Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Title of entry: SpringSummer 2025 Lenya feature

About this entry: In the past ten years, devastating forest fires in the state of California have consumed whole towns and subdivisions, including Paradise, Coffey Park, and Greenville. For its Spring/Summer 2025 issue, California magazine published a profile on Lenya Quinn-Davidson ’04, a UC Berkeley fire expert who is trying to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future by championing a forestry management technique called prescribed burning. Used by Indigenous North Americans for thousands of years, the ancient practice of periodically clearing away brush and duff before it can accumulate and feed future infernos had, in modern times, been subject to total suppression. But things are changing. Writer Coby McDonald followed Quinn-Davidson as she lobbies both the government and communities to cut through red tape and form Prescribed Burn Associations. As she sees it, it's about putting firea--one of humanity's fundamental tools--back into the hands of California communities.

In terms of impact, Lenya's story was picked up by various campus media outlets, including UC Berkeley Public Affairs, the College of Natural Resources, and the University of California Office of the President, greatly amplifying a message that might otherwise gone unnoticed.