Benmore Valley Project

He has accumulated over 40 years of hands-on experience in production agriculture, along with long term experience in construction, metal fabricating, land development, and land stewardship. In the last 20 years, since taking over the family ranch, he has shifted focus more and more into land restoration and ecological regeneration projects. Two of his primary passions are wildlife habitat restoration and environmental education for youth.

Jared’s involvement in fire ecology work began at an early age, from participating in his father’s well-known activism to promote control burning, as a land management tool. He was directly participating in prescribed burning by age 12, and has continued to do so since the early 1960’s. He became an activist and strong promoter of prescribed fire around 2003.

In 1981 his family ranch was badly burned over by a catastrophic wildfire, the Cow Mountain Fire. It was a hyper- intense wildfire, one of the first in the area in recent times, a community wakeup call as to the developing risk from massive brush loads in the area. After purchasing the ranch lands from his family in 2003 Jared started a very proactive program of prescribed fire on his family’s and neighbor’s lands. To date he has personally conducted over 150 prescribed burns. His ranch was burned over again in 2018 in the River Fire, also with high intensity, but suffered much less damage due to Jared’s fuel load reduction work through prescribed burning.

In the past 10 years Jared has also become increasingly involved in wildfire prevention work. He has done large scale projects of contract prescribed burning and firebreak system design & construction. Both fire agencies and the public are becoming increasingly aware that wildfire prevention must be dealt with on a community and regional scale. They are also becoming more aware that the most effective approach to wildfire risk reduction is holistic. The best risk reduction includes broad brush fire ecology restoration, addressing the whole range of land stewardship issues – long term vegetation management, water resource management, wildlife & biodiversity dynamics, community education, and multiple other factors. Jared is highly skilled at evaluating specific land situations, to design fully integrative fire ecology restoration projects for them.

Jared has intentionally created a high level of documentation of his fire ecology and land restoration work, of the last 15 years, to lay foundation for creating educational materials. He expects to start production on video and written materials in the near future. He also expects to start conducting more educational workshops and collaborative events at the same time.

He also is a firm believer in maximizing youth involvement in all environmental and ecological projects. He feels it is the key to project impact longevity, and effective long term land stewardship.