Fire Tending Services
This service is still under development. We are currently exploring ways to collaborate with landowners to meet their goals. Below are some of the ideas that we have that might be beneficial. If you like what read here and are interesting in partnering with us, please get in touch here:
We provide services to plan, prepare, and deliver burns to help improve ecological function, improve habitat for wildlife, improve grazing land for livestock, manage invasive species, increase resilience to catastrophic fire, and reduce the risk of loss of life and property.
The thought of bringing the land back into a healthy balance with fire is so often overwhelming. We are here to help make and execute tangible plans that have real, visible results that not only help the land owner but also are beneficial to all the plants and wildlife that share the land.
What we offer
Plan development
Burn plot preparation
Equipment usage during the burn (Soon to come - inquire if you’re interested!)
Permit coordination
Develop operational maps
Burn coordination and leadership throughout delivery
Post-burn follow-ups
Ecological monitoring plan development
Data collection for ecological monitoring
Burn mentorship and workshops
Burn Planning
Here at Tender Fire we offer services to plan cool ecological burns that suite the needs of the land owner and the local ecosystem. We use our 15+ years of experience practicing and planning fire to tailor each burn to safely meet objectives and manage risk and liability.
Burn Preparation
Preparations are generally required under a burn plan to safely and effectively meet objectives. We offer the skills and expertise to guide the prep work before burn day, whether you’re hiring us to do it for you, or using your neighbors or the local CFA folks, we can help ensure things go the way you want them to.
Burn Delivery
Preparing for a burn can be complex, and it’s important that all the pieces fall together just right. Weather, fuel conditions, preparation, and organizing the appropriate people with the right experience levels will all dictate whether your burn will be successful. We rely on our years of organizing these kinds of burns to help make sure all the pieces are in place come burn day, so we can ensure a smooth delivery of the burn.
Burn Leadership
Good leadership is critical when delivering a burn, both for the safety of those participating and for ensuring that the purpose of the burn is being achieved. A mentor once told Mason “how you light the fire determines how well it stays in the lines”.
Leadership while burning will help ensure the fire is lit in the correct ways, keeping it cool and low, achieving what it’s meant to do. Mason began his journey in fire leadership 10 years ago, and has been a leader on more than 50 burns of all different sizes, complexity levels, and plant community types.
There is something new to be learnt every burn, and Mason brings with him all the lessons he has learnt over the past decade to help give the steady and calm guidance that’s needed when burning.
Why Burn?
Plants all around the world evolved with fire. There are very few plant communities worldwide that don’t require fire for regeneration.
Our relationship with fire is one that is fuelling the current fire regime - we suppress fires as much as can, until the fuel builds up too much and fire is too intense for us to suppress. “There is no such thing as fire prevention”, one of my old mentors used to tell me “only fire postponement”. The longer we postpone fire, the more intense and catastrophic it will be. And so, we burn.
Burning can be done for many beneficial reasons, not the least of which is the reduction in risk of catastrophic fire. Burning can help control invasive plants. Seeds of many Indigenous plants require heat and/or smoke to germinate. New shoots of plants regrowing after fire can be as much as 300% more nutritious for the animals that eat them. This is just a few of the many benefits.
Burning Philosophy, Inspiration, and Mentors
Burning on Country is a personal thing, and requires a high level of trust and vulnerability. It’s important to have some level of alignment in philosophy around why and how to burn when building such a relationship between people and Country.
We recognise that nothing we do, and nothing we know in this space, is new. Indigenous peoples have been burning Country all around the world since time immemorial. Tender Fire derives much of its way of using fire from burning alongside Indigenous peoples in California, namely the Amah Mutsun, the Tamien, and the Esselen Tribes. We have also been strongly influenced by several Indigenous fire practitioners who have authored books, some of whom are from here in Australia.
Mason's understanding of fire has been shaped by years of mentorship during his time with the California State Parks, where he had the privilege of working alongside and learning from some of the most respected fire practitioners in the field. These mentors included George Gray, Gary Reece, and Frank Padilla, who were all of “the old guard”, who helped to bring ecological burning into regular practice in the 1980s. Mason also learnt from Ben Jacobs, who is still one of the premier Burn Bosses in California, and likely the most experienced Burn Boss conducting burns in Giant Sequioa groves. In addition, Mason has been mentored by his uncle, Tim Hyland, who has been a leading Burn Boss on California's Central Coast for more than two decades.
Knowledge of burning is place-based. It takes burning in a place to know how to do it. Mason recognises that he has a lot to learn here in this new environment. He looks forward to getting to know Country here, building a slow and steady relationship through the use of tender fire.
