‘Cheerleading for a broken system’: fire exclusion in the Klamath National Forest

The experience that people like me have had living here my whole life on the ground is just watching everything we love being destroyed by the effects of fire exclusion and fire suppression on our landscapes. What we see time and again with the Forest Service response to wildfires is just cheering on the firefighters. And in the moment, you know, the public agrees. I mean, we all agree. We want to save our towns from being burned down, and in that moment, we do need to suppress fires. But what's disingenuous is not addressing the root cause which is the wildfire paradox – the more fires we put out, the more at-risk our communities are.