FUSEE 2020 Year in Review

Written By FUSEE

2020: An Uphill Battle

A Note from FUSEE Executive Director, Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D.

Tim surveying a burned native forest thriving after a recent fire in the Oregon Cascades.

Tim surveying a burned native forest thriving after a recent fire in the Oregon Cascades.

Climate chaos has sparked a wildfire crisis across the west, and makes clear the need to shift the fire management paradigm.

This year across the west, wildfire ignitions spread at tremendous speeds and grew to enormous sizes that overwhelmed the ability of firefighters to stop them or put them out. The world's largest, most technically-trained and equipped firefighting force with near-limitless funding could not halt the climate-driven wildfires and urban conflagrations that killed dozens of people, destroyed thousands of homes, and incinerated entire neighborhoods. Now, communities and wildland firefighters alike are looking to FUSEE and our allies for a new path forward for living safely and sustainably with the reality of wildfire crises amidst climate chaos. The time is ripe for the paradigm shift we seek that will enable us to live and work with fire instead of forever fighting against fire. This is the way to protect rural communities, restore fire-adapted ecosystems, and preserve fire-dependent species.

Amidst the unique challenges that 2020 brought, FUSEE had numerous successes. We launched a new website, were featured in over 70 news articles on a wide range of fire topics, released five new publications, gave numerous public presentations via live webinars, and have initiated several vital collaborations with grassroots groups across the Pacific Northwest to deal with climate change and wildfire recovery. We’ve also started up the FUSEE Fire Shop featuring unique artwork that is both wearable and displayable, and your purchases help support our work.

As the challenging year of 2020 comes to a close, myself, and all of us at FUSEE would like to wish all of our members and supporters good health, happiness, and resilience as we look forward to the work ahead in 2021. Throughout the global pandemic, social unrest, and an unprecedented climate-driven wildfire season, FUSEE has been working hard to serve our mission to promote safe, ethical Ecological Fire Management. We could not do this work without the generous help of our members and supporters. Thank you!

-Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D.
Executive Director, FUSEE

FUSEE in the News: Winning the Media Battle

The 2020 fire season was unprecedented in anyone’s living memory, but it offered a teachable moment with many lessons to learn, and the newsmedia turned to FUSEE like never before to offer critical analysis and visionary commentary to help learn from this experience. We generated over 70 print and broadcast news stories in local, national, and international newsmedia that spanned a wide range of fire-related topics. Your support enabled us to work with journalists over this long fire season, and we are preparing a number of media outreach projects for another active year ahead.

FUSEE in the News showcases all the articles we were featured in in 2020

FUSEE in the News 2020
Eugene Weekly
Working with fire: Eugene-based organization FUSEE celebrates 20 years of rethinking what we think we know about wildfires
Eugene Weekly

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology is celebrating 20 years of advocating for change in wildfire media coverage and management. For FUSEE members, proactive fire lighting can solve the wildfire crisis. This stance has been historically underrepresented in media and policy because of the conventional narrative that fire suppression and logging will prevent wildfire damage.

“We’re torch bearers for a new paradigm of fire management” says founder and executive director Timothy Ingalsbee, echoing FUSEE’s slogan. Over its 20 years FUSEE has been featured in over 400 news stories and has had a national impact on wildfire policy.

Eugene Weekly
Eugene Weekly
Ten days of action: The Eugene Environmental Film Festival starts Oct. 11 at Art House
Eugene Weekly

“Environmental justice is at the heart of this year’s festival,” says EEFF Director Ana McAbee in a press release. “We believe that films have the power to educate, inspire and mobilize communities.” Each day of the festival is hosted by either filmmakers or by local nonprofits working in collaboration with the festival. Those nonprofits include Mount Pisgah Arboretum, Beyond Toxics, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, the Edelic Center for Ethnobotanical Services, Friends of Family Farmers, BRING Recycling and the Willamette Resources and Educational Network.

Eugene Weekly
Columbia Gorge News
How the Northwest Forest Plan may reshape management of our woods
Columbia Gorge News

“One of the biggest barriers is just risk-averse managers. There’s this double standard,” continued Ingalsbee. “They can light up an entire mountainside in a huge backfire, fighting the fire and celebrated as heroes. But if they try to light a prescribed fire and things go wrong, it could cost their career.”

