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 USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service awarded the money, which will go to the Oregon Agricultural Trust and its partners.
The traditional management practices include setting fire to the landscape in order to rejuvenate certain plants, eradicate pests, and reduce slash and debris, commonly known as “cultural burns.”
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.
Maui firefighters took lunch as Lahaina blaze seemed dead. Then it grew.
Timothy Ingalsbee, a fire ecologist who is executive director of the education and advocacy group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said Maui firefighters appeared to have followed standard operating procedures.
“It’s not unreasonable that they would disengage from that fire that they thought was fully contained and controlled,” he said. “When you’ve got running flames elsewhere on the island and you’ve got a crew that’s been working hard and needs to get a bit of rest before facing more obvious fire risks, it’s understandable.”
Learn to live with wildfire smoke, British Columbians told
British Columbians are going to have to live with the health effects of huge forest fires for decades to come and need to be prepared to protect themselves individually and as communities.
“We are going to have to face this again and again and again,” Health Minister Adrian Dix said.
He said it means training and hiring more nurses and providing greater support to health workers as they work with affected people in communities.
And, he stressed, among those most affected by fires and the resulting evacuation alerts and orders are the elderly living in care homes.
A Northern California tribe works to protect traditions in a warming world
"One of the first things the government outlawed was cultural burning," said the Southern Sierra Miwuk's Lerma.
State officials made this tribal practice of igniting small fires illegal in 1850. The years of fire suppression that followed have made wildfires worse.
"'Smokey the Bear' all over the place," said Fouch-Moore. "And now our forests are overgrown and in bad health. And they're like, 'Oh wait, maybe we should let the Indians do their thing.'"
In recent years, the National Park Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) have started to collaborate with Indigenous communities to return traditional burning to the land.
Fire as medicine: Using fire to manage forests, prevent catastrophic wildfires in the Northwest
Indigenous communities in the region, including Reed’s, hope in turn that the tribal approach of setting beneficial fires will become a major facet of the Northwest Forest Plan’s update – and a way for people to reconnect with the land they inhabit.“We as humans have a responsibility to the landscape,” Reed said. “We’ve had a disconnect with the reciprocal relationship with the landscape and now we’re starting to feel the consequences.”
Preparing homes for wildfires is big business that's only getting started
Some insurance companies give people a break if they invest in home hardening. These are long-recommended techniques: fire-resistant roofs, covered gutters, no plants or mulch within 5 feet of the house, mesh on air vents that can stop embers from flying inside.