FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 24, 2025
Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative (SOFRC)’s groundbreaking education program, a successful model that is poised to expand regionally, may be eliminated this year due to unexpected termination of EPA funding. The funding cut represents 27% of SOFRC’s annual budget. Without these funds, SOFRC will be unable to sustain their education program that provides critical wildfire education and workforce training to students across Southern Oregon. All of the 1,000+ students that SOFRC serves annually live in communities with extremely high wildfire risk, and many were impacted by the 2020 Labor Day fires. SOFRC’s program addresses a dire need for wildfire preparedness by teaching K-12 students to be proactive community leaders of wildfire adaptation. The program also provides high school students with valuable career pathways, training and certification opportunities, and entrepreneurial mentorship.
SOFRC seeks emergency funding by January 1, 2026, to maintain staff positions and deliver spring 2026 curriculum to the students who are counting on it.
SOFRC has been an indispensable partner in building the wildland firefighting branch of our Natural Resources & Forestry CTE program. They provide the curriculum, industry connections, field certifications, and professional support that make this program possible — resources our rural school district would be hard-pressed to access on our own.
— Caroline Burdick Rihan, Science Teacher and Natural Resources CTE Teacher, Crater High School, Central Point, Oregon
If funding isn’t restored or replaced, 500 students will lose promised spring 2026 instruction, and another 500+ students won’t receive summer and fall 2026 program opportunities. Years of collaborative investment from schools, agencies, and community partners will halt, just as the program is ready to expand to offer new career training programs, curricula trainings for teachers across Oregon, and free community preparedness events.
The Program at Risk
SOFRC’s education program delivers comprehensive wildfire resilience education through classroom curriculum, hands-on service learning, and career pathway development in wildland firefighting and natural resource management. Students complete defensible space projects around their homes and schools, lead community preparedness events, and develop skills for careers in natural resource management. These careers are part of the workforce that Southern Oregon needs to implement landscape-scale forest restoration that will reduce wildfire risk by up to 70%. Three developing Career and Technical Education (CTE) wildland firefighting programs in rural high schools now face disruption. Without a clear education-to-career pathway, communities remain susceptible to cycles of devastating fires, which burden our housing supply, our safety, and our health.
The program operates across Southern Oregon’s highest-risk counties, where communities are still recovering from the devastating 2020 wildfires that destroyed 2,500 homes and displaced 40% of students in some districts. The knowledge and skills that the program offers are needed statewide. During the 2024-25 school year, SOFRC trained 148 educators from every corner of Oregon on their K-12 wildfire curricula, and more are planned for 2026.
Long-Term Consequences
There are many organizations and agencies that have public education campaigns about wildfire safety – but only SOFRC’s gives youth the hands-on, interdisciplinary experience of understanding fire science and wildfire adaptation, and opportunities to apply their knowledge through community leadership and workforce training. Research demonstrates that youth education is one of the most effective ways to deliver information to households and change public response to crises.
Children as Household Agents of Change
- Fire safety research shows that when children receive fire prevention education, parents are significantly more likely to adopt critical safety behaviors, including testing smoke detectors and creating family fire escape plans (Chavez et al., 2014; Hwang et al., 2006).
- Environmental education studies document that child-oriented education influences adult knowledge and household behavior, with children serving as “effective agents” who transfer education-dependent knowledge to their families (Damerell, Howe & Milner-Gulland, 2013).
- Recent research shows adolescents can successfully disseminate information to parents and other household members, influencing family behaviors through both knowledge transfer and behavioral modeling (Lawson et al., 2019; Kong & Jia, 2023).
How you can help
SOFRC calls on the local community, the State of Oregon, and the federal government to assist with restoring or replacing the funds needed to sustain their wildfire education program into 2026. SOFRC remains hopeful that the federal government will recognize the value of educating and training youth to not only be prepared for wildfire, but to thrive as professionals and entrepreneurs in wildfire-prone areas. SOFRC encourages citizens to call their representatives to ask that federal funding be restored to the program. Those who are interested in supporting directly can donate to the program through SOFRC’s website.
About Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative
SOFRC is a network of conservation leaders, forestry experts, educators, government officials, and landowners working to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk across Southern Oregon. SOFRC coordinates the Rogue Basin Strategy, a 20-year plan for restoration across 4.4 million acres that is expected to reduce wildfire risk by 70%. The organization provides scientific data, coordination, and support that partners need to implement landscape-scale forest restoration while developing the skilled local workforce essential to this work.
Media Inquiries
Amelia Liberatore, Communications Specialist
Jennifer Payne, Education Program Director