Idaho Gov. Little aims to ‘complement’ Trump order with this wildfire plan
Tim Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and the co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told the Idaho Statesman that an overreliance on commercial logging would in fact exacerbate the risk of wildfires. He supports increasing the use of prescribed burns — along with strategically cutting back smaller trees and clearing out undergrowth — as a more effective form of mitigation.
As a wildland firefighter, “I worked hard as a young man to save those trees, to keep them standing,” Ingalsbee said. “If that’s their solution, why bother to fight fires at all?”
The state’s controversial wildfire map may go. But the risk to communities won’t.
No matter where you live in Lane County, don’t discount your wildfire risk, said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Eugene-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
“Once it enters the city, what begins is house to house ignition, kind of like a chain nuclear reaction,” Ingalsbee said. “So that’s why even in the center of Eugene, we’re still vulnerable.”
With much of Eugene and Springfield categorized as low hazard in the wildfire map, he worries the map has given people a “false sense of security” at a time when city resources are already stretched thin.
White House pushed to move firefighting out of Forest Service
A draft executive order would revamp wildland firefighting, pursuing a new federal agency and mandating 30-minute response times in high-risk areas.
Letter-to-the-Editor: Support Tribal inclusion in the Northwest Forest Plan
The inclusion of tribal co-stewardship and Indigenous knowledge represents a profound change that goes beyond undoing past wrongs to Indigenous peoples—it will help restore species, habitats and landscape diversity. But these benefits are under threat. The Trump administration now threatens to subvert the progressive prospects of the Northwest Forest amendment by its effort to banish the words “diversity” and “inclusion.” That is why it is essential that forest conservationists and social justice advocates speak up in favor of tribal co-stewardship. This once-in-a-generation opportunity should not be squandered.
Trump job cuts could leave Oregon forests more vulnerable in 2025
After Oregon’s record wildfire season in 2024, local communities and government officials are concerned that ongoing personnel purges at federal land management agencies could leave the region shorthanded for pre-season fire mitigation projects and unprepared to combat deadly conflagrations when they break out later this year.
Ingalsbee said firefighters are already struggling with longer and more extreme fire seasons due to climate change, and that they would be called on to pick up the slack if other staff take a big hit.
“Crews are getting banged up, beat on and burned out,” he said. “It will just add more burden.”
495 outdoor organizations sign letter to Congress demanding action on firings
A group of 495 outdoor-related organizations have signed a letter being sent to Congress urging an immediate reversal of the federal government's seemingly arbitrary firing of public lands workers. Groups to sign on include conservation organizations, local tourism boards, friends of national parks, tribal organizations, and even outdoor marketing firms, among others. The letter is a reaction to the chaotic firings of park rangers, researchers, and general staff among federally run public lands agencies.
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship.
“When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,” said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, “one: you don’t have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.”
The way L.A. thinks about fires is all wrong, two experts say. They explain how to do better.
Frustrated by the continual ineffectiveness of firefighting efforts over the decades, both advocate for a more sophisticated understanding of fire and the ecosystems that foster urban and wildland blazes. Fire is so often viewed as a crisis and emergency that it is divorced from many factors that contribute to its destructive nature — factors that, if addressed, could mitigate the destruction.
Simple ways to protect OR homes from wildfires
Once a fire starts moving house to house, Ingalsbee acknowledged it is almost impossible to control. He added people living rurally as well as in urban areas need to think about safety because embers from wildfires can travel for miles and ignite homes easily.
"If anything is teaching us a lesson now, in this era of climate change, we're all living in the fire zone," Ingalsbee pointed out.
Rain aids L.A. firefighters, prompts fears of toxic runoff, while Trump plays politics
“Our current dominant model is to invest in reactive wildfire suppression, and the costs are just soaring,” Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told the Guardian.
Climate change is stoking monster blazes that no amount of dollars or human effort can put out, the former wildland firefighter warned.
Rather than reactively laying siege to fire whenever it appears on the land, Angelenos need to “re-engage” with an element that has always been a part of the ecosystem in which they live, Ingalsbee said.
