The young people reshaping wildfire policy
In 2022, Reed, Trefny and two other students — Bradley Massey, a junior at Alabama A&M University, and Alyssa Worsham, who recently completed her master’s at Western Colorado University — formed the FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen, for short), a group that advocates for centering Indigenous knowledge and bringing more young people into the wildfire space.
Local firefighters tend to flames and mental health
Firefighters are often expected to work through anything without concern for their own well-being, according to wildland firefighter Courtney Kaltenbach, who is employed by a local contractor.
“Firefighting is an extremely patriarchal, masculine field, so it’s dominated by a culture of toxic masculinity, which is ‘don’t show any weakness,’ so already there’s a huge difficulty trying to change the culture around talking about mental health,” Kaltenbach said. “It’s especially difficult I think for people who aren’t men, mental health-wise, to exist in that world.”
Kaltenbach mentioned that in their experience, they have only just begun discussing mental health in their training process, but it is far from adequate.
Debate Over Wildfire Retardants Continues in CA
Some groups are pushing to stop the use of fire retardants dropped at wildfires, saying the impact on nature is worse than the fires they halt.
As California fire season begins, debate over wildfire retardant heats up
When it comes to preventative spraying along roadsides, Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, argued that resources would be better spent hardening homes and communities and conducting controlled burns, which are “more effective and actually less damaging than chemical warfare.”
Ingalsbee has long been critical of how fire authorities use air-dropped retardant in wilderness areas, saying the material is overused and frequently deployed in areas where its effectiveness is limited. The new product, he said, will only help the manufacturer earn even more profits. He calls the use of both materials “a government boondoggle.” “It is true that a lot of ignitions do start along roads, but how many roads do we have?” he said.
Wildfires in the U.S.: Changing Our Response Is the Focus of the FireGeneration Collaborative
Reed is now dedicated to restoring humans’ relationship to fire. He's a graduate student, Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter, and he’s teaming up with other young fire practitioners to change the way the U.S. responds to the wildfire crisis.
FireGeneration wants young people to help shape wildfire policies
The FireGen cohort believes that getting more young and Indigenous people involved in developing wildfire policies can increase support for proactive tactics like prescribed burns. It’s a shift that Tim Ingalsbee, an instructor at the University of Oregon and a former wildland firefighter, said he’s noticed among his students in recent years.
“Young people want to get involved in putting good fire on the ground,” said Ingalsbee. “Thirty years ago, no one asked me that. They all wanted to be firefighters.”
‘Missed opportunity?’ Records detail Forest Service response to Beachie Creek Fire before blowup
The documents and actions illustrate a team trying to put out a fire with no ground crew availability, said Michael Beasley, deputy fire chief of Yosemite National Park from 2001 to 2009 and a retired interagency fire chief.
“They dumped a lot of water on it, they used a lot of resources and spent a lot of money," he said. "That wasn't for show."
Beasley said his only question about tactics was: “I would say in my day we never did water drops without a crew on the ground, because you really need that ground crew to be effective in actually putting out the fire. These days, hotshot crews have more ability to turn down dangerous missions and it has become more common to have aircraft dropping water without ground support.”
Readers respond: Invest in workforce with Oregon Conservation Corps
The Oregon Conservation Corps offers a glimpse of the future community wildfire preparation workforce needed to live with fire on the land but keep it out of our homes. This science-based, socially-progressive program should be expanded, even exported to other western states, and the Legislature would be wise to fully renew its funding as an investment in youth and rural communities.
The Next Fire Generation
Over the past few months, Trefny has collaborated with a diverse group of young, fire-focused leaders to develop, build power around and present a vision to the United States Forest Service (USFS), the Department of Interior (DOI) and other government officials. It’s called the FireGeneration Collaborative, or FireGen for short, and their ask is simple: to provide young people, particularly those from Indigenous and other marginalized communities, with the space to influence wildfire policy-making.
Discussing what makes the use of aerial fire retardant in forest fire management controversial
This features an audio recording of a 15 minute live radio interview featuring FUSEE’s Executive Director on the NPR affiliate, KPCC (Pasadena, CA)
Aerial fire retardant drops are attacked as ineffective and environmentally harmful
“Aerial retardant is effective over a narrow range of conditions, and the windows of opportunity for those conditions are narrowing each year due to climate change,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, which is not involved in the lawsuit.
“The Forest Service feels pressure to do something, as much for public relations as any operational benefit,” he said. “But it’s just a big airshow.”
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.’”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Prescribed burns started a wildfire, but experts say they're a crucial tool
MATTHEW HURTEAU: A lot of the planning tools that fire managers rely upon for planning prescribed burns were built under a climate that no longer exists.
CHANG: Last year, the U.S. government spent a record $4.3 billion on fire suppression - something that has actually worsened wildfire conditions. Meanwhile, from 2009 to 2018, just over $500 million were spent per year on treatments to reduce wildfire fuel like prescribed burns. Experts like fire ecologist Timothy Ingalsbee argue the agency should rethink its priorities.
TIMOTHY INGALSBEE: If we were to shift those resources and that funding into prescribed burning, that would be a big help.
N.M. debacle won’t deter Forest Service prescribed burns
Although the report encourages the use of prescribed fire, one advocate for the practice told E&E News on Friday that he worries the Forest Service may be adding layers of bureaucracy.
“It’s going to require a lot more paperwork,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, in Eugene, Ore.
The report’s emphasis on promoting fire as a tool was comforting, Ingalsbee said. But he added that one related practice that’s increased dramatically — “back fires” lit to influence the behavior of wildfires already in progress — received little attention.
Extinguishing fears
Elemental: Reimagining Our Relationship With Wildfire isn’t supposed to be grim, communicating that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme wildfires and that it’s “game over,” Jennings says. The documentary features incredible shots of Oregon terrain burned in 2020 and explores how people in wildland-urban interface areas can co-exist with wildfires and how communities can withstand the most extreme climate change-caused mega disasters.