Preparing the Next Generation for Fire Management

This March, environmental nonprofit Discover Your Northwest will host its inaugural Youth Wildland Fire Career Camp, a free program open to people ages 16 to 20. The camp is meant to familiarize youth with the professional world of wildfire mitigation – work that can be both boots on the ground and behind a desk.

Uncontained wildland fires greatly threaten forest biomes and the natural life found within them. For humans, consequences can range from loss of access to loss of property and life for particularly vulnerable communities.

Poor air quality is also a major concern; wildfire smoke this decade has more than once caused Portland and Seattle to register more hazardous air than heavily polluted cities like Dhaka, Bangladesh. Last summer, Canadian wildfires filled American skies with smog and sent smoke plumes as far as northwestern Europe.

And with climate scientists predicting hotter summers in store, the risk to forests, animal life and communities nationwide will continue to creep higher year by year. Discover Your Northwest, founded in 1974, believes the answer is to educate and engage younger generations on public lands management.

Emily Curtis, the nonprofit’s wildland fire community educator, said the idea for the program came in 2024 after a U.S. Forest Service fire management officer reached out to them hoping to promote workforce development. “We developed a program that we had hoped to launch last March, but with the pause on federal funding grants, we had to cancel last year,” she told the Source.

Trump’s federal funding freeze in early 2025 put many such environmental programs on hold, but in April, a Rhode Island federal judge ruled that affected money, which had been approved by Congress, was unlawfully frozen and must be disbursed.

Over 3,400 USFS employees were fired last year, but the unfreezing (for now) of Urban and Community Forestry Program funds has allowed outreach like this youth camp to resume, representing opportunity for the next generation to get involved.

“We’re committed to fostering career development within the fire service,” stated Discover Your Northwest. “This program is a crucial step in empowering the next generation of firefighters.”

But not just firefighting in the traditional sense; according to Curtis, the program will also introduce youth to a “vast variety of wildland fire careers,” including public information work, fuels management (controlled and prescribed burning) and even aviation.

That last item may be of most interest to participants, who will get a firsthand look at the Redmond Air Center, a Forest Service facility next to the Redmond airport that serves as a training center, a smoke jumper base and a regional incident support cache.

The camp will also provide education about fire mitigation technology, local weather patterns and wildfire behavior.

“What’s really valuable, in addition to training and simulations, is the discussions and networking that youth will have with fire professionals who are already in the area,” Curtis said, mentioning that interested participants may be able to find mentors in the field.

The day camp will take place Wed., March 25 to Sat., Mar 28 in Redmond. “Programming will be held from 9 am to 4 pm with lunch and transportation from local communities provided,” per Discover Your Northwest. Applications are now open.

This article appears in the Source January 15, 2026.