Ancient sequoias safe for now as crews continue battling 3,500-acre Washburn fire in Yosemite
But sequoias have also evolved with wildfire and in fact rely on extreme heat to help release their seeds. Crystal Kolden, a fire scientist at UC Merced who has been tracking the blaze, said she was “not worried” about the trees in Mariposa Grove. “They’ve been doing prescribed burns in that grove for over 50 years, and it’s early in the season yet,” Kolden said via email. “This fire should actually be pretty beneficial for them, and it is much better for them to burn in July — which is normally when most of the lightning ignitions are in Yosemite, so it’s the natural fire timing — rather than in September.”
Karuk leader Bill Tripp appointed to new federal wildfire commission
A Karuk leader who has been among those leading the charge to bring managed fires back to the landscape has been appointed to a new federal wildfire commission.
On Thursday, the Biden-Harris administration announced that Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, was one of 18 experts appointed to the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The commission is expected to provide recommendations to the federal government on how to address catastrophic wildfires.
Tripp said it was “quite the honor to be selected.”
“I think that we are in a new time where people are ready to listen to the perspectives that come from Indigenous communities on this subject matter,” Tripp said.
All that’s needed is a spark’: why the US may be headed for a summer of mega-fire
Fire activity is expected to increase in several US states over the coming months, according to a newly released outlook from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), with parts of the Pacific north-west, northern California, Texas, Hawaii and Alaska forecast to be among those hardest hit by fire conditions in the months ahead.
The severity of the emergency will depend on four key factors: drought, dried fuels, windy or warm weather, and of course, ignitions. But the climate crisis and human-caused warming has turned up the dial on risk-factors with more intense conditions and a greater frequency with which these conditions align.
More wilderness, more … wildfire?
As the West reckons with decades of suppression and mismanagement, some politicians are exploiting the politics of wildfire in peculiar ways.
Wildland fire agencies work to create 'better work-life balance' as fire seasons grow longer
Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in late 2021, which funds $8.25 billion for wildland fire management around the country. A considerable amount of that money is designated for federal wildland firefighter pay increases and will turn many seasonal jobs into full-time positions for the longer fire seasons.
NIFC spokesperson Jessica Gardetto said the goal is to help improve their way of life, while also recruiting and retaining more wildland firefighters.
Gardetto said federal agencies will not begin to see the staffing effects of law until next fire season because they do most of their hiring in the fall which was around the same time Congress passed the law. She said leadership does believe the law will certainly entice new and former wildland firefighters to join crews in 2023.
Oregon faces firefighter shortage as it looks toward wildfire season
This year's fire season could be a challenging one for crews in Oregon. They're dealing with a firefighter shortage and a delayed pay raise. Sen. Ron Wyden visited Southern Oregon Tuesday to get an update on this year's fire season from state fire officials. Wyden has been pressuring the Biden administration to speed up a promised pay increase for wildland firefighters. Congress approved $600 million last year to raise firefighter pay, but that’s been delayed by over a month.
Oregon wildfires offer new clues on forest management
In the Pacific Northwest, land managers should focus on fire-resistant construction and fire suppression, not big forest management projects, a research paper on the Labor Day 2020 fires said.
Even the ‘Good Fires’ Can Now Turn Disastrous
But Pyne is most focused on what he calls “working with wildfires”: a more open and fluid approach that treats those that begin with an accidental or natural ignition almost like prescribed burns by guiding them toward useful spread. “I wish the agencies were a little more forthright about this” — that some remote fires can just be left to burn, he said. “It’s legal, it’s legitimate. But it can also seem evasive, a little sub rosa,” especially against a backdrop of growing fire anxiety across the West, driven not just by the fires themselves but the smoke they produce. “People get hay fever in the spring,” Pyne said. “Well, you may be dealing with smoke fever in the fall.”
Cal Fire fumbles key responsibilities to prevent catastrophic wildfires despite historic budget
Cal Fire has publicly signaled a commitment to rebalancing its priorities. But a monthslong investigation by The California Newsroom, a public media collaboration, found that the department continues to fumble key responsibilities related to forest management and wildfire mitigation.
Trial by fire: The trauma of fighting California’s wildfires
As California’s wildfires intensify and burn year-round, its firefighters suffer from the increasing strain of post-traumatic stress. Decisions made while struggling with lack of sleep, long hours and stress could endanger not just the crews, but the public, too. What is the state doing to respond? Overwhelmingly, California’s firefighters and mental-health experts say, “Not nearly enough.” Cal Fire has been slow to address PTSD and suicides among its ranks, and firefighters routinely encounter problems getting workers’ comp insurance to cover their care.
Crowning fury: Anger toward the Forest Service has been smoldering for a century. Raging wildfires brought it roaring to life.
