Moderator: Kyle Broome, RPF, Wildfire Division Manager and Director of Meaningfulness, Cabin Resource Management Ltd.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is any area where combustible forest fuel is found adjacent to homes, farm structures, or other outbuildings. This may occur at the interface, where development and forest fuel (vegetation) meet at a well-defined boundary, or in the intermix where development and forest fuel intermingle with no clearly defined boundary.

Building resiliency in the WUI is incumbent upon a dynamic and complex set of factors that result from incorporating people into wildland fire management. The forest professional is responsible for integrating the local social, economic, and political context into wildfire mitigation projects, and will require a diverse toolbox to draw from. We work closely with people and communities to build knowledge, navigate constraints, and seize opportunities to incorporate innovation. This session will explore these factors through a practical lens, with learnings that can be applied universally.

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Following the presentation, attendees will have learned the following:

1. What the wildland-urban interface is and how it contributes to the landscape-level mosaic of fuels and wildfire resiliency management.
2. What the complexities are in the WUI that differ from landscape-level forest fuels management.
3. Why forest professionals must look beyond the forest to understand the role of citizens, community and built fuels, and politics in developing resiliency in the WUI.
4. Considerations for how and why intentional fire (prescribed and cultural) should or could be used to mitigate wildland fire risk within communities.
5. Opportunities for innovation in WUI fuels management, including examples of pilot projects from the Okanagan.