This bill to reduce wildfires might actually make them worse
Some experts told me that the basic logic behind the bill could actually lead to more severe burns. Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, or FUSEE, told me that scaling up logging in the wilderness, where uncontrolled blazes can stomp through small towns on their way to the exurbs, would leave behind the most flammable materials. “Grasses, shrubs, leaves, small trees, old logging slash: These are the things that the timber industry will never ever remove,” he says. “They have no commodity value. When they wanna do logging, they remove the least flammable portion of a tree and dump all the needles and limbs on the ground where it’s basically tinder.” In fact, the best wildfire mitigators are often the trees themselves. Old-growth forests are able to survive and slow the spread of flames—and their numbers are dwindling due to logging.
We Australians have learned from our bushfires. Can Californians?
As Angelenos stand in the ashes of their own fires, the fear, rage and finger-pointing has kicked in. Australians have been there, too. Fire transforms what it touches, not just the air that it poisons and the land it blackens, but also people and institutions. Over time, we’ve learned that comanaging nature and urban sprawl involves trade-offs that are difficult but worth making.
Inclusion of Indigenous voices in revised Northwest Forest Plan focus of symposium
“One of the ways we are going to get through both the climate and the wildfire crisis is by bringing in the values and perspectives of indigenous people,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology. “They survived here, thrived here for millenia.”
Symposium stresses need for Indigenous perspectives in Northwest Forest Plan amendment
One point of emphasis for one of the speakers was how going forward fire management needs to change its year-round approach, especially outside of wildfire season.
"As wildfires come through, then we pick up the broken pieces,” says Ryan Reed, an Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter. “There is a lot of power that needs to be distributed into the proactive aspect. It's wintertime now, where work and strategy-making has to be done now."
‘We surpassed human limits to stop this’: LA megafires show our approach to fire needs to change.
“Our current dominant model is to invest in reactive wildfire suppression, and the costs are just soaring,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (Fusee) and a former wildland firefighter.
“The problem is we surpassed our human limits to prevent or put out all wildfires, particularly during these extreme wind-driven weather events that have a link to climate change.
“We surpassed our human limits to stop this,” he said.
Here’s what we know about L.A. fire department’s DEI efforts, which Republicans have attacked
Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, a public education and advocacy group, said the wildfires are "a clear sign that we have surpassed the human capacity to stop these extreme, urban conflagrations during these extreme conditions."
It’s a "grand delusion" to suggest that "more white, male firefighters, bigger fire engines or bigger air tankers" would have stopped this disaster from unfolding, he said.
Lesbian fire chief blamed for L.A. wildfires by conservatives. Conservatives falsely complain Kristin Crowley prioritized DEI over firefighting, leading to the horrific situation in Los Angeles.
Mike Beasley, the head of the board of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology, told National Public Radio that blaming DEI for the current difficulties extinguishing wildfires has “only slightly more credibility than the Jewish space laser theories.”
He added that right-wingers’ accusations of DEI are nothing more than political pandering to their ideological allies.
OPINION: As fires rage on, political tensions rise
Mike Beasley, who heads the board of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology, told NPR that “No fire agency is going to sacrifice training and fundamental fire control and fundamental operations at the expense of DEI training” and that “there is no number of people that will stop all the fires in the middle of a hot, dry season with the climate charged fuel aridity.”
What is pink fire retardant, being used to curb California wildfires — and what are the environmental concerns?
The use of pink fire retardant is not new in the United States — the product has been around for decades. However, growing research has raised questions about its effectiveness and potential harm to the environment.
What Los Angeles could have done to prepare better for wildfires
Los Angeles County has one of the world's top fire suppression organizations. Most technologically advanced. The firefighting force is highly trained and well paid.
There could have been ten times the number of crews and equipment there and they would not have been able to stop the spread of these fires.
If anything, this is another screaming signal about climate change. When these conditions of prolonged droughts and hurricane force winds and record heat waves are all aligned, it's just not humanly possible to stop the spread or put out these fires.
[Interview with Timothy Ingalsbee at 3:25:00 mark]