Christian Noack

Christian grew up along the American River. He was born close to where it merges with the Sacramento River, spent his youth rowing on Lake Natoma, every summer exploring the headwaters of the North Fork American, and every winter skiing on what will eventually melt into it. He left his homewaters for UC Santa Barbara to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Global Studies and German. After quitting his start-up desk job in 2019 to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail, he dedicated his work to helping solve California’s wildfire crisis. Christian ran chainsaw crews, assisted a local Forester with fuel management projects, and surveyed and planted conifers in Sierra burn scars to study the effects of fire intensity with a lab at the University of Nevada, Reno. He moved to Prague to study Forestry, Water, and Land Management at the Czech University of Life Sciences, where he has nearly finished his master’s degree. When he’s not playing board games or tromping through the woods in the Yuba watershed, you can find him stoking up flames on one of his projects’ prescribed burns or putting them out as an on-call wildland firefighter with the Plumas NF.