Big Iron & Big Profit
As is in vogue today, business experts are allowed to pose as experts in any and all things. I caught this review of the new book, Running Out of Time: Wildfires and Our Imperiled Forests in Wildfire Today.
Jetstream
“While most of the United States is coming out of a wet winter, large fires are ravaging Alberta and British Columbia just north of Montana. Ninety large fires have burned a million acres in 2023, burning 150 times more area than fires in the last five years combined. While May is typical fire season in western Canada, fires are going to new extremes this year, burning
Indigenous Cultural Burning Crew Returns Good Fire to Oregons Willamette Valley
“As a thirty-plus year veteran of wildland firefighting and retired Fire Management Officer for one of California's eighteen National Forests, I have had the privilege of working with many incredible fire crews over the years. But I must say, the crew of young wildland firefighters I had the opportunity to work with this past fall was truly exceptional.
Fire as the Essential Tool: Remembering to Celebrate Success
Looking at the Washburn Fire, there have been dozens of iterations of prescribed burning, thinning, and pile burning around the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and the nearby community of Wawona. In addition, the park has since the 1970’s had a program of allowing some lightning caused fires to burn. Both the human community of homes and infrastructure that comprise Wawona and the natural community of giant sequoias have benefitted from a single program of work – return fire to the extent possible to fire-dependent and fire-adapted landscapes.
FUSEE welcomes new crew members
Thanks to generous donors and the shifting cultural fire attitude around fire, the FUSEE crew is growing! We have recently welcomed more torchbearers for the new fire paradigm - an Administrative Director and two summer interns.
We Owe the Forests Good Fire
People owe the forests and wildlife restoration. We owe the natural world the best of our knowledge to restore the land to a resilient state that will support the maximum populations of diverse plants and animals and give generations of people beautiful places to find solitude, beauty, knowledge, adventure, recreation and spiritual sustenance.
BIGHORN FIRE: A Big Fire Management Success
Managing wildfires with ecological fire use in the age of Covid-19
Safety is more than a 5-minute talk. Keep close contact with your community too.
Despite worsening drought, longer seasons, increasing job vacancies, and increasing fire behavior it always seemed that tragedy could never hit me or anyone close to me. We are too smart. Too tough. We pay attention. We know what we are doing. Well, turns out that there are a lot of things out of our control.
Leadership in Forest Management
Leadership. It's a simple word that can be as complex as an August lightning bust. Its principles are beaten into individuals and organizations, but they're only as useful as the person who cares enough to think about how to apply them.
Forest Wisdom Found At The Golf Course?
It was a little rich having Donald Trump and Mike Pence coming in from New York and Indiana to tell California’s governor and state scientists that they need to “manage forests” to confront unprecedented wildfire. For those of us deeply involved in fire and land management on federal lands in the West, their know-it-all scolding was laughable, condescending, ignorant and mildly insulting.
In Oregon’s 2020 fires, highly managed forests burned the most
This record-breaking fire season has re-ignited discussions about causes of severe fires. One long-standing narrative is that fire suppression has resulted in ‘overgrown’ forests that fuel larger and more intense fires than occur under more intense management (the “fuels narrative”). This narrative, promoted by timber interests and the president, among others, is irrelevant within the context of Oregon's major western Cascades fires.
America’s Black Tuesday
“This could be the greatest loss of life and structures… in state history.”
Watch Out Situation: Disastrous Suppression Spending From Wildfire Disaster Funding
We must stop disastrous suppression overspending that is certainly not preventing wildfire disasters. Strategic investments in fire planning, fuels management, and community preparedness are the way to wisely use limited taxpayer dollars.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength: Orwellian Spin on the Red Salmon Complex Fire
It's a big deal that the USFS is waging their war against wildfire in the Karuk's homeland, and brought their Big Iron war machines into the Trinity Alps Wilderness. In essence, it represents the latest invasion and imposition of white settler-colonialism.
Community Destruction During Extreme Wildfires is a Home Ignition Problem
For the sake of fiscal responsibility, scientific integrity, and effective outcomes, it’s high time we abandon the tired and disingenuous policies of our century-old all-out war on wildfire, and fuel treatments conducted under the guise of protecting communities. Instead, let’s focus on mitigating Wildland/Urban fire risk where ignitions are determined – within the home ignition zone.