The Rotary Club and Girl Scouts teamed up to build “bucket trees” to prevent wildfires in Alaska.
Girl Scout Troop 210, led by Leah Eskelin, previously won the 2024 Caring for the Kenai award, which led them to earn the 2024 President’s Environmental Youth Award in Washington, DC, which recognizes outstanding youth dedicated to environmental stewardship.
After witnessing the impact of the 2019 Swan Lake wildfires, which burned over 170,000 acres of land, the students decided to take action to help protect and educate their community. The team from Troop 210 developed the “Bucket Trees for Campfire Safety” project in the Kenai Peninsula. They researched innovative ways to reduce the risk of human-made wildfires, as nearly 85 percent of fires in the United States are caused by humans. For campgrounds, they advocated for new safety standards to stifle campfires, which include dowsing fires with water, stirring, and ensuring that coals are cold.
Since 2022, the group has also installed 18 “bucket trees” on campgrounds in the Kenai Peninsula. These stands have several empty loaner buckets for visitors and campers to use. The buckets, labeled with fire safety instructions, are distributed by host agencies that continue to advocate for their use, thereby promoting sustainable fire safety practices and mitigating the risk of human-caused wildfires.
The project was praised by Alaska State Park Rangers, firefighters, and the broader community alike, all of whom commended the students for their service and environmental stewardship.
Now, Troop 210 is back with more “bucket trees,” yet these are being deployed to the Russian River campground.
Eskelin says that they aim to have bucket trees available anywhere anyone would have a warming fire or a campfire, and they are increasingly needed on the east side of the peninsula.
“I love watching the community gather around a shared interest and a shared concern. We don’t want our community to deal with the negative effects of forest fires, so we are putting our energies towards prevention while also learning through these girls how we can go out and recreate in campgrounds in our area and not leave a campfire behind that could escape.” Eskelin says.
Girl Scout Troop 210 presented the idea to the Rotary Club at a board meeting.
Brian Erwin, president of the Soldotna Rotary Club, thanked Troop 210 for bringing this to the Rotary’s attention.
“I’ll be sending this all to the presidents of the clubs out there in Alaska and see if we can’t get more bucket trees and more campgrounds throughout our state because there’s wildfires going on right now. Some are natural causes, and some are just man-made, and if we can stop the man-made ones, we’re ahead of the game in that sense. So we really appreciate Troop 210 so that we could help them see this goal and idea come to fruition, not just in our area but further out.” Erwin says.
The Rotary Club and Girl Scout Troop 210 successfully built 10 bucket trees.
Erwin says Troop 210 and the Rotary Club’s goal is to make this official statewide and, hopefully, nationwide in the future.