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.
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.
New western training center seeks to grow prescribed fire capacity
Classrooms for training will be set up near prescribed fires in existing offices, or other locations, according to the strategy. Federal officials hope the effort will “increase the pace of prescribed fire training-to-qualification in the Western United States, provide trainees real-time experience in different fuel types and terrain, and ultimately increase national prescribed fire resource capacity.”
Forest Service rekindles burn practices with local tribes
In the early morning on Dec. 19, 2023, in the Long Meadow section of Sequoia National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service joined with members of the Tule River Tribe (Tule) and members from other local tribes to take part in a Tachi Yokuts Tribe (Yokuts) cultural tradition that had not been performed on Forest Service land for over 100 years.
Forest Service warns of budget cuts ahead of a risky wildfire season – what that means for safety
These are some of the reasons why an announcement from U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore on Feb. 8, 2024, is raising concerns. Moore told agency employees to expect budget cuts from Congress in 2024. His letter was thin on details. However, taken at face value, budget cuts could be interpreted as a reduction in the firefighting workforce, compounding recruitment and retention challenges that the Forest Service is already facing.
Indictment of US Forest Service ‘burn boss’ in Oregon could chill ‘good fires’ across the country
A “burn boss” with the U.S. Forest Service is facing unprecedented criminal charges for an escaped prescribed burn in rural Oregon, which may complicate nationwide goals to set low-intensity fires that can thin out excess vegetation and dead wood in overgrown forests to improve forest health and lower the risk of uncontrollable wildfires igniting.
In Oregon, a youth program prepares vulnerable landowners for wildfires
This is the Community Wildfire Protection Corps, a three-month paid program for young adults ages 19 to 26. It’s backed by state wildfire funding, and run by the Northwest Youth Corps.
The goal is to build fire-safe buffers around homes and infrastructure, with a focus on landowners who are older, disabled or without financial means. In the process, organizers also hope to train some of the next generation of wildland firefighters.
Many California native plants adapt to fire. Some are threatened by it.
For the native flora here in California, fire is an essential part of their life cycle.
Every year the rainy season brings growth, and plants bloom and set seed, before the dry season brings decay. Fire is like a reset to the whole system, Evan Meyer, the director of the Theodore Payne Foundation, said. “Fire is … as much of the landscape as rain,” Meyer added, “the plants are adapted to it and they expect it.”
The perverse policies that fuel wildfires
Gradually, it became clear that fire suppression was wrecking many of the forests it was intended to save. (Among the trees whose seeds require fire to germinate are giant sequoias.) These days, O’Connor writes, the Forest Service likes to boast that it oversees the country’s biggest prescribed-fire program, which burns almost 1.5 million acres a year. But this isn’t nearly enough to make up for what’s become known as the “fire deficit.”
In Oregon, a New Program Is Training Burn Bosses to Help Put More “Good Fire” on the Ground
More states and private landowners recognize the importance of prescribed burns to improve forest health and reduce the severity of wildfires, but the lack of firefighters trained to ignite and manage the blazes has slowed progress.
Timber company sues Forest Service for not putting out 2020 Beachie Fire before blowup
An Oregon timber company has sued the U.S. Forest Service for $33 million for not putting out the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire before it turned into a raging inferno.
Lessons learned from the Bighorn Fire
Even though the fire burned more than 120,000 acres, people's properties were kept safe and as a whole, the fire was deemed a success in that regard.
Tim Ingalsbee with the Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said, "What they knew from the get-go is that there would be some benefit to fire, and so we are still trying to contain that fire and keep it away from communities." That is exactly what happened.