IN MEMORIAM: Jan van Wagtendonk, 1940-2022
Written by Jim Agee, Scott Stephens, Andi Thode, and Allie Weill
It is with great sadness that we report the loss of Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, who passed on at his home in Winters, California in July 2022. Jan was a native Californian who spent most of his youth in Indiana. It was there that he developed a lifelong interest in trees and forests, which encouraged him to enroll in the forestry program at Purdue University. Between his freshmen and sophomore years, he was lured westward by a job as a smokejumper. Working with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, he suppressed wildfires in Oregon and Alaska. Those experiences planted a seed in Jan’s mind, that not all wildfire effects were destructive and not all fire suppression efforts were justified. He transferred from Purdue to Oregon State University and graduated with a degree in forest management in 1963.
Jan joined the U.S. Army and spent four and a half years as an officer in the 101st Airborne and as an on-the ground advisor to the Vietnamese Army. During this time, he maintained an interest in fire and in ecology, which led him to apply to graduate school in fire ecology. From Fort Ord in Monterey, he corresponded with Professor Harold Biswell, who was a leading fire ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. He began a Masters’ program in 1967 and started his Ph.D. program in 1968. Prescribed burning was at that time very controversial, and Dr. Biswell spent considerable time conducting field tours where he would demonstrate the beneficial effects of prescribed fire. Jan and Biswell’s other graduate students would attend and often be called upon to describe the work they were doing. Jan’s doctoral dissertation was focused on refining burning prescriptions for backing and head fires in mixed-conifer forests. After being refused permission to burn on Forest Service land, he was invited to conduct his research at Yosemite National Park. The National Park Service had just changed its fire policies to allow prescribed fires and some natural fires to burn, but needed scientific guidance that Jan provided. Those prescriptions are still in place half a century later!
The newly anointed Dr. van Wagtendonk was offered a job at Yosemite when he graduated from Berkeley and spent his 40-plus-year career at the park. He conducted pioneering research in wilderness management and fire science. He was one of the first researchers to develop wilderness visitor simulation models, which helped to set carrying capacity limits for the backcountry. He also studied ecological impacts of visitor use, which helped to ration use to keep “wilderness wild.” But he is best known for his fire research.
Jan’s fire research covered a vast array of topics from burn severity, interaction of fires, owls, fire behavior, fuels and more. His research set the foundations for management at Yosemite National Park and beyond. Jan began work on wilderness fire management in Yosemite’s Illilouette Creek Basin in the early 1970’s and encouraged Scott Stephens to work with him in the early 2000’s. Twenty years later this partnership produced some of the best information on using fire in remote areas anywhere in the US and many National Forests are working to expand this practice. He took great pride in his work having an impact on the landscapes that we know today and in sharing his knowledge with others.
Jan always took time from his busy schedule to talk to people about fire and forests. Whether it was an agency administrator or a brand-new graduate student, he would engage with them and leave a lasting impact. Not only did he mentor numerous graduate students, but he brought them into his professional circles and his home. Jan began an annual backpacking trip in Yosemite that included the park’s senior leadership and scientists. He believed getting people around a campfire and having discussions along the way was crucial to conserving the ecosystems of Yosemite. The trips continue today. He led field courses for the California Association for Fire Ecology (CAFÉ) which he then helped lead to become an international non-profit now known as the Association for Fire Ecology. Jan was a founding member of the Association, served as its President for three years, and as Editor of the Association’s journal, Fire Ecology, for five years. In 2017, Jan gave a keynote presentation with Neil Sugihara at the International Fire Ecology and Management Congress, sharing the early history of CAFE and AFE; click here for the video recording of their presentation. Many people remember Jan’s very active engagement in getting accepted papers into print. He was very detail oriented and wanted this journal to prosper as it has today, being one of the most cited journals in fire science.
Jan was very patient regarding getting more people to use fire in land management. While many of us would vent our frustration in the current state of affairs, Jan would say that there had been good amount of change, and more was coming. However, even he was frustrated with a continued focus on fire suppression as a long-term method to conserve our fire-dependent ecosystems.
Jan taught at the interagency Fire Behavior Analyst course at Marana, AZ, for many years. He was a contributing editor for the first edition of Fire in California Ecosystems, published by the University of California Press, and was lead editor for the second edition. Jan’s contributions to the profession have resulted in many career awards: National Park Service Director’s Award for Research in Natural Resources (1995), the Forest Service Chief’s Excellence in Wilderness Stewardship Award (2002), Department of the Interior Meritorious Service Award (2003), George Melendez Wright Award (2005) from the George Wright Society, and the Biswell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Fire Ecology (2012).
Jan was an avid backpacker and hiked every trail in Yosemite National Park, and he had a map on his wall where he marked off all the routes he had taken. He also did a great deal of off-trail hiking, and his memory of these incredible areas were vivid. He was always willing to sit down and talk fire over a good beer (but never before 11 am) or give advice to a new student or professional. It is fitting that while Jan passed on, the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias in the southern part of Yosemite was saved from severe effects from the Washburn wildfire due to decades of prescribed fire applied to the grove, largely based on Jan’s fire prescriptions. Jan will be missed by all as a mentor, leader, and friend.
Here is a link to an interview Jan gave in 2008: https://youtu.be/1KxLDs-V8Vk.
