Illinois Prescribed Fire Council Short biographies of our current directors as of January 2016 Bio for Leslie Berns

Leslie is currently the Manager of Landscape Ecology for the Lake County Forest Preserve District. Prior to that, she was Manager of Natural Resources for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. She has over 20 years of experience in natural areas restoration and management and is a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager. Leslie is responsible for prescription fire planning and field coordination for the Lake County Forest Preserve. She was part of the team that developed the Midwest Ecological Prescription Burn Crew Member training which is used to train volunteers by many organizations in the Chicago Wilderness area. Her professional interests are in fire ecology, stream restoration and geomorphology. In her spare time she likes to hike, bike, and kayak while taking pictures of stunning natural areas wherever she can find them.

Bio for Jason Timm My wife and I raise Simmental cattle, I also am a field staff instructor for the Illinois Fire Service Institute in; wildland, large animal rescue, courage to be safe, and oil well firefighting. I am a 24+ year veteran of the fire service serving as a volunteer fireman, currently with the Kell Fire Protection District, and short time on a paid department in Richmond, KY where I attend college at Eastern Kentucky University getting my BS in Fire and Safety Technology with a concentration in Fire Protection Administration.

I currently hold the rank of Lieutenant on the fire department and am the prescribed burn coordinator as well as training officer. I am one of 4 certified burn managers on our department. I have been burning for over 8 years with Kell Fire. We typically burn for landowners throughout the area who have there ground enrolled in the native grass plantings within the CRP program of the USDA Natural Resource Department and for the local soil and water district. We on average burn around 200 acres in the spring and 80 in the fall. I live in a rural area Iuka which is in Marion County. I am married to Jennifer, ag teacher at Cisne High School, have 2 children, boy 14 and girl 12. Our family shows cattle at a variety of places throughout the year. The wife and I are also leaders of a local 4H club. Jason Timm

Bio for Bob Szafoni

Bob Szafoni retired from the IL DNR in Dec 2015 where he was the Natural Areas Stewardship Project Manager for IDNR's Division of Natural Heritage for 10 years. Prior to that, he was an IDNR Natural Heritage Biologist in north-central and, later, east-central Illinois for 20 years and a wildlife biologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey. He has a BS and MS in Biology from University of Illinois - Urbana. He is a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager. His primary interests are natural areas identification, protection, and stewardship and freshwater mussel ecology. He grew up in Chicago, is a life-long White Sox fan, and lives in rural Champaign County.

Bob Szafoni

Bio for Scott Crist

As the Fuels Specialist for the Shawnee National Forest, a division of the USDA Forest Service, Scott Crist is responsible for planning, implementing, and monitoring prescribed fires in a variety of terrain and fuel types across southern Illinois. He began his career in forestry in 1994 with a summer job with the City of Decatur Forestry Department, before working temporary positions in Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, North Carolina, and Washington for the Forest Service, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. He served as a Fire Suppression Crew Foreman in New Mexico for three years before coming to the Shawnee, where he has been since 2003.

His fire career has taken him to 25 states. He is qualified as a Division/Group Supervisor and Prescribed Fire Burn Boss Type 2. He serves as the Operations Section Chief for the Shawnee’s Type 3 Team and as an alternate Division Supervisor with the Eastern Area Type 2 Team. He also teaches a number of classes and is in the Advisory Board for the Oak Woodlands and Forests Fire Consortium.

In his spare time he enjoys traveling, cooking, photography, watching and playing sports, and spending time with his son.

Bio for Rob Littiken I have worked for TNC for 13 years now. Eleven in my current position as Project Manager of Kankakee Sands Illinois and 2 years part-time for the Indiana chapter. I have been involved in nature all of my life and have always loved the beauty and wonder it evokes. Before working for TNC I had worked for many years in professional auto racing, Indy car and Drag racing. Through my racing career I got to see much of the world, the beautiful places and places in peril. In my current position I get to perform all aspects of a project from invasive species control and prescribed fire to community education and land acquisition. I am certified as an RXB2 Burn Boss and have been burning with TNC since 1999, with over 200 burns to my experience. In my off time I enjoy traveling and developing alternative energy projects at home. I currently produce all of my hot water and twice my electrical needs through wind and solar systems that I have constructed. It's really nice to get a check from the power company and produce no CO2 from my energy. Rob Littiken

Bio Randy Heidorn First burn was conducted in 1979 at Cary Junior High Prairie as a volunteer and School teacher. IDOC District Heritage Biologist 1982-1993 responsible for prescribed burns at numerous sites including Moraine Hills, Illinois Beach, Chain O lakes, and in original district areas such as Goose Lake Prairie, and Iroquois Co Conservation Area. Became the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission Stewardship deputy director in 1993 where, I oversaw the INPC’s stewardship planning and implementation programs. As Assistant Director of INPC worked with Fran Harty of TNC to shepherd the Illinois Prescribed Burning Act into law and led the drafting team within state government for the rules implementing the Act. Heidorn was appointed as the INPC

representative to the Illinois Prescribed Burn Certification Board and serves as presiding officer. During this time he kept active as a CPBM reviewing and approving INPC staff burn plans, and serving as a member of the Illinois Incident Management Team. In addition to being Director of the INPC and a CPBM, Heidorn is red carded as a Logistics Section Chief.

