March 29, 2025

California’s Growing Fuel And Wildfire Problem. A Conversation With Zeke Lunder. Fuels mitigation and prescribed fire are key to the solution.

1 hour 1 minute

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Zeke Lunder is a Pyro-geographer. His parents fled the Bay Area for the hillbilly sticks of Northeastern California in the late 1970s, when the timber industry was still a major part of the local economy, and Zeke started working in the woods in high school on a Forest Service conservation crew.

Zeke started his prescribed fire and fuels career in 1995 on a timber crew on the Lassen National Forest, marking trees for thinning on large-scale shaded fuel break projects and burning house-sized piles of logging slash. He got a degree in map-making from California State University, Chico, in 1996 and was one of the first NWCG-qualified wildfire mapping specialists in the United States.

In 2021, Zeke and his wife, Erika, founded Lookout Media, which provides in-depth reporting on prescribed fire, wildland fire management tactics, and forestry through their YouTube channel and website. Zeke currently lives in Chico, California.

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