Host: South Carolina DNR, National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative, Working Lands for Wildlife, Quail Forever, Amsa Yoga, the Southern Fire Exchange, Joint Fire Science Program and the University of Florida.

Presenter: Johnny Stowe, South Carolina DNR

Abstract: All across North America, and beyond, people are gathering to Share the Flame.  Resilient embers have been re-kindled, passionately nurtured in the deep-time crucible of people and fire that has warmed our hearts and hearths for scores of thousands of millennia. Twenty-five years ago, the phenomenon of wildland fire-lighting in North America was barely flickering in scattered spots. Today, an intense, intergenerational, pandisciplinary pyronexus forged in the natural and multicultural heritage of people embedded in fire-loving landscapes is being restored and is thriving in a wide and deeply-rooting range of programs, policies and on-the-ground practices. Lighting up the landscape, under prescription, is an accelerating, transcontinental, cultural phenomenon centering on the shared pride of people connected to special places through a uniquely satisfying, primordial practice. Fire-lighting binds people together as it promotes and gives resilience to ecological integrity, economic health and public safety. Fire-wonder is increasingly expressed through prescribed fire tales, poems and paintings, and it resonates in rituals, ceremonies, pyrotourism and other gatherings. Our cultural spot fires have pulled together, and they are creating their own winds and fuels. The fire-lighting pyroparadigm of North America — once nearly extinguished by decades of pathological, command-and-control, anti-fire propaganda, pogroms and policy — has been taken back, and we’ll let no one, ever again, wrest it away. Following the presentation there will be time for audience Q/A with the speaker.