A long-time Missouri Western relationship with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs led to several students joining crews to fight wildland fires or participate in prescribed burns for the past several years. That relationship has now expanded to give students the opportunity to also work in wildfire base camps.
Dr. Cary Chevalier, professor of biology, said he has always had students interested in joining a hand crew to fight fires, but he has also had several students who wanted to participate, just not on a fire-fighting hand crew.
The Bureau suggested those students work in the base camps, and last summer, after participating in a weekend training session and taking online courses, Caitlin Glore and Jackie Herron were two of several Missouri Western students who participated. The women, both wildlife conservation management majors, spent three weeks in Rangely, Colorado; Durango, Colorado; and Keystone, Wyoming; helping set up, tear down and making sure the firefighters had the equipment they needed.
“I wanted to do it at first because the pay was good, but I liked it,” Glore said. “I met a lot of people, made new friends and got to see a lot of places, and it was good for networking.”
However, she said you did earn your pay because camp days started around 5 a.m. and ended around 10 p.m. every day.
“It’s about the money in the beginning,” Herron added, “but you see different areas of the United States and meet a lot of great people, too.”
The training and the actual work give the students an excellent skill set, Dr. Chevalier said. “It makes them superiorly competitive in the job market.”
For many of the students, the summer work with the Bureau pays them enough so that they do not have to hold down a job during the school year, he said.
Both Glore and Herron said they would like to work at a base camp again this coming summer. “I liked getting to see behind the scenes of how a camp is run and what it takes to fight a fire,” Glore said. “It’s worthwhile work.”