As wildfires rage in Oregon, tree-sitters continue protests to protect old growth trees
Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said sensational media coverage of wildfires creates and instills fears of a natural process. Activists said the timber industry and politicians bank on these worries.
“Scientists call it a natural disturbance but I prefer to call it an ecological stimulus,” Ingalsbee said. “Fire is nature’s recycler. It helps create a diversity of habitats.”
Ingalsbee said fires burn down small trees while larger and older ones are able to resist the same type of damage. Timber companies, on the other hand, cut down the larger trees to maximize profits, leaving behind younger and highly flammable forest.
Fueled by climate change, extreme wildfires have doubled in 20 years
“We’ve had this paradox where the amount of burning on Earth is declining … and yet we are having fires that are more extreme, more damaging,” said Stephen Pyne, fire historian and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. “How do we reconcile these two?”
Forest Service, Native American Tribes partner to promote forest resilience
Ryan Reed, a member of the Hoopa Tribe in Northern California, is also member of a 21-person federal advisory committee for the Northwest Forest Plan. (And at 23, he’s the youngest.) He said true co-stewardship with tribes starts with early engagement in the planning process. Too often, he said, tribes are notified toward the end and then under pressure to find the people and resources to respond.
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Reed added that not everyone embraces tribes sharing in policy decisions. But he’s seen Forest Service leaders working “to make some serious change” in tribal consultation practices. “Climate change has been an unfortunate vehicle for tribal leadership and knowledge to be reintroduced,” he said. “The colonial mismanagement ... in our forests since contact has really caught up with the rest of society. We have large catastrophic wildfires and fuel loading in our forests. And so now the agencies are in a pinch.”
Scientists seek ways to protect PNW rainforests from wildfires
For instance, in a drier forest, the intensity of a fire is constrained mainly by how much burnable material sits on the ground. Counterintuitively, aggressively fighting too many fires in such an ecosystem can make future wildfires worse, because frequent, moderate fires clear away some of the smaller trees and undergrowth that could power an even larger, more severe fire. That’s why prescribed fire — the strategy of deliberately setting a moderate fire — works so well in many forests. It’s also why many ecologists argue that some wildfires should be allowed to burn, and that overzealous firefighting can worsen the risk of an uncontrollable megafire. In a dry forest, a smaller good fire makes an extreme bad fire less likely.
In controversial push to thin forests to prevent wildfire, concerns grow over loss of old growth
Conservationists say timber companies, brought in to assist with forest thinning for wildfire, are also taking old growth trees most resilient to fire
Criminal charge dismissed against federal burn manager in rural Oregon
A criminal case was dismissed Wednesday against a U.S. Forest Service employee arrested in 2022 by a rural Oregon sheriff after a prescribed burn on federal land unexpectedly spread to private property and burned roughly 20 acres.
Umatilla tribal leader passes the drip torch to future generations learning about prescribed fire
When it comes to fire, Huesties plays two roles: firefighter and fire starter. He fights fires that overtake buildings in town, then he sets fires to wild areas as a way to tamp down overgrowth.
He said the tribe continues to struggle to recruit young tribal members into firefighting, but maybe they would be interested if they got a taste of the excitement. He himself learned to love the adrenaline from the job.
Can satellites combat wildfires? Inside the booming ‘space race’ to fight the flames
New satellite missions backed by NASA, Google, SpaceX, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and other groups were announced this week and promise to advance early wildfire detection and help reduce fire damage by monitoring Earth from above.
Bend is a national test site to expand prescribed fires close to communities
"There is a balance to be struck," Larkin said. "We know that every time we do a burn in this area we know we are going to introduce smoke into the community. With prescribed fire, we know when that smoke is going to come in and we have the opportunity to limit how much smoke comes into the community. The idea is by doing this work, we prevent future times when we have wildfire smoke coming in for extended periods of time in amounts that make life really unhealthy for the town."
I was a wildfire fighter for six years. The reason they’re quitting is simple.
The U.S. Forest Service is losing experience. Federal firefighters are quitting. Leadership is leaving. Recruitment is abysmal. The reason is simple: The government hasn’t significantly raised pay in decades.
We are living in the Pyrocene—At our peril
Ancient prophecies of worlds destroyed by fire are becoming realities. How will we respond?
Forest agencies seek tribal inclusion in policymaking. Indigenous leaders are holding them accountable
Indigenous leaders working on the Northwest Forest Plan amendment are trying to hold the U.S. Forest Service to account — and Reed is part of the latest generation engaged in that effort.
A conservative Oregon county attempts criminal prosecution of a federal employee
Attorneys for a federal wildland firefighter whose controversial arrest in eastern Oregon by a rural sheriff drew national headlines have successfully delayed his trial while they try to move the case to federal court.
Now is no time to reduce support for wildland firefighters
Now is not the time to shrink our firefighting workforce. Not only does the profession offer professional jobs in rural areas, but it is also essential for protecting communities and wildlife habitats. The public needs to know we cannot take firefighters for granted, especially when fires are increasingly big and challenging and threaten millions of homes throughout the West.
Fire suppression is exacerbating wildfire severity in the US West: Study
“Part of addressing our nation’s fire crisis is learning how to accept more fires burning when safely possible,” co-author Philip Higuera, a University of Montana professor of fire ecology, said in a statement. “That’s as important as fuels reduction and addressing global warming.”
Fighting every wildfire ensures the big fires are more extreme, and may harm forests’ ability to adapt to climate change
To address the wildfire crisis, fire managers can be less aggressive in suppressing low- and moderate-intensity fires when it is safe to do so. They can also increase the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to clear away brush and other fuel for fires.
“It feels impossible to stay”: The U.S. needs wildland firefighters more than ever, but the federal government is losing them
For communities throughout the American West, wildland firefighters represent the last line of defense, but that line is fraying because the government decided long ago that they’re not worth very much. The highly trained men and women protecting communities from immolation earn the same base pay as a fast-food server while taking severe risks with their physical and mental health. Despite the mounting public concern over the increasing severity of wildfires, the federal government has not seen fit to meaningfully address these issues. The effects of this chronic neglect have now become strikingly clear as the fire service is finding it difficult to fill its ranks, prefiguring what advocates are calling a national security crisis.
“It feels impossible to stay”: The U.S. needs wildland firefighters more than ever, but the federal government is losing them
For communities throughout the American West, wildland firefighters represent the last line of defense, but that line is fraying because the government decided long ago that they’re not worth very much. The highly trained men and women protecting communities from immolation earn the same base pay as a fast-food server while taking severe risks with their physical and mental health. Despite the mounting public concern over the increasing severity of wildfires, the federal government has not seen fit to meaningfully address these issues. The effects of this chronic neglect have now become strikingly clear as the fire service is finding it difficult to fill its ranks, prefiguring what advocates are calling a national security crisis.
This is a big year for forests in Oregon. After 30 years, the Northwest Forest Plan is getting amended
The Forest Service will have the final say in what’s ultimately included in the amendment, and there’s no requirement that it include any of the committee’s recommendations. At a late January meeting in Eugene, Forest Service staff slashed entire sections of the draft the advisory committee had spent months to develop, saying they weren’t relevant to an amendment.
Several committee members say the agency should have provided more guidance on what it was expecting earlier on.
“It’s difficult for us to be banging our head against the wall when there hasn’t been a lot of transparency from higher U.S. Forest Service leadership,” said committee member Ryan Reed during its January meeting in Eugene.