Next Thanksgiving, Smokey Bear should talk about climate change
In an excellent story timed to Smokey’s 75th birthday in 2019, HuffPost reporter Chris D’Angelo made the case that the federal fire-prevention campaign “may be a net negative for the environment.” He talked with experts who told him that the bear’s “only you can prevent wildfires” message had obscured the important role that natural fire plays in healthy forest ecosystems.
Fighting wildfires: Young people are going into fire service and science careers
More frequently, those living in fire-prone areas are turning to groups who have coexisted with fire for generations. Controlled, intentional burns and other strategies enable the landscape and wildlife to thrive, mitigating climate change and offsetting future wildfires. “The way that I was raised, we look at resources as relatives. It is our obligation to take care of them,” Mahseelah says. “Our tribe practiced fire management long before we were on the reservation. Fire is medicine, it's rebirth, regeneration, cleansing. It is needed.”
Two years with America’s elite firefighters
A report published this year by the University of Washington concluded that on average, the base monthly pay of federal firefighters, including hotshots, was about 41 percent less than their counterparts in state agencies.
The pay disparity is at the heart of the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act, legislation that would raise the base pay of entry level federal firefighters by 42 percent. The bill is currently pending before Congress.
How I learned to stop worrying and love unmanned aerial flamethrowers
Rather than mount a whole flamethrower to a drone, the Drone Amplified device works by dropping small potassium permanganate shells that had been injected with anti-freeze, causing the shells to ignite, over a landscape. (The shells are known as “dragon eggs.”) This allows fire agencies to conduct controlled low-intensity burns in hard-to-reach locations to limit the available fuel for future wildfires. It also allows firefighters to start what are known as backburns, defensive “counter-fires” of last resort that block an advancing wildfire from moving into a new landscape, and that are traditionally started by hand with dip torches.
Fundraiser offers a chance to shoot hoops for a good cause
To celebrate Native American Heritage Month and bolster wildfire resiliency efforts, a group of University of Oregon students and alums are working with local Indigenous fire practitioners on a fun-for-all approach to fundraising: basketball.
The group is turning one of its favorite hobbies into social good by organizing Oregon’s first Wildfire Resilience Hoop-A-Thon on Nov. 19. The event takes place at the UO’s McArthur Court with the goal of raising $100,000 for workforce development and wildfire resilience efforts around the state.
“Our generation needs pathways for resilience so we can live with fire on the landscape,” said Kyle Trefny, a wildland firefighter, FireGeneration researcher and economics student at the UO. “We face hotter and drier times ahead, but by preparing proactively we can be ready for both wildfires and the prescribed and cultural burning we need on the land.”
Federal money will support Native American burn practices in Oregon’s oak habitats
A project incorporating traditional Native American management practices for oak habitat restoration in Oregon has been awarded $9.23 million.
The project also seeks to permanently protect designated oak savannas and woodlands, and give Native Americans access to them for cultural use and environmental stewardship.
Park Service should refrain from planting sequoia seedlings and let nature do its job
The death of numerous sequoias got lots of media coverage, though subsequent analyses are finding many trees assumed to have been killed are in fact alive. More recently, attention has shifted to what’s happening with sequoia regrowth after the fire. There’s been a concerning lack of new sequoia seedlings surviving over the past century, putting the future of sequoia ecosystems in doubt.
This is what I witnessed in Redwood Mountain Grove: verdant carpets of young sequoias stretching up to my knees and covering the hillsides. And this new generation is thriving. Researchers are finding high survival rates, vigorous growth and new seedlings continuing to emerge two years after fire.
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article280709210.html#storylink=cpy
America’s new wildfire risk goes beyond forests
Forest fires may get more attention, but a new study reveals that grassland fires are more widespread and destructive across the United States. Almost every year since 1990, the study found, grass and shrub fires burned more land than forest fires did, and they destroyed more homes, too.
It’s been 5 years since California’s deadliest wildfire. Can we stop it from happening again?
Those efforts might benefit communities immediately adjacent to the work, but the overall impact is likely to be small in a state with more than 30 million acres of forestland, said Zeke Lunder, a Chico-based pyrogeographer who also runs The Lookout, a wildfire information website.
