State-driven Burn Boss Certification

Prescribed Fire for Forest Management Series

Oct. 1, 2025 | 10:30-Noon CT

The Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council (WPFC), in collaboration with UWSP’s College of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, recently developed Wisconsin’s first ever Certified Burn Boss Program. Their inaugural Prescribed Burn Boss Academy, located at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Treehaven facility, convened 28 new burn bosses from across the state. This feat, five years in evolution, focused upon fire prescription at the burn boss level instead of fire suppression. This webinar is intended for both a Wisconsin and a national audience and will discuss the process of developing a Burn Boss Certification program for a state like Wisconsin and potential paths forward for other state that do not yet have a similar program.

Watch Recorded Webinar

DISTINGUISHED PANEL

Jeb Barzen

Chair, Private Lands Conservation, LLC; Chair, Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council; Adjunct Assistant Professor, UW-Madison Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture; Lecturer, UW-Madison Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Jeb has spent most of his 36-year career studying birds and applying ecosystem restoration tools in wetlands, grasslands, and savannas worldwide. This includes conducting over 770 prescribed burns throughout the Midwest, in Vietnam and in the Russian Far East. While teaching prescribed burning in Russia, Jeb can uniquely claim to be the only person to be quoted by Pravda as an ‘expert American arsonist.’ Early on in his career, it became clear that the most interesting projects would last well beyond his own lifetime, so Jeb soon began to focus on teaching, mentoring, and advancing the tools that we depend upon to improve ecosystem restoration – chief among them – prescribed burning and prescribed burn practitioners. To that end, Jeb recently collaborated with the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council, the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UW Arboretum, The Wisconsin Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and numerous local NGOs to create a course on fire ecology and prescribed burn implementation at the UW-Madison which currently matriculates 24 students each year.

Jim Elleson

Founder, Quercus Land Stewardship Services; Chair, Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council

Jim started Quercus Land Stewardship Services in 2003 with the goal of helping landowners improve the ecological health of their land. Over the next two decades he helped hundreds of landowners including federal, state, and local agencies, non-profit conservation organizations and land trusts, commercial businesses and private individuals. He and his crews provided land management services for tens of thousands of acres, including prescribed burning, invasive species control, timber stand improvement, and other activities to promote native plant communities. Jim led over 500 prescribed burns totaling nearly 13,000 acres for clients from 2004 to 2023. He stepped down from running the business in 2020, and his “retirement” projects include leading the development of a Wisconsin prescribed fire burn boss certification program for the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council, mentoring the next generation of prescribed fire leaders, and managing his own little corner of Wisconsin’s Driftless area.

Michael Tiller, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Forest and Fire Management, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Michael grew up in Northern California where he enjoyed an active outdoor lifestyle hunting, fishing, camping, and skiing in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains and coastal redwoods. He enjoyed a 10-year career with Cal Fire serving as a Firefighter and Fire Apparatus Engineer. In 2006, he moved to College Station, Texas where he attended Texas A&M University and earned a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Science. After completing his B.S. degree, he attended Stephen F. Austin State University where he earned an M.S. degree in Environmental Science and Ph. D. in Forestry, both with a research focus on understory fuel flammability in forest and rangeland ecosystems. Michael also served as a Wildland Urban Interface Specialist for the Texas A&M Forest Service for 2-years where he was actively engaged with fuels management and prescribed burning. He recently accepted an Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology position at UW-Stevens Point where he leads the fire science program and serves as an adviser for the UWSP Fire Crew.

Michele Witecha

Prescribed Fire Specialist, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Michele began her prescribed fire journey as a volunteer burn crew member with The Nature Conservancy in 2002. Her career background is primarily in wildlife/endangered species management and fire ecology in Florida, Texas, and Kansas. She worked with both public and private prescribed burn programs in the southeast and the Midwest before joining the Wisconsin DNR fire program in 2013. As the specialist for the DNR prescribed fire program for the last 7 years Michele has had the privilege of working with field staff and outside partners to continually improve and increase prescribed fire on both public and private lands.

PANELIST / MODERATOR

Michael Demchik, Ph.D.

Professor of Forestry, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Michael Demchik grew up in southern West Virginia in unincorporated Pond Fork. With the freedom to explore the outdoors, a mountain on one side and a stream on the other, a future career in natural resources just made sense. Demchik is currently a professor of silviculture at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His previous positions included an Extension Forester specializing in farm forestry in Minnesota, a state Maple Syrup and Non-Timber Forest Products specialist in Pennsylvania, and a number of other jobs ranging across federal, state, and private industries in West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.