landscape that is adaptable and resilient to the changes that we know are coming. It's not an if; it's a when, and it's looking more and more soon than previously understood.
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