About Us

The Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network (WUICAN) is a collaboration between the University of California, Irvine, UC Riverside and UC San Diego, Tribes, community groups and land managers that are working together to address the climate crisis. Through a generous grant from the UC Office of the President (UCOP), WUICAN leverages innovative climate research, land stewardship and educational projects to generate science-based and community-driven best practices for dealing with climate risks with the goal of creating knowledge and climate solutions that ensure a resilient relationship between society and wild landscapes. WUICAN’s Principal Investigator (PI) is Steve Allison, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine.

Who we are: WUICAN (pronounced “we can”) stands for the Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network. We focused the network on the wildland-urban interface (WUI) because most of California’s population lives on or near it, where climate change contributes to more frequent and intense wildfires, droughts and floods. Our network is generating community-driven climate action policies and procedures that will guide climate action locally, statewide and nationally.

Our goal: We aim to develop, in partnership with university, Tribal and community partners, a new model of co-governance for land stewardship and climate action policies. WUICAN produces science-based and community-driven best practices for dealing with climate risks. As part of this new model, we are working to build capacities for collaboration across all partners and those they serve.

Collaborative research: Research co-design and partnership is at the center of WUICAN. Our unique network includes researchers in environmental science, the humanities, law and social sciences from the University of California, Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Riverside and eleven community partners, including Tribal leaders, land managers, local city governments and an interfaith working group. Learn more about our partners here.

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WUICAN Contacts

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WUICAN acknowledges our presence on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Acjachemen and Tongva Peoples, who still hold strong cultural, spiritual and physical ties to this region.