Bio for Brad Woodson Profession/title: Natural Resource Manager Organization: McHenry County Conservation District Years of experience: I graduated from Iowa State University in 1989 with a Bachelors of

Science Degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology. I have 25 years of professional experience in the field of conservation

Prescribed Fire: I went on my first prescribed burn in 1988. I have conducted prescribed

burns every spring in Iowa and/or Illinois since 1990. Our goal at the McHenry County Conservation District is to burn between 2500 and 3000 acres every year. The District has burned at least 2000 acres 5 out of the last 6 years.

Home town: Woodstock, IL Family: Married to my wife Kris for 20 years, we have 3 boys, Sam, Ben and Eli Hobbies/interests: I play and coach all types of sports with my kids. I also enjoy hunting,

fishing, hiking, and bird watching.

Brad Woodson

Bio for Bill Kleiman Title: Project Director, Nachusa Grasslands The Nature Conservancy, Illinois Chapter Bill is an RXB2 Burn Boss with over 300 fires he had led. Bill Kleiman is the project director for The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands in North-central Illinois. Bill has directed all aspects of land management, habitat restoration and the volunteer stewardship program for the 3,000-acre Nachusa Grasslands preserve since 1993. For fifteen years, he has been the fire manager for TNC in Illinois. He has been a director with the IPFC since its inception. Bill has been the chair of TNC’s Fire Management Advisory Team.

Bio for Jody Shimp:

Jody Shimp has been working in Illinois natural areas for the past twenty nine years as a volunteer, researcher, biologist, and administrator. Currently, he is employed as a regional administrator for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Natural Heritage. He is a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager and sits on the Illinois Prescribed Burn Manager Certification Board and IDNR’s Fire Working Group. Jody completed a M. S. in Plant Biology from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC) in 1996 and has a bachelor’s degree in Zoology also from SIUC. He participated on his first burn in 1987 while employed by the Kane County Forest Preserve District (KCFPD). Jody has Rx and wildfire burning experience while employed by local (KCFPD), state (IDNR) and federal (Shawnee National Forest) agencies.

Bio for Thomas Richter Title: Wildland/Prescribed Fire Program Manager Organization: Illinois Fire Service Institute

Tom Richter joined IFSI in 2005 and currently serves as the Wildland/Prescribed Fire Program Manager. Tom has also taught numerous Incident Management classes for the NIMS, Command & General Staff and ICS 300 & 400 programs. During IFSI’s campus events, Tom serves as part of the Command & General Staff. Tom has been and continues to be particularly well-known with the wildland fire community for more than 30 years and with the All Hazards Fire Service community for 26 years. He is qualified at the Command (Chief Officer) level as well as at the single resource (Company Officer) level.

Tom serves the public through deployments during large scale natural and man-made disasters here in Illinois as part of the Illinois Type III All Hazard Incident Management Team and nationally as part of various Type I, II & III incident organizations. He is also an Adjunct Instructor in the Wildland Urban Interface and Cooperative Leadership Issues curriculum programs at the National Fire Academy and Emergency Management Institute in Emittsburg, Maryland. Tom was recently appointed as the IFSI Liaison to the Illinois Prescribe Fire Council and also works as a Prescribed Fire Specialist consulting with private industry. Tom attended Black Hills State University and regularly attends the National Fire Academy and Emergency Management Institute in Emittsburg.

Charles Ruffner

Since joining the faculty of Southern Illinois University in August 1999, Charles has taught various forestry courses including Measurements, Mapping and GIS, Fire in Wildland Management, and Historical Ecology. His main academic interests include International Ag Development, Fire History, and Oak Woodland Restoration. His SIUC fire crew works closely with local agencies, landowners, and interest groups to reintroduce prescribed burning to forests and prairies of the Central Hardwoods region.

Bio for Douglas Chien. Douglas got his start with prescribed fire while in high school - burning up his parents lawn gone dormant due to drought. Once in college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign he co-founded a student run prairie restoration group, The Red Bison, leading fellow students in management activities including prescribed burns of remnant prairies in Champaign and Piatt counties. After receiving his Master's from UIUC in Geography he moved to Chicago, spent 10-years working for the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club and now works for Friends of the Forest Preserves helping build a constituency for healthy nature the oldest and largest forest preserve system. He's currently a co-Site Steward of Powderhorn Prairie and Marsh Nature Preserve, part of the Forest Preserves of Cook County, and lives in Oak Park where he successfully lobbied the Village to permit prescribed burns of native landscaped yards. Douglas and his partner Michele Gurgas have a 9-year old daughter who's first prescribed burn was at 3 months of age at Nachusa Grasslands.