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
Scientific American
We are living in the Pyrocene—At our peril
Scientific American

Ancient prophecies of worlds destroyed by fire are becoming realities. How will we respond?

Scientific American
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Forest agencies seek tribal inclusion in policymaking. Indigenous leaders are holding them accountable
Oregon Public Broadcasting

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.

Oregon Public Broadcasting
Santa Fe New Mexican
Now is no time to reduce support for wildland firefighters 
Santa Fe New Mexican

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.

Santa Fe New Mexican
Oregon Public Broadcasting
This is a big year for forests in Oregon. After 30 years, the Northwest Forest Plan is getting amended
Oregon Public Broadcasting

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.

Oregon Public Broadcasting
Inside Climate News
Indictment of US Forest Service ‘burn boss’ in Oregon could chill ‘good fires’ across the country
Inside Climate News

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.

Inside Climate News
KLCC
In Oregon, a youth program prepares vulnerable landowners for wildfires
KLCC

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.

KLCC
Inside Climate News
In Oregon, a New Program Is Training Burn Bosses to Help Put More “Good Fire” on the Ground
Inside Climate News

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.

Inside Climate News
KVOA News 4 (Tucson, AZ)
Lessons learned from the Bighorn Fire
KVOA News 4 (Tucson, AZ)

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.

KVOA News 4 (Tucson, AZ)
Resilience
Our tinderbox world: Wildfires and risk reduction
Resilience

“The following websites and organizations can help you identify and implement a number of concrete actions that could protect your community or your own family and residence from wildfires:…Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (ecological fire management), Indigenous Peoples Burning Network…”

Resilience
Around the O (Eugene, OR)
Fundraiser offers a chance to shoot hoops for a good cause
Around the O (Eugene, OR)

To celebrate Native American Heritage Month and bolster wildfire resiliency efforts, a group of University of Oregon students and alums are working with local Indigenous fire practitioners on a fun-for-all approach to fundraising: basketball.
The group is turning one of its favorite hobbies into social good by organizing Oregon’s first Wildfire Resilience Hoop-A-Thon on Nov. 19. The event takes place at the UO’s McArthur Court with the goal of raising $100,000 for workforce development and wildfire resilience efforts around the state.

“Our generation needs pathways for resilience so we can live with fire on the landscape,” said Kyle Trefny, a wildland firefighter, FireGeneration researcher and economics student at the UO. “We face hotter and drier times ahead, but by preparing proactively we can be ready for both wildfires and the prescribed and cultural burning we need on the land.”

Around the O (Eugene, OR)

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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