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Flash Forest places Top 3 at the Conservation X Labs Fire Grand Challenge

Flash Forest places Top 3 at the Conservation X Labs Fire Grand Challenge.

In 2025, we partnered with Grand County Wildfire Council to restore heavily fire-damaged landscapes. After nine months of field testing in Colorado's East Troublesome Fire burn scar, we brought essential restoration R&D to communities that need it most: landscapes too damaged for natural recovery, too dangerous or remote for planting crews. The competition started with 92 teams from 20 countries. Twelve made it through to field deployment.

Last week, on January 27th in Oakland, we presented results to the room that controls what happens next: federal agency heads, Indigenous land managers, private funders making deployment decisions. Dr. Paul Bunje from Conservation X Labs set the tone for the day: we're living with too much of the wrong kind of fire, and we cannot solve this without doing it together.

The judges awarded the Top 3 solutions $50,000 - $100,000 for the next phase of their project. More valuable are the identified opportunities in mapping and forest intelligence service (coming soon) that let us scale in Colorado and beyond.

Fire season runs year-round in the West. The technology performed. Now the work expands. Follow our expansion across the Western North America!

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