Learning to Love — and Protect — Burned Trees. Wildfire-killed trees are some of the most important structures in a forest. So why are they still being logged?
Dead trees, known as “snags,” are some of the most valuable wildlife structures in the forest and help support hundreds of animals.
“A tree really has a second life after it’s been killed, particularly with fire-killed trees, which decay far slower than if a tree succumbs to disease or insects,” says Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildfire ecologist and executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “I’ve called them ‘living dead trees.’”
Inferno: Climate disaster Is turning the planet into a tinderbox
Like dozens of previous reports from the U.N. and other international organizations, it describes a situation that, while dire, isn’t yet hopeless. Despite those ever stronger, hotter, drier winds that will fan the flames, governments could slow climate change by improving their forest management techniques, planning and preparing far better, and communicating more effectively. To reduce the likelihood of future mega-fires means working with forests where fire is an element as essential to ecosystems as sunshine or rain. It also means working with forest communities, where local knowledge accumulated over generations is too often shunned. And of course, it means honestly confronting our reluctance to ween ourselves from the fossil fuels that power our factories, cars, and those absurdly unnecessary leaf blowers that are backing us toward the cliff.
A deadly wildfire traumatized their town. Can nature help them heal?
Although the Chico State walks have not yet been the subject of published, peer-reviewed research, studies show that other forms of forest therapy can lower stress hormones, boost immune systems and ease the symptoms of trauma. And after the dual ordeals of fleeing from fire and navigating an overburdened disaster bureaucracy, participants say the program has helped relieve some of their pain.
“The forest is the therapist,” Nelson says. “Nature knows how to heal.”
Ancient human relative used fire, surprising discoveries suggest
Control of fire is considered a crucial milestone in human evolution, providing light to navigate dark places, enabling activity at night and leading to the cooking of food, and a subsequent increase in body mass. When exactly the breakthrough occurred, however, has been one of the most contested questions in all of paleoanthropology.
‘Sexy’ Smokey Bear balloon gets Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade viewers hot and bothered
Created in 1944, Smokey Bear has served as a stalwart public service announcement about the dangers of unplanned wildfires ever since. With his slogan—“only YOU can prevent forest fires”—Smokey has raised awareness about a problem which continues to destroy wildlife and infrastructure on a mind-boggling scale. Over 62,000 fires have burned more than seven million acres in the U.S. this year alone, according to National Interagency Fire Center stats.
But as the necessity of wildfire safety has increased, so too has Smokey Bear’s hotness. Despite being originally designed to have a body similar to that of an actual bear, the character’s appearance inadvertently dropped ursine realism in favor of a leaner, voluptuous look in a 2007 redesign, according to Slate.
The Big Burn podcast explores the history and state of wildfire management today
CHANG: That's right because even though there is more awareness today of good fire and traditional Native American management practices, there is still largely a culture of fire suppression which guides how the state manages fire and all the expectations of people who live here in California. A lot of them want to see fires go away. How do you unwind all of that, especially in an era where wildfires are getting larger and more destructive?
MARGOLIS: Yeah. I just think we've lived in an unrealistic place with fire for so long that we're being, like, forced to reckon with the reality we need to accept. We're not going to suppress our way out of it. We need to stop thinking of fire as only as the enemy. We need to let some fires burn instead of putting them out right away. And we need to do more prescribed burns. And in turn, people have to be OK with smoke throughout more of the year, with the additional risk that prescribed burns bring because though they rarely escape, it does happen. So ultimately, at the end of the day, we do need a radical rethinking of fire. It is starting to happen. But my feeling, to be honest, is that it's not happening fast enough.
Elemental wildfire documentary worth viewing
The documentary’s central theme is that wildfires are primarily driven by climate/weather and that fuel treatments are ineffective in protecting communities. Home hardening, not logging, makes communities safe.
As Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) says in the video, we need to change our entire paradigm toward wildfire. Instead of trying to suppress or prevent wildfires, we need to develop a new relationship with the blazes.
Studies show prescribed burns key to forest resiliency
A 2021 Work of Wildfire Assessment compiled by the Department of Natural Resources found prescribed fires that had been conducted recently helped reduce wildfire severity. Those treated areas also gave firefighters a place to corral the wildfire, said Garrett Meigs, a forest health scientist with the Department of Natural Resources. “It's not really a question of if these landscapes are going to burn, it's really when and how. And so if we anticipate that we can try to harness the work of wildfire for good outcomes,” Meigs said.
An arrest in Oregon worries those who want to prescribe more fire on the land
“We’ve created a real problem,” said Rich Fairbanks, a forest landowner in Jackson County and a longtime firefighter. “The basic idea is if you get rid of low-severity fire, you get high-severity fire. You get rid of controlled burning, all you really lose is the control.”
Terry McLaughlin: Dixie and Paradise Fires
In 2005, Tim Ingalsbee, a wildland firefighter since 1980 with a doctorate in environmental sociology, started Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, and has been trying ever since to educate Congress and anyone else who would listen about the misguided fire policy which has led to the megafires we have seen in California in the past decade. “It’s horrible to see this happening” he said, “when the science is so clear and has been for years. . . Every year I warn people: Disaster’s coming. We’ve got to change. And no one listens. And then it happens.”