Like so many in the devastation zone, she squarely places the blame on the USFS, not only for starting a prescribed burn in the windy month of April — when gusts reached 70 miles per hour — but for a century of conflict with rural communities. Known locally as La Floresta, the USFS is often seen as a feudal lord, a faraway government entity that has accumulated vast holdings with little idea of how to properly steward them or enough funds to do the job.
Indigenous knowledge reveals history of fire-prone California forest
Combining multiple lines of evidence, Knight and her team show that the tree density in this region of Klamath Mountains started to increase as the area was colonized, partly because the European settlers prevented Indigenous peoples from practising cultural burning. In the twentieth century, total fire suppression became a standard management practice, and fires of any kind were extinguished or prevented — although controlled burns are currently used in forest management. The team reports that in some areas, the tree density is higher than it has been for thousands of years, owing in part to fire suppression.
Human-triggered California wildfires more severe than natural blazes
Human-caused wildfires in California are more ferocious than blazes sparked by lightning, a team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine reported recently in the journal Nature Communications. The research could help scientists better understand fire severity and how likely a blaze is to kill trees and inflict long-term damage on an ecosystem in its path.
Can we replace fire with mechanical thinning in Southwest Colorado?
The spate of burn-induced wildfires led Forest Service Chief Randy Moore to suspend the agency’s prescribed fire operations to conduct a 90-day review of its protocols and practices.
Yet, amid renewed awareness of the risks of prescribed fire, forest ecologists and biologists say fire serves an irreplaceable role in Southwest Colorado’s mixed conifer and ponderosa pine forests, and that limiting the use of fire would do more harm than good.
Fires spread as firefighters plead for pay raise promised last year
Federal firefighters still haven’t received a pay boost approved last year. It’s not known which employees will get the money once it is implemented. In some high-risk areas, the U.S. Forest Service has only half the staff it needs.
Meanwhile, the number of acres burned as of Wednesday was 112 percent higher than the 10-year average, according to the government’s wild land fire outlook. Drought, heat and wind are creating additional fire hazards.
Forest Service finds its planned burns sparked N.M.’s largest wildfire
After decades of embracing a policy of putting out fires as quickly as possible, federal and some state officials have come around to the idea of prescribed burns in recent years. The basic concept, backed by science and Indigenous groups’ long history of using intentional fire, is that modest controlled burns can clear flammable vegetation and preempt the kind of destructive megafires that have devastated the West. Experts have called for more fire on the land, and the Biden administration has announced plans to use intentional burns and brush thinning to reduce fire risk on 50 million acres that border vulnerable communities.
But extreme drought and record heat, worsened by climate change, have made it more difficult to use intentional fire as a preventive measure. Longer wildfire seasons have narrowed the window of time when firefighters can set controlled burns safely. Bureaucratic obstacles, combined with public fear that an intentionally set fire could escape, have also prevented some forest managers from using prescribed fires.
COIC, Heart of Oregon Corps receive nearly $1 million to launch C. Oregon Wildfire Workforce Partnership
(The) Central Oregon Wildfire Workforce Partnership…will train and employ over 140 local youth and young adults in wildfire reduction and related skills. In addition to gaining on-the-job training, certifications, and knowledge in fire fuel reduction practices, youth in the program will receive wages, scholarships, additional workforce training in both soft and hard skills to prepare them to enter the professional workforce.
Why climate change makes it harder to fight fire with fire
Last summer, the Forest Service’s chief, Randy Moore, restricted the use of prescribed fire on agency lands to make sure resources were available to fight wildfires. He also ordered a pause on allowing backcountry fires to burn if they provided ecological benefits and didn’t threaten homes or infrastructure.
The halt was temporary, but it was enough to make some ecologists fear that officials’ recent championing of fire could still go into reverse. If the goal is to return the land to an older ecological state, one in which frequent natural fires kept forests vibrant and resilient, then the scale of the task is staggering.
Many factors influenced the severity of burns from Oregon's devastating 2020 megafires
"90% of the burning occurred during high winds," said Dr. Cody Every, a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Science and Management at Portland State and the study's lead author. "But we also found that vegetation structure and canopy height were significant in determining where the fire burned more severely."
The research team found that areas with younger trees and low canopy height and cover were particularly susceptible to high mortality rates. As Holz pointed out, this finding is of particular consequence to lumber production in the state, where trees grown on plantations are typically younger, uniformly spaced and located near communities and critical infrastructure.
How the Indigenous practice of ‘good fire’ can help our forests survive
“There is so much to learn from cultural practitioners — not just about traditions and techniques, but also about stewardship and connectedness,” she says. “Fire is a reflection of culture, and the kinds of fires we’ve been experiencing in California are a projection of our own disconnection and imbalance. It’s time to reclaim the balance, rebuild the relationship. Cultural practitioners can help show us how.”