On a crisp afternoon at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, a group of twenty one farmworkers suit up in firefighter gear. Woman and men take turns helping each other strap on backpacks and fire helmets in preparation for another intense day of prescribed burn training. These are carefully planned low intensity fires set under specific environmental conditions, intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Many of these immigrant and Indigenous farmworkers typically work in the grape fields throughout Sonoma County, but extreme drought, flooding, and massive wildfires have made these jobs more precarious.

Seeing the need for alternative jobs that provide safety training and fair wages, a coalition of organizations including North Bay Jobs with Justice, Audubon Canyon Ranch, and Resilience Force teamed up to create paid opportunities that tackle our climate crisis head on. Part of this work includes certifying farmworkers to do prescribed burns on private lands throughout the North Bay, as a way to prevent the build up of fuel before fire season.

Prescribed burns are not a new practice by any means. They are rooted in many cultures. Some of these farmworkers have already practiced prescribed burns in their homelands in Mexico and Central America, and bring this ancestral ecological knowledge to their new line of work.

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