(Photo: Flickr)
To address the devastating effects of wildfires in Western North America, the nonprofit Conservation X Labs (CXL) and its partners have awarded $50,000 each to 12 shortlisted teams seeking to scale up novel technologies and processes to lower wildlife risk and increase ecosystem and community resilience.
CXL announced the 12 finalists of its first Fire Grand Challenge on March 26. Each finalist will field-test their solutions over the next nine months in fire-prone regions across the western United States, Canada and Mexico.
“Across Western North America, destructive fire threatens to wipe out cherished ecosystems, from the giant sequoias to bristlecone pines to culturally important landscapes,” Liam Torpy, CXL‘s Fire Grand Challenge manager, told Mongabay by email. “Each innovation seeks to help better steward landscapes in order to protect and restore biodiversity, in addition to decreasing risk to people and communities.”
Each $50,000 grant will be divided between the technical organization that developed the innovation and the partner communities, which will collaborate on development and field testing. The grant will support controlled burns, test flights, and improvements to business models and scaling strategies.
The shortlisted innovations include The Coldfire Project, which uses native fungi to break down biomass and wood chip piles, reducing fuel for fire. Another project converts forest biomass into wood fiber potting substrates for the horticultural industry, which will both mitigate fire risk and create local jobs.
