Author: Brent Skaggs and Craig Thomas

Brent J. Skaggs a Contractor working with The Fire Restoration Group and The Watershed Research and Training Center since 2022. He has a Forestry Degree from Reedley College and a Technical Fire Management graduate from Colorado State. Brent retired after working 35 years for the US Forest Service on the Sequoia National Forest in Fire Management, he started on a Type 3 Fire Engine, and worked a decade on a Fire/Fuels twenty- person hand crew, performing a wide variety of fuel treatments including thousands of acres of prescribed fire. Brent became the District Fuels Battalion and moved into the Forest Fuels Officer and spent his last 13 years as the Forest Fire Management Officer working directly for the Forest Supervisor. Craig Thomas has been the Director of The Fire Restoration Group since 2018. He has a background in ecology and cultural anthropology and has worked on federal forest and fire policy in California for 35- years. In 2022 he co-authored with several other State, Federal, Tribal and NGO partners the California Strategic Plan for Expanding Beneficial Fire published in March 2022. He served as a Prescribed Fire delegate on the National Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission, and current member of The Alliance for Wildfire Resilience.