'We call these dragon eggs': Company drops fireballs to prevent wildfires
Prescribed burning is one of the oldest and most effective ways of preventing extreme wildfires. Nebraska-based company Drone Amplified wants to make it safer, easier and more accessible.
Former firefighter reflects on adventurous and challenging career as a trans woman
Well, in wildland firefighting, we build a fire line. And we use hand tools, or we use bulldozers, but we have a fire line, to put the fire out. That’s how we fight a wildland fire. And in my career, I had worked on both sides of the gender fire line so to speak, starting out my career as male. And maybe a third or halfway through my career I transitioned, and those early years of my career were very difficult. And so the title I think – a fire chief buddy of mine was the one who suggested that title. And I thought that when I heard him say it, I thought it really apropos because it tells my story. I worked both sides.
Forest Service employee's arrest after fire crosses onto private land sparks larger debate
“I think in a lot of parts of Oregon, it’s just a very real experience for federal employees to have a lot of hostility towards what they’re doing right now,” said Christopher Adlam, a regional fire specialist for Oregon State University’s Extension Service. “I’m not saying that people don’t also appreciate firefighters and thank firefighters. But it’s a pretty common thing in some parts of Oregon for federal employees to face hostility.”
Indeed, federal crews called the regional interagency dispatch center on both days of the burn to report verbal harassment, threats and aggressive driving through the smoke, and to request law enforcement assistance on the scene.
Grant County Sheriff arrests US Forest Service employee after prescribed burn jumps to private property
Some firefighters say the agency has a history of going silent when mistakes are made or even blaming firefighters.
“Historically the Forest Service has a terrible record of not defending employees,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, a veteran wildland firefighter who now runs Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, a group that advocates for more responsible fire management. “They’re regularly thrown under the bus for the greater good of the agency.”
Ingalsbee said he would expect the Forest Service to voice support for its employees.
“This employee was doing this at the behest of his agency for the benefit of the lands they manage,” Ingalsbee said.
California to require insurance discounts for property owners who reduce wildfire risk
The change also arrives amid a larger conversation about how best to address the state’s catastrophic wildfires — and whether and when it makes sense to rebuild in their wake. Some experts say forest management is the key to protecting more Californians, while others say time, money and energy are better spent on home hardening and making communities less vulnerable to flames.
“Home-hardening retrofits, along with defensible space, significantly increase a home’s chance of surviving a wildfire,” Berlant said. “Using the latest fire science and recent wildfire data, these retrofits and landscaping requirements provide a strong path to structure survivability.”
Wildfires aren’t firefighters’ only hazard. 6 share the toll the job takes
Although the wildfire conversation is complex and nuanced, there is widespread agreement that the people fighting the fires should be taken care of, fairly compensated, and have access to resources if they are injured on the job or dealing with the mental and physical strains that are common across this workforce. But this has not always been the case, even as firefighters are expected to work longer seasons on some of the largest and most intense blazes in recent history.
Wildfire retardants illegally poisoning streams - lawsuit
The nonprofit group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Montana federal court saying the federal agency dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals into forest streams in recent years, despite concerns those chemicals kill fish and aren’t effective at fighting fires. The most commonly used chemicals are inorganic fertilizers and salts, according to the suit. The group said it wants an injunction keeping the Forest Service from spraying chemical retardants from the air until it receives a Clean Water Act permit and shows the strategy works.
Logjam: The supply chain problem that’s keeping California from preventing catastrophic wildfires on private land
Timothy Ingalsbee has been watching the gyrations of federal forest policy from Oregon, where he is executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. In the 1980s, he was a self-described environmental activist who spent years protesting clear-cut logging of old-growth forests. Today, he says, small woodlot owners may have the best shot at establishing forests that can take the heat of fire and the dry of drought. Most are invested in their land for the long term and can plan to earn revenue from their forests through carbon storage as well as lumber. They have the incentive to think creatively about using wood, not only in harvest techniques but end uses: “making bigger things with smaller logs. Maybe even reviving logging as a craft skill,” Ingalsbee says.
The US Forest Service planned to increase burning to prevent wildfires. Will a pause on prescribed fire instead bring more delays?
Headed into the fall, the U.S. government is at a crossroads, navigating how to increase its use of controlled fire while handling the public relations nightmare that results from the minuscule percentage—0.16 percent—of those burns that go awry. Today, the agency is stuck between decades of poor land management that it must reverse, which most foresters and firefighters say requires the increasing use of prescribed burns, and climate-primed, tinderbox forests and grasslands that can quickly erupt with uncontrollable wildfires. Right now, wildfires are burning across the West—two of six active wildfires in Oregon have already burned more than 100,000 acres each, while in Idaho firefighters don’t expect to contain a fire sparked in July until the end of October.
California wildfires to Florida hurricanes, how the rich game climate change
The 300 or so people who want to move back insist they can rebuild safely. Climate scientists are skeptical, though, because as with so much of high-risk Northern California, it’s likely that another severe wildfire will scorch Greenville in the coming years as the West becomes hotter and drier.
“Whatever risk tolerances that we collectively decided were acceptable, for whatever reason, in whatever context, are no longer valid,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, told us. “Because we built our towns, we built the infrastructure, people built their homes, in a particular historical context that no longer exists.”