Dr. Hugh Safford is a research ecologist at the University of California, Davis. He and his lab work principally in vegetation and fire ecology, resource management, climate change adaptation, and ecological restoration. Safford was Regional Ecologist for the USDA-Forest Service’s Region 5 (California, Hawaii, Pacific territories) between 2001 and 2021. Safford is director of the Sierra Nevada section of the California Fire Science Consortium, a fire science outreach organization, and he is PI of the California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program, a partnership with CAL FIRE. 

Safford has provided international technical assistance on fire, forest management, and climate change issues since the 1990s. Recent projects include climate change adaptation planning in Ukrainian national parks, data science support to wildfire risk mitigation in Chile, fire risk mapping in the country of Georgia, and forest restoration and management in North Africa and the Middle East. Safford was a Fulbright Fellow between 2017 and 2019, where he studied post-fire ecosystem restoration practices in the Mediterranean Basin.