In July 2021, the Bootleg megafire burned across south-central Oregon, including 12,000 acres of The Nature Conservancy’s Sycan Marsh Preserve. For over two decades, Sycan has been a center for learning about how to safely restore the natural role of fire in our dry forests through ecological thinning and controlled burning with numerous tribal, academic and public agency partners. This session will introduce to the Conservancy’s Sycan Marsh Preserve as well as our partnerships and treatments to conserve biodiversity and restore the inherent resiliency of these dry forest and marshland ecosystems. We will dive into the story of the Bootleg megafire and the results from our partnership with the University of Washington to evaluate the effectiveness of pre-wildfire treatments. Excitingly, preliminary results support the direct observations of our frontline fire personnel during Bootleg and indicate that, even under extreme fire weather conditions, wildfire severity was moderated in areas that had received controlled burning, either in combination with ecological thinning or alone, prior to the Bootleg Fire. Treatments to reduce fuels also allowed firefighters more and safer options to conduct effective fire suppression efforts. These hopeful results are relevant to land trusts and public land managers across the West and anyone who cares about conserving the resilience and biodiversity of our western forests in an era of fire.