OUR COLLABORATORS
We are proud to work with a team of independent consultants from around the world. We can put together a unique team for your project depending on your specific needs.
Herbert Haltenhoff
International Fire Prevention Planning & Policy
Herbert retired as Chile’s Chief of the Department of Wildfire Prevention, for CONAF (Chile’s National Forestry Corporation/Service). He began his CONAF career in 1976 as an Aerial Observer and Dispatcher and in 1979 as the Chief of Fire Management for the Santiago Metropolitan Region. He was also the national Chief of the Human Resources for 8,000 employees, where he restructured that department.
Internationally, Herbert has organized and taught several workshops in Colombia, Cuba, and Guatemala, and worked as a consultant for both Holland and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has participated in technical meetings, conferences, and trainings in Chile, US, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, and Italy, and has authored over 50 publications on how to prevent and control wildfires.
Herbert has an MS in Human Settlements and the Environment from the Catholic University of Chile, as well as degrees in Phycology and Forestry Technology.
As such, Herbert has a wide range of skills including fire suppression, prescribed fire, risk management, WUI community wildfire prevention, communications (especially in Spanish), policy, and HR.
Dave Kahan
Forest Health Specialist
Dave has been working towards wildfire resiliency and for sustainable forestry since 1981. He has a strong affinity for a healthy ecosystem, striving to balance both ecological and economic sustainability. Dave spent four years on federal Hotshot wildfire crews, and 22 years as a privately-contracted hazard tree faller. He has worked on wildfires in every western state except Hawaii, as well as Tennessee and North Carolina.
Since 1987, Dave has designed and implemented more than 20 miles of regionally strategic shaded fuel breaks, and many dozens of defensible-space projects for his neighbors in northwestern California. This was accomplished with his crew at Full Circle Forestry, the company he started in 1991. Among his experience, he planted trees commercially for 20 years, built and maintained trails on federal lands for four years, and received his California Timber Operator License (LTO) in 1991.
Dave has served on the Boards of Directors of the Institute for Sustainable Forestry, Mattole Restoration Council, and Telegraph Ridge Fire District. He has authored many articles and given countless presentations and workshops on various aspects of sustainable forestry and wildfire resilience.
Since witnessing the devastation and “modus operandi” of the Wine Country fires of 2017, Dave has focused much of his recent efforts on educating residents on the crucial importance, and inter-relatedness, of fire-hardened buildings and defensible space.
Alison Kent
Graphic Facilitator
With a background in graphic design, writing, and editing and with
training in conflict resolution, Alison Kent has combined these skills
to become a graphic facilitator and principal of Listen-ink. Graphic
facilitation is the capture of meetings and conversations into images
and words. Alison is equally happy working on large sheets of paper or
digitally, where she helps make meaning visible.
Alison grew up in Spain where she learned to love birds and nature.
Based in Davis, California, she leads nature journaling workshops for
Yolo Audubon Society.
Zeke Lunder
Wildfire Scientist
Zeke founded the wildfire consultancy firm Deer Creek Resources (DCR) in 2011. DCR uses GIS mapping and cutting-edge wildfire science to help communities and landowners prepare for wildfire. DCR's staff are experts in prescribed fire planning and implementation. Along with their parent company, Firestorm, DCR delivers a full-service wildfire safety program – from project design to implementation.
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DCR leads community wildfire safety planning projects, provides onsite mapping and intelligence support for the US Forest Service and CAL FIRE during major fires, helps lead prescribed fire trainings for the Nature Conservancy's Fire Learning Network, and designs large-scale wildland fuel management and prescribed burning projects.
Zeke's professional interests are in expanding the scope of prescribed fire and managed wildfire, re-igniting a culture of fire use in California.
Esther Mandeno
GIS Specialist and Fire Planning
Esther is the owner of Digital Mapping Solutions. With over 20 years of experience in GIS data management, map production, wildland fire behavior modeling, and natural resource management, Esther brings a wide breath of skills and knowledge to any project.
During her time with California State Parks in the Lake Tahoe Basin, she became a Burn Boss, using prescribed fire to manage forests. Later, she shifted her focus to the Sierra District’s GIS where she developed and implemented a wide variety of data and map products for land managers.
Esther can work on many levels to assist or write wildland fire management plans and bring those to the public with innovative online tools such as ESRI’s Story Maps.
Cameron Naficy
Forest and Fire Ecologist
Cameron is a landscape ecologist studying disturbance dynamics (e.g. fire, insects, drought), ecosystem resilience, and human-environment interactions in temperate forest and grassland ecosystems. He uses remote sensing, dendrochronology, spatial analyses, statistical modeling, ecophysiological methods, and field data to integrate research over long time scales and a range of spatial scales.
He has worked extensively in the Rocky Mountains in the US and Canada, and in several temperate forest regions of the southern hemisphere, including Patagonia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. He earned a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Rice University, an MS from the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Montana, and his PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He was recently a post-doctoral scientist at the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and is currently a research associate in the Forest Ecosystems & Society department at Oregon State University.
Karen Pickett
Media
Karen has been a leading grassroots activist for over 40 years, working on issues of forest and species preservation, environmental justice, and resource use and recycling, as well as native rights, protecting the civil rights of activists, and alliance building within the labor and environmental movements. She is a founder and Director of the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, and a Board member of the Global Justice Ecology Project. She has provided strategic communication and logistical support, collaborating with front-line campaigns as a Media Consultant on a variety of environmental and social justice issues, as well as legal cases, films, workshops, and events. She is the recipient of a number of awards for her work.
Karen is a published writer and has worked to prepare and mentor the next generations for informed social justice activism by leading college classes and non-profit workshops on relevant activist skills including effective media, movement building, and grassroots organizing.
Karen has been a California resident for over 40 years and lives in the WUI in the Bay Area.
Carol Rice
Senior Wildland Fire Manager
Carol Rice is the General Manager of Wildland Resource Management, a Bay Area consulting firm providing expertise in fire management, with specialized knowledge in fire behavior (e.g. spread and potential loss), fire codes and policies, risk assessment, structural ignition potential, fire ecology, defensible space creation and maintenance, and fuel and vegetation management.
Carol has early experience with both WUI and land-use planning, including as the Instructor of Technical Fire Management, where she taught the WUI Module as well as Determining Fire Effects in Land Use Planning from 1991 to 1993. She began her career as a Forest Service Fire Ecologist in Big Bar, CA, where she designed and conducted a fire ecology study of the Trinity Alps in 1975. Her work has since taken her all over the globe, although she works mostly in California. Carol has an MS in Wildland Resource Science from UC Berkeley, where she evaluated potential fire behavior of the Berkeley/Oakland hills WUI in 1987.
four waters
Public Relations
Blessed to grow up in some of the most extraordinary regions of Central and Northern California, four waters has a deeply rooted love for the beauty, awe, power, and connectedness of our natural world.
four is President of four waters media, inc., a consulting firm that provides assistance with public relations, communications, strategy, social media, and political campaigns, as well as printed materials. Her work often uses a unique proprietary Framing process, based on fundamental values and core beliefs, which helps clients to remain simultaneously disciplined and genuinely authentic.
four is also devoted to empowering grassroots organizers to become more strategic and effective. She has trained across the state, with a special focus on women who are just stepping into their political power.
four is still inspired by her love of creativity, and driven to help create opportunity, foster respect, and live with dignity. She remains dedicated to keeping our remarkable planet a place of beauty, recreation, sustenance, and awe — to be shared by all long into the future.
And of course, she remains committed to the success of her fabulous clients.