While growing up in the small city of Monroe, Louisiana, Ed Hunter would go hiking and camping as part of the Cub Scouts. A little over a decade later, he’d receive a call that would return him to the outdoors. Since joining the U.S. Forest Service in 1998, Hunter has steadily risen the ranks, and became a Deputy Regional Forester for the Southern Region last year.

Now Hunter oversees one of the country’s largest swaths of forested lands, consisting of 14 National Forests across just as many states and territories. He’s also at the forefront of the region’s wildfire-management efforts. We talked to Hunter about how the region continues to lead the country in controlled-burn attitudes, innovation, and collaboration.

How did you get your start with the U.S. Forest Service?

I went to Tuskegee University on a football scholarship. Unfortunately, I had some health challenges leading into fall semester and lost my scholarship. I was just about to go home when I received a call from the liaison between the Forest Service and the university. She talked about the forestry program and offered me a scholarship for a year. If I liked it, I could stay, and if not, I had a year of schooling paid for, so I gave it a shot.

What was your first experience with wildfire?

My first summer with the Forest Service, I went out to Spanish Fork, in Utah, and worked on a trails crew and just absolutely fell in love with natural-resource management. I got a chance to fight fire for the first time, and I was hooked.

What role has prescribed burning played in the South?

For us, prescribed fire has long been socially accepted in the South. It was adopted by early European settlers from the Native Americans, and has been used to manage forest conditions but also by farms to prepare lands to be planted. We also have very strong partnerships here. Eighty-seven percent of the forested land in the South is private, so we cannot be successful without working in an interagency and cross-boundary way with our state, private, and tribal partners.

In addition to reducing wildfire risk, what other region-specific benefits are there?

A number of threatened and endangered species like the red-cockaded woodpecker, gopher tortoise, and the Louisiana pine snake are heavily dependent on open, grassy conditions that, in many cases, we can only produce with prescribed fire. The practice also supports regeneration of one of our keystone species, longleaf pine, which was almost decimated by overlogging in the early 20th century.

How has your wildfire strategy continued to grow and adapt?

To be the best partners to our communities, we’ve developed a tracking website that allows the public to see when and where our prescribed burns are playing. We’ve also continued to implement advances in technology that result in safer outcomes. This past year, we’ve increased the use of drones. They accomplish roughly 10 percent of our prescribed burns, and we plan to do more in the future.

"And now our National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center, which opened in 1998 in Florida, is actually being replicated in the West. We’re very proud of that."

How is the Southern Region expanding its strategy nationally?

With the introduction of our Wildfire Crisis Strategy and Implementation Plan last year, we’ve been helping the agency develop training opportunities for Burn Bosses [private individuals who are certified to plan and execute prescribed fires]. And now our National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center, which opened in 1998 in Florida, is actually being replicated in the West. We’re very proud of that.

Learn more about Hunter and his region’s wildfire-management efforts at fs.usda.gov/main/r8/fire-aviation or hike the Appalachian Fire Trail, an interpretive route that spans Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest and North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Along the route, you’ll find informational signs that correspond to a podcast explaining the role and history of fire on the landscape.

Cover photo of Hunter with a fire crew near the city of Weiser in Idaho, by U.S. Forest Service.

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