Columbia Gorge News
The Revelator
Wildfire Data Is Flawed — Here’s How to Fix It.
The Revelator

The U.S. Forest Service includes fire it intentionally sets as part of its acreage count of the nation’s “wildfires.” That presents an inaccurate picture.

The Revelator
Seattle Times
Can Washington hack and burn its way out of a future of megafires?
Seattle Times

By the 1950s, wildfires that used to burn around 30 million acres each year now burned close to 3 million a year, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildfire ecologist and the executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. During these decades, forests across the American West were accumulating a fire deficit. Grasses, shrubs and trees that historically burned away collected and piled up.

Seattle Times
Inside Climate News
In the Park Fire, an Indigenous cultural fire practitioner sees beyond destruction
Inside Climate News

Where others might see only catastrophe, Don Hankins scans fire-singed landscapes for signs of renewal.  

He identifies prohibitions on Indigenous cultural fires as some of the most destructive ecological policies in history for both Native cultures and the lands they traditionally stewarded. “Indigenous communities often recognize colonization as the beginning of the climate crisis,” Hankins wrote. “Spanish, Mexican, and American governments enacted policies enabling private ownership of land and forbidding Indigenous peoples from setting fires—often with extreme penalties (i.e., death).” A complex web of state and federal laws continues to severely limit cultural burning.

Inside Climate News
Washington Post
A megafire overwhelmed even some of the best preparations. What’s next?
Washington Post

But there are already questions about whether it was enough. Zeke Lunder, a Chico resident and wildfire and fuels management expert, quickly pointed to an overgrowth of invasive thistle near the Park Fire ignition site that Chico could have reduced with a prescribed burn, as it recently had in other parts of Upper Bidwell Park.

Washington Post
Counterpunch
The enormous flaw in wildfire data
Counterpunch

The first publicized example of such wildfire expansion was the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Timothy Ingalsbee, PhD of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology estimated that a large proportion of the Biscuit Fire was ignited by Forest Service firing operations. Inglasbee stated in a 2006 report largely focused on the Biscuit Fire: “…burnout operations can sometimes take place several miles away from the edge of a wildfire, or alternately, miles away from the fire containment line.” Wildfire expansions have increased since 2002, and wildfire starts, such as lightning strike ignitions, are often simply the “match that lit the fire” leading to numerous firing operation ignitions to implement intentional burns that they call wildfires.

Counterpunch
Washington Post
Why the Park Fire exploded so quickly
Washington Post

“What climate change is doing is just adding more energy into the system and amping up what’s there,” said Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor and fire historian at Arizona State University.

Washington Post
Will the Northwest Forest Plan finally respect tribal rights?
High Country News
Will the Northwest Forest Plan finally respect tribal rights?
High Country News

Ryan Reed (Karuk, Hupa, Yurok), an Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter and the youngest advisory committee member, said he pushed the committee to start to address the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, citing the impacts of the agency’s long suppression of cultural fire:

“If we’re able to empower Indigenous people, we’re also going to empower the various communities that are directly impacted by fire and have limited access to traditional foods or cultural practices.”

“We’re all feeling the negative impacts of fire suppression,” said committee member Ryan Reed.

High Country News

The Time for Ecological Fire Management is Now

FUSEE 2020 Publications
The Science Basis for Ecological Fire Management
The Science Basis for Ecological Fire Management

An introductory guide to the literature of Ecological Fire Management. This database provides an introduction to the fire science literature that gives evidence of a paradigm shift and validates the need for EFM. The database is organized by key topics in fire science and management that are also often the subject of public and policy debates over forest management.

Short synopses of each topic synthesizes some of the main papers, and each section will include bibliographic references and excerpts from of key publications. The papers cited all contribute to a growing literature that may be the science basis for developing policies, programs, and projects that implement EFM.

The Literature of Ecological Fire Management
The Literature of Ecological Fire Management

An Unfolding Bibliography for an Emerging New Paradigm. This is a list of the best peer-reviewed publications for providing the scientific foundation for Ecological Fire Management.

Covid-19 Wildland Firefighter Policy Synthesis
Covid-19 Wildland Firefighter Policy Synthesis

Synthesis of policy proposals gathered from a number of agency documents from spring 2020.

Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change, Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management
Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change, Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management

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.

On the Horizon: Looking Forward to 2021

FUSEE is excited to share new

FUSEE
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