Second Field School: Strengthening Community Networks for Wildfire Prevention in Central and Southern Chile

The gathering included community leaders, researchers, representatives of local organizations, and environmental managers who shared experiences, strategies, and challenges related to wildfire prevention. Held at UFRO’s Pucón Campus, this second iteration of the field school featured participatory workshops, such as creating social maps and collective exercises to delve into symbolic concepts and imaginaries surrounding fire.

The event aimed to promote reflection on past and current experiences while facilitating the projection of future scenarios for collaborative, community-based wildfire management. Regarding this goal, our foundation’s Conservation Director, Tomás Altamirano, stated:
“An organized community network allows us to create efficient action plans, grounded in the realities of each territory, to address increasingly frequent and severe threats like wildfires. The socio-ecological crisis demands urgent collaboration among individuals and civil society organizations,” he emphasized.

Sharing Experiences for Wildfire Prevention

The field school featured presentations from representatives of various community initiatives. Participants included Jennifer Gabrys, Director of the Smart Forests project; Leonardo Nuñez and Alejandro Salinas from the Águila Sur Emergency Committee in Paine; Daniel Poblete and Loreto Márquez from the Chukaw Mahuida Eco Brigade in Lampa; and Pedro Contreras and Rosario Letelier from Caritas Chile, representing the Valparaíso and Ñuble regions.

Jennifer Gabrys, researcher and Director of Media, Culture, and Environment in Cambridge University’s Sociology Department, presented advancements from Smart Forests, a project exploring the use of digital technologies for forest monitoring and management, as well as the social, political, environmental, and scientific implications of these practices. Gabrys visited Chile in late 2023 to collaborate with our foundation on wildfire research. The first phase involved interviews with various stakeholders from the Valparaíso, Metropolitan, Biobío, La Araucanía, and Los Lagos regions to gather general information on wildfire prevention practices. Subsequently, a community-focused approach was applied in La Araucanía, one of the regions most affected by wildfires between 2017 and 2022.

Currently, Smart Forests investigates how Chilean organizations implement practices, networks, and technologies to combat wildfires, seeking to learn from these experiences and share the knowledge generated.
“The goal is to build a social infrastructure with high responsiveness and adaptability,” explained Gabrys. She emphasized the need for collective approaches to enhance resilience and organization for planning and regenerating socio-ecosystems after such events.
“It is crucial to integrate multiple perspectives and disciplines since no single technology or approach can address the challenges posed by climate change,” she concluded.

Pedro Contreras of Caritas Chile presented the case of the Botania neighborhood in Quilpué. Thanks to a prevention plan implemented jointly with the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf), 70 homes remained untouched by the wildfires that affected the Valparaíso region earlier this year. Contreras highlighted the importance of community organization to manage risks and reduce vulnerabilities, stating:
“An organized community identifies needs in advance and mobilizes resources to protect all its members.” He also stressed the necessity of incorporating technologies and remote communication systems to build resilient communities with infrastructures prepared to face disaster risks.

Symbolic Imaginings of Fire

The second part of the field school focused on activities designed to imagine and shape possible futures for territories threatened by wildfires. Before this, our Director of Art and Publications, Maya Errázuriz, presented the Fire Ecologies residency, where five artists and scientists explored fire through biocultural, ecological, historical, and scientific perspectives. As part of this residency, artist Bárbara Acevedo Strange developed the game Planetarium: Fire Ecologies. Through interaction with the game, attendees reflected symbolically on fire using images, words, and illustrations, speculating on new imaginaries of fire and projecting fictions exploring its complex relationship with an uncertain future.

The event also included the workshop Social Mapping: From Reality to Imagination, where participants visualized the current state of their territories and projected a desired future in terms of forest care and disaster prevention. Through individual and collective drawings, participants depicted practices, technologies, and resources necessary for advancing resilient communities.

For Andrés Painel, a ranger from El Cañi Sanctuary, such instances foster the exchange of experiences and solutions based on lessons learned from other territories.
“We face similar threats and challenges, especially in conservation, which requires significant resources and the commitment of dedicated people,” he noted.

Andrés Fuentes, a forestry sciences academic at UFRO, valued the initiative and highlighted the shared challenge of contributing to decision-making by transforming scientific research into practical tools for strategic planning and prevention.
“Our duty is to go beyond and translate this data into concrete decisions that municipalities, neighborhood councils, and local initiatives can use,” he concluded.

A Collaborative Network for Wildfire Management

Building on the experiences from previous field schools and Smart Forests, a collaborative network for wildfire management will be established. This network will focus on co-creating a community-based wildfire prevention plan, maximizing the use of resources and technologies led by the communities themselves, with an emphasis on the Palguín Alto watershed.

As Felipe Guarda, our Evaluation and Research Coordinator, explained:
“The knowledge and tools gained from this research are crucial for advancing a proposal that enables us to work with the Palguín Alto community on a wildfire prevention plan for this area, home to the Bosque Pehuén conservation area.”

The findings from this research will also contribute to a publication co-developed by Smart Forests and our foundation on community-led technologies, incorporating insights from Chile. Additionally, the results from the field school will be documented in the Smart Forests Atlas.