Fuel-reduction work is “not necessarily going to fundamentally change the megafire regime,” said Lunder, noting that the Dixie fire burned a nearly million acres despite forest treatments in the area. He added that the Camp fire quickly transitioned from a wildfire to an urban conflagration, which highlights the importance of home-hardening efforts in addition to forest management.
Burn before windy spring sparks uncontrolled blaze
The U.S. Forest Service is scrambling to correct the mistakes of generations of foresters who believed all fire was bad until the 1990s. Overgrazing, logging and fire suppression have left much of our forests in a mess, and the only realistic way to correct these past errors is with prescribed fire. Thinning close to homes and towns needs to happen, too, but the ultimate tool to protect wildlife habitat and ensure safety from future firestorms is prescribed fire.
Why many scientists are now saying climate change is an all-out ‘emergency’
“Scientists are more willing to speak out,” Ripple said. “As a group, we’ve been pretty hesitant, historically.” But, he added, “I feel like scientists have a moral obligation to warn humanity.”
'Get bitten by the fire': Book explores wildfire's mystique, science in a shifting climate
Science journalist M.R. O'Connor's new book "Ignition," published Tuesday by Bold Type Books, will make you fall in love with the flickering, challenging mystery of fire, and even, cautiously, with its fearful ferocity.
How megafires are remaking the world
This incendiary age, which some scientists have called the Pyrocene, could lead to “a wholesale conversion of what habitats are where on the planet,” Dr. Hodges said. “Right now, everybody is talking about fires and smoke and who dies, because of the immediacy of this fire year. But really, truly, the long-term consequences are much more severe and sustained.”
This wildfire season, here’s another terrifying threat to worry about
Members of Congress have already proposed bipartisan bills that could shore up pay and benefits for our firefighters. It’s imperative that our government take legislative action to permanently secure and stabilize the earnings of those bravely defending our communities.The consequences of inaction are dire. If lawmakers don’t stabilize firefighter pay, about a third to half of the 11,000 U.S. Forest Service firefighters could leave the service, according to the National Federation of Federal Employees.
FUSEE commends report, calls for paradigm shift from firefighting to firelighting
Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, said the report essentially appeals for “a sociocultural paradigm shift” in society’s relationship with fire.
“Continued fire exclusion and systematic fire suppression is simply unsustainable from a socioeconomic and ecological standpoint,” Tim said. “All fire-dependent species and fire-adapted ecosystems in North America need more fire, not less, to recover from past fire exclusion and prepare for future climate change and wildfires.
Cause of Oregon's devastating 2020 Labor Day wildfires still remains unknown
It’s been more than three years since historic wildfires tore through multiple Oregon communities, burning 1 million acres and forever altering the lives of thousands.
As communities rebuild, survivors put their lives back together and lawsuits assign blame, one element of recovery remains missing: an official cause for almost all of the fires.
Of the nine major Labor Day fires that exploded in Oregon in September 2020, eight remain either under investigation, incomplete or have not been made public.
"It’s shocking to me that they have not concluded the fire investigations," said Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of the Eugene nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
Thousands of federal firefighters face a looming pay cut. How much is up to Congress
Federal wildland firefighters were on the frontlines of some of the harshest wildfires to hit the U.S. and Canada this summer. But as Congress is inching towards its Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government, those firefighters stand to lose half their salaries.
The threat of wildfires is rising. So are new artificial intelligence solutions to fight them
Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions. Enter artificial intelligence.
Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.
With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology — which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.
Maui firefighters admit to taking lunch as Lahaina fire reignited
A crew of Maui firefighters took a lunch break on 8 August, thinking they had successfully tamped down a blaze threatening the town of Lahaina, only for the fire to later grow and race toward the historic town.
A wildland firefighter argues for setting more fires. Ryan Reed says: “In short, let’s look to Indigenous leadership.”
Reed is a member of the Karuk, Hupa and Yurok tribes in Northern California (those tribal lands are just across the Oregon border, and he got an environmental studies degree at the University of Oregon). Those tribes for years have lobbied the Forest Service for a return to Indigenous forestry practices, which include regular prescribed burns to reduce the underbrush that turns forests into tinderboxes. The concessions they’ve obtained—including the right for the Karuk Tribe to conduct controlled burns in Six Rivers National Forest—have been hard won.