In 2025, the Coldfire Project was selected as a finalist in the Fire Grand Challenge:
“The Fire Grand Challenge is a global call to innovators from around the globe to submit solutions to transform how we manage and live with fire in Western North America. We’re offering $1,000,000+ in prizes and support to scale innovations that blend cutting-edge technology with Indigenous, rural, and place-based knowledge.“
https://www.conservationxlabs.com/news/fire-grand-challenge-finalists
Our proposal:
Coldfire leverages the natural systems that the forest uses to recycle biomass- fungal decay. We collect primary saprophytes (wood rotters) and train them to recognize the materials we call waste as a food source. Whereas a wood rotting mushroom would immediately accept a fallen log as a food source, piles of wood chips are different enough to delay their rapid adaptation. Returning a fungus to the wild is akin to throwing a babe to the wolves. There are bacteria hungry for its flesh, other fungi interested in the same food source, or the target mushroom itself. Through over a decade of study we have developed protocols that reduce the risk of contamination post inoculation. Our initial goal was to find a way to kick start and accelerate a natural process. And test after test has confirmed this.
Since we are using native organisms in their established environment, after generationaly conditioning them to consume our target substance, we avoid the pitfalls of unintended consequences. They are not invasive species. Their place in the ecosystem is already negotiated, so they will not spread unnaturally since all of the local pressures already exist to keep them in balance. Indeed, field studies have shown that secondary rotters, in the expected order of succession, appear in the following years after introduction to do as much work as the initial species that we introduce.
We have discovered that we can reduce piles of wood chips by 80%-90% in three years, at industrial scale in the field. The resulting by-product is chemically similar to forest soil organics. But it contains more carbon than naturally produced duff. We are currently investigating precisely how much, and in what forms that carbon is potentially sequestered.
We have several methods of inoculation and are continually researching new applications for both pre-fire mitigation of excess biomass, to the rapid decomposition of dead “matchstick” trees post fire. The fungal world pioneered the land in general, and forests in particular. We think the field of mycoremediation, the use of fungi to aid in healing our planet, will become a massive field of study and application. The Colfire project is also focused on training others in our protocols to create a self-sustaining capable of implementing their own projects. Such an ethic should inform how we think of our relationship to the land and our techniques of husbandry and stewardship.
Our Team:
We teamed up with the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition and the Gitxsan community of Sik-e-dakh to create the first international Coldfire project. We replicated our initial experiment, but at a scale of around 70 tons of biomass. The project is also a study with carefully designed methods and operating protocols intended for publication in or around 2029. Stay tuned for more updates.
