The U.S. Forest Service awarded Clemson’s “Fire Tigers” the Southern Regional Forester Award on Nov. 3. The program, which is on its fifth year, has been hard at work in teaching Clemson’s forestry and wildlife students about wildfires and controlled burns. 
The team currently features 26 active members and actively fights fires in the Clemson area with equipment from sponsors such as the Andrew Pickens Ranger District and the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers. 
The voluntary student fire crew has several goals, according to a press release by the Forest Service. The team burns a large portion of the district each year, tripling the burn capacity in the last five years. They also welcome fire management experts each year to interact with the team and hold a week-long “fire camp.”
The crew also hopes to get forestry and wildlife students involved in fire management and “promote wildland fire careers after graduation.” 
Helen Mohr, a double-Clemson graduate in ‘97 and ‘02, is the leader of the program, and has worked with the Forest Service for over 20 years. Mohr interviewed with “Clemson World” about the program in 2019.
“Every person has a role, a job,” said Mohr. “The beauty of the fire is that it has a life of its own. What gives us confidence controlling that life are the boundaries we enact. However, we recognize we’re on the cusp of danger. The day we are no longer afraid of the fire is the day we hang up our hats.”
Mohr and her colleagues help students become certified wildfire-fighters. She further elaborated on the program in a 2020 video. “They adhere to those national standards,” she said. “They’re officially red carded and can really work anywhere in the country.”
The location of Clemson’s campus is an invaluable asset to the program. “We are very lucky to be situated only 30 minutes from Sumter National Forest,” Mohr said. “It gives these students the opportunity to very quickly be in a forest service truck with their equipment on the way to a fire, and that is unique in itself.”
They not only fight wildfires, but set their own. Prescribed burns are essential to removing excess fuel from the forest floor, which builds up over time. Eventually, it becomes kindling for much bigger, more dangerous fires. Don Hagan, an Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology, spoke about the importance of the program in a 2020 video.
“Prescribed fire is a management tool that we use to reduce hazardous fuels, to take these forests that have changed pretty dramatically due to fire suppression, and put fire back on the landscape,” said Hagan.
In the future, the Fire Tigers hope to become self-sufficient with oversight from the Forest Service and to be on-call across the country, as well as continue to train students as capable and experienced firefighters. 
From July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020, Oconee and Pickens Counties each experienced 14 separate wildfires, while Anderson County faced 16. In total, South Carolina had over 1,000 wildfires in that same time period, scorching over 6,000 acres of land.