FUSEE Publications

Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change,Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management is a guide intended to help forest and climate activists talk to broad audiences about wildfire in the era of climate change, in ways that are grounded in the best available fire and climate science and progressive fire management policy.

Agencies, organizations, and institutions in the wildland fire community will have to engage in an explicit pro-fire “pyroganda” campaign to help counter its historic anti-fire propaganda and inspire necessary changes in consciousness and behavior in the public and fire management workforce. As part and parcel of this effort, FUSEE proposes renaming wildland firefighters as fire rangers.

This analysis concentrates on the work of the Fire Suppression Committee of the Governor's Wildfire Response Council (WRC), relying on draft policy recommendations issued on September 16, 2019.

Fire managers felt pressure to “do something” to stop the spread of the Ranch Fire, attempting a hastily planned burnout along a bulldozer fireline. But this action contradicted the advice from Forest Service risk management experts who warned that aggressive firefighting tactics had low probabilities of success given record-level fuel dryness at the time.

Wildre has been an integral part of western forests for thousands of years, but in recent decades conicts between people and re have increased dramatically. Climate change is bringing hotter, drier conditions to western forests, which is increasing re activity, and scientists predict that this trend will continue as the planet heats up. This guide is intended to help climate and forest activists understand the unique dynamics between forests, wildre, and climate so we can collectively chart a new path towards community resilience to the impacts of climate change. By modernizing our wildre policies, we can protect homes and communities while restoring the important role that re plays in the forest ecosystems of the American West.

Learn how to acquire and analyze suppression operations documents and data. Titles of specific items in the “docs box” are presented along with tips on navigating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process.

Learn tips for sharing your research findings with fellow community members, and how to communicate your concerns with agency officials during, after, and especially before a fire

Compiled by Douglas Bevington, Forest Director, Environment Now California Program

California’s state policies on wildfire need to change direction. The current policies are failing. They have not effectively protected homes, while they place dramatically increasing pressures on state and local budgets. Moreover, these policies are often based on notions about the role of fire in California’s ecosystems that are not supported by sound science and do not reflect the changing climate. These policies try to alter vast areas of forest in problematic ways through logging, when instead they should be focusing on helping communities safely co-exist with California’s naturally fire-dependent ecosystems by prioritizing effective fire-safety actions for homes and the zone right around them. This new direction—working from the home outward—can save lives and homes, save money, and produce jobs in a strategy that is better for natural ecosystems and the climate.

The Soberanes Fire Suppression Siege offers an extreme example of excessive, unaccountable, budget-busting suppression spending that is causing a fiscal crisis in the U.S. Forest Service. It demonstrates the absolute necessity for Congress to perform critical oversight of wildfire suppression spending by federal agencies.

This Reporter’s Guide to Wildland Fire is intended to help journalists improve the accuracy, quality and value of their stories on wildfire events and fire management. Using tips and tools in this Reporter’s Guide will help journalists produce more powerful, informative and even inspiring news stories that reflect the best ideals of journalism. It is also hoped that this Guide will inspire more alternative and investigative reporting on wildfire events including a broader array of fire management issues beyond the stereotypical focus on emergency firefighting only

Defending homes from fast-spreading high-intensity wildfires is one of the most difficult and dangerous duties for wildland firefighters. FUSEE feels strongly that informing homeowners about fire-resistant construction materials will help wildland firefighters better protect communities, and reduce some of the risks to firefighter safety. Moreover, when rural homes and communities are better prepared for wildland fire, then more options and opportunities open up to properly manage fires to restore forests and grasslands degraded from past fire exclusion.

The 500,000 acre Biscuit Fire was the Nation’s largest wildfire in 2002, and was the world’s most expensive wildfire suppression incident in history at that time. Although the wild area was over 85% wilderness and roadless area with tens of thousands of acres of climax old-growth forest, aggressive firefighting actions severely damaged the landscape, and the Biscuit Fire area became the largest USFS timber sale proposal in modern history when the agency planned to “salvage” log trees in areas severely burned by high-intensity backburning.