Natural fires are as essential as sun and rain in fire-adapted forests, but as humans encroach on wild spaces, fear, arrogance, and greed have shaped the way that people view these regenerative events and have given rise to misinformation. The peril that these myths pose to forests is profound—affecting whole habitats and the wildlife that depend on them. The exploitation of these carbon dioxide-absorbing ecosystems also threatens humanity's chance of overcoming the climate crisis, and puts human communities at greater risk from wildfires in multiple ways.Dr. Chad Hanson will address these issues and suggest a better, science-based, and more hopeful path forward.

Dr. Hanson is a research ecologist and the director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, located in Kennedy Meadows, California, and has a Ph.D. in ecology with a research focus on fire ecology in conifer forest ecosystems. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed studies on forest and fire ecology, and is also the co-editor and co-author of the 2015 book, The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix.