I fear this does more harm than good. We know a full suppression model for fire doesn’t work and leads to more ecological harm and more high severity fire. No one is arguing for managed natural ignitions for resource benefit during PL5, but there is no way we can treat every acre to safely get Rx fire on the ground or reintroduce natural fire. We need to get fire on the landscape sooner than later.
Hi Kathleen: I'm not sure what "ecological harm" results from fire suppression, but I do know that the vast damage done to western USFS lands during the past 30 years -- and particularly the last 10 -- is among the very worst in our history. 2020, for example, was likely among the worst three "fire years" in US history, including 1871 and 1910. The problem is massive fuel build-ups through passive forest management policies since 1990 -- certainly not "climate change" and only somewhat related to pre-1990 fire suppression, if at all. We need to get the fuels under control and THEN reintroduce fire to the land, as my crews did in the 1980s. No problems, fine results. Here is an example of how Indians burned the pine forests south of Crater Lake in the late 1800s, by John Leiberg in 1899:
(p. 248) But the open character of the yellow-pine type of forest anywhere in the region examined is due to frequently repeated forest fires more than to any other cause.
(p. 249) The forest floor in the type is covered with a thin layer of humus consisting entirely of decaying pine needles, or it is entirely bare. The latter condition is very prevalent east of the Cascades, where large areas are annually overrun by fire. But even on the western side of the range, where the humus covering is most conspicuous, it is never more than a fraction of an inch in thickness, just enough to supply the requisite material for the spread of forest fires.
(p. 268) In other places fires have destroyed a certain percentage of the forest. The damage may vary from 10 to 60 per cent or higher. The destruction has not been all in one place or body. The fire has run through the forest for miles, burning a tree or group of trees here and there.
Kathleen, relist to the podcast. Did you hear the part where over 60% of the Dixie fire and the North complex fires were fire put on the ground by the forest service? It is hard to say how much of the 2024 Park fire was put on the ground by the forest service. I personally know what is like to be wiped out by the campfire. Nobody could’ve stopped that freight train anyway but just saying. There’s my street credentials. Did you know that there’s only a tiny strip of Butte County California that has not caught fire in the wild urban interface within the last seven years? There is too much fuel out there and the forest service hasn’t allowed anybody to go in and clean it up in decades. Go walk in the woods and you’ll see it for yourself, you can barely walk in the woods. The people who live in WUI areas deserve better than that from the USFS. All over the American west they need to adopt a CalFire style urgency to getting a fire out particularly when it’s near populated areas. They need to prosecute fire in that area at high speed. Not put more fire on the ground during red flag conditions. That’s doing it wrong and a recipe for disaster. If you want to have a fire out in the deep forest for the good of the forest, that’s fine when you do it the right way and during the right season, but when you run everybody out of California because they can’t afford to insure their properties because of Wildfire, you’re doing it wrong. Please do more research and rethink your theory. Maybe go live in the WUI and then worry about your home. It will change your thinking for sure. Particularly after you get a load of some of the costs of homeowners insurance these days. It’s a thing. Idealism is not a greater good than people, their lives and property. Not everybody’s going to be safe 100% of the time, but wiping out entire towns? We can and should do better than this. I agree with many of the points made during this interview.
Hey Tac, I live in the Caldor Fire burn scar. I have a PhD in forest policy and work every day in forest management. So when you say I need to do more research, I’ve quite literally spent my career doing research on these topics and live it daily.
Were you aware of the extent of intentional wildfire use in high fire season and red flag conditions? I’m curious because most academics have no idea of the extent of #holdthelineandburnitall firing operations across the West. Not blaming academics or politicians or even many firefighters. As Governors Gianforte and Little pointed out in October, the Forest Service has systematically and purposefully misled all of us about wildfire use. I only became aware of it because of my investigations in support of FTCA and Tucker Act claims. The significance of this lack of candor is virtually every study seeking independent factors for the scope, scale, and exploding costs of wildfires is erroneous on publication. How are we to understand the current fire environment if we don’t know the single most important independent factor in the Bush, Telegraph, Black, Dixie, North, August, Tamarack, Alice Creek, Beachie Creek, and so many more was intentional firing operations on an unprecedented scale? I’d be interested in your thoughts about the issue. Escalating firing operations are resulting in inverse condemnation of private property and a completely unacceptable loss of living forest ecosystems. Brush fields are fast becoming the tallest trees in the forest.
Thanks Kathleen, for your work on this, but why hasn’t USFS attacked wildfire with the same alacrity that Cal Fire has when wildfire threatens people and property in the WUI? Constitutionally this is job one of Government, yet this podcast was informative regarding USFS priorities regarding wildfires over that of the people who reside in the WUI, and burning more than necessary. It does beg the question why there isn’t more logging. If you have done the research, why aren’t forest management practices and efforts being taken to a improved level? Why isn’t the USFS going as hard on wildfires when life and property are threatened than CalFire? I have heard some say we have all the air resources we need. I see the same resources stretched. In the grand scheme of, the public benefit is questionable regarding how things are currently run. When will we start to improve? I apologize, but my tax dollars have paid for your research, but what have you improved for we the public? 🤷🏻♂️ Remember, how it is as a public servant … can you give us a fair answer for what we funded you? Did we get what we paid for??
Also, regarding the interview, I don’t think he was asking for full containment. I think he differentiated that full containment nice to have when you’re near people in property, and maybe when you’re not it’s OK to let things burn. But he noted as well as many others such as a couple of governors of states and it’s not lost on a lot of us who have been hammered by Wildfire in the wild urban interface, that The forest service is better at kicking the can and they are putting in the fire out. It was awfully interesting to hear how they’re actually back burning even more than is necessary. Would you refute that 60% of the Dixie fire was unnecessary because of back burns? Would you say the same was true of the North complex fire? is it your opinion that 400 Seguro was a worthwhile forfeit so that the forest service could back off 25 miles away from a fire and start back burn? Why would anybody lie about these figures? You would think a guy who spend his entire life fighting fire and working for the forest service would want to see it at its best, and he’s not the only person who corroborates his observations.🤷🏻♂️ I think he’s asking for a more major approach. I agree with the fact that the Forest Service needs to aggressively stop fire when it’s in the path of civilians and property. They need to go hard. And it doesn’t always look like they do. Maybe the forest needs to burn, but it doesn’t need to burn near people. I can’t speak for everybody but I am quite sure that those people out there who have lost everything they ever had to Wildfire would rather still have it then having to rebuild. It would be ashamed to tell them that the real reason why they lost everything was because of a lackadaisical attitude on the part of the forest service. prioritizing forest silver people particularly in the wild urban interface is a wrongheaded thinking. I’m sure that the private companies that own massive amounts of timber would much rather have the timber to sell then have it all burned up due to a policy decision. This is really looking a lot more like a case that the government doesn’t have the people who pay its bills best interest in mind. That’s also very wrongheaded thinking. If I have said anything that you don’t feel like can back up, I hope you can prove me wrong. I’d love to know I was wrong, I’d love to know thatpeople in your job description are working your butts off to make my life better. That’s what governments for. That is why we allow ourselves to be governed, but governed is not the same thing as subjugated.
I agree with many of the things that Frank said. I'm concerned about his use of terminology though, which confuses the issues. Sounds like his main concern is around the use of fire as a suppression tactic, which I'm certainly sympathetic to as having been an Agency Administrator in the Forest Service for 20 years. I am concerned about disparaging the use of fire (lightning ignitions) in our large wilderness areas, which has been a very successful experiment for over 40 years. We are just starting to realize that investment in returning fire to these fire-dependent landscapes in the Bob Marshall, Selway-Bitterroot, and Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness areas. I'm also concerned about a broken suppression model that continues to emphasize the suppression of all fires, when you cannot keep fire out of the system, which has overwhelmed the system over the last 25-30 years. We need to step up the application of prescribed fire knowing that we do not have enough resources yet to accelerate such a change in fire management. We're certainly not going to "log" our way out of this wicked fire/fuels problem that we have created. Targeted silviculture/timber harvest in and around identified values at risk can certainly make a difference, and we are going to have to learn to live with wildland fire, if we're ever going to change the paradigm. I have in the past and do question the suppression tactics we implement on large, complex fires, but many Agency Administrators do not have the knowledge and exposure in fire management to have such a discussion with many of our CIMTs (Complex Incident Management Teams). The communications issues we have with our local partners, especially the states, need to be addressed by the agency. We are our own worst enemies when trying to explain what we're doing on a fire and why. I welcome the continuing discussion around fire suppression and management and hope to support the changes that are needed if we're ever going to meet the intent of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy.
Thanks for your comments. Please don’t imagine I’m opposed to using lightning fires in wilderness. I began my career at Saguaro National Monument in 1972 in the second year of our natural fire program (let-burn). I have a strong testimony about fire as a positive and inevitable force for good. I support firing ops as an acceptable tactic to tie in direct line. I support falling back to the next best ridge in indirect attack. I’m talking about something far outside normative fire fighting strategies. Lighting 300,000 acres of the Gila/Aldo Leopold on purpose using “emergency fire suppression” dollars to fly fire drone strikes and holding their free-range burning with heavy air tankers is a misappropriation at best. The FS has made the case for the Cohesive National Wildfire Strategy to the states…and the states aren’t buying any of it. Neither are the people most affected by unilateral ideological wildfire use strategies. You served as an AA line officer under regulations and policies whose sole legal underpinning was Tom Tidwell’s 2009 Chevron Deference memo that asserted wildfire use was the way forward without any input from anybody. No public involvement. No scoping. No disclosure of cumulative impacts. No alternatives. No recognition of administrative or substantive laws. The basis for the Cohesive Strategy is now gone. If the FS wants to continue burning millions of acres on purpose they’re going to have to start over. They are no longer legally sufficient. To my way of thinking, the desired future condition of any management strategy has to result in living forests and sustainable production of all the things our forests give us. It appears we have forgotten our mission and no longer pursue integrated land management. Neither the Organic Act nor NFMA contemplated wildfire use for active forest management. It’s no longer acceptable or legal to ignore our laws as of June 2024. Nor do alternative arrangements for emergencies granted by CEQ any longer apply to any form of wildfire use beyond normative firing ops. It’s a mess. Pretending wildfire use is settled science is a bigger mess. The FS must make the case for wildfire use in open public forums and actually engage “partners” instead of dictating policy absent law.
Again, I agree with your concern that some firing ops are indiscriminate and not tied to some strategic/incident objective and are unnecessarily burning large acreages for no good reason. Many of our land management plans are too old and require significant updating, but many plans are permissive to use lightning ignitions to accomplish land management objectives, regardless of the “Chevron” decision and are legal. I wholly agree that we are far from walking the talk with the Cohesive Strategy but it still is a legitimate pathway to pursue. The states also have ownership in this “wicked” problem we have and very often fail to acknowledge our more comprehensive land management vision and mission. I’m all for transparency and public engagement, and we need better socio/political license to change our fire management paradigm. We can’t keep fire out of the system, we need to find where we can utilize fire, whether prescribed or natural ignitions, to reduce and breakup fuels over vast acreages in order to lessen the exposure to the values at risk that we care about.
Thanks for your comments, Supervisor Mark. Please order your people back to their offices. Spend the next four months helping facilitate the return to the public facing integrated Forest Service. Wash your uniforms. Polish your badges. Get your employee directory back on line so we can find you. Kick out the fear, have faith, and lead your people out of their wilderness of uncertainty. Let us know if we can help.
I’m serving in a different role now that I’m a retiree going on 11 months. I will continue to lead externally for the paradigm change that is so desperately needed in wildland fire management. I look forward to working with all who have a passion for this business of fire management considering all perspectives and convictions. This evolutionary change will not come easy, will not be simple, and cannot be relegated to just having employees back in the office or starting up the timber program again. This “wicked” challenge revolves around the way we treat the firefighter workforce, the lack of trust from the public, lack of honest dialogue with the public, cooperators, and government officials, and a false assumption over how much control we really have over the wildland fire environment. I look forward to this enormous undertaking.
Great interview. Kudos, Frank, for standing up against the insanities that have been taking place within the Forest Service over recent years with the “use” of fire across the West. Burning up our National Forests is not a solution to our wildfire fuels problem. Out-of-control forest growth cannot be controlled over the long term without aggressive mechanical entries ahead of time that will include the removal of larger trees and allow for the safe re-introduction of fire later onto the landscape. It’s that simple. It will take a huge effort, but it can be done. All we are lacking is a national will. That national will will not be forged without doing what you are doing, i.e., calling out the unwarranted destruction. As a forester buddy of mine (with extensive experience in protecting old growth timber stands through the wise use of all tools available to him) stated recently, “This isn’t rocket science”. We know what to do. It’s time to get with it. The hardcore “environmental” movement’s little experiment has been tried. It didn’t work. Let’s get back to dealing with reality. Your approach is the only way to make that happen. What has been happening is a national disgrace. Thanks for speaking the truth.
I forgot to add, he brought up lots of stuff I never thought about, ie, I didn’t know they were using VLATS on the Shoe Fire to control the fire they put on the ground 😂😂💰💰
I don’t think I mentioned the Shoe Fire. There are plenty of examples across the West from the past decade and there will be more until building litigation stops it altogether pending compliance with the law and obtaining a public license and informed consent by all those interested in or affected by this major, soil disturbing, federal action.
Brilliant interview. Thank you both.
I fear this does more harm than good. We know a full suppression model for fire doesn’t work and leads to more ecological harm and more high severity fire. No one is arguing for managed natural ignitions for resource benefit during PL5, but there is no way we can treat every acre to safely get Rx fire on the ground or reintroduce natural fire. We need to get fire on the landscape sooner than later.
I can totally understand your point of view. I am working on getting a counter point guest on as well.
Hi Kathleen: I'm not sure what "ecological harm" results from fire suppression, but I do know that the vast damage done to western USFS lands during the past 30 years -- and particularly the last 10 -- is among the very worst in our history. 2020, for example, was likely among the worst three "fire years" in US history, including 1871 and 1910. The problem is massive fuel build-ups through passive forest management policies since 1990 -- certainly not "climate change" and only somewhat related to pre-1990 fire suppression, if at all. We need to get the fuels under control and THEN reintroduce fire to the land, as my crews did in the 1980s. No problems, fine results. Here is an example of how Indians burned the pine forests south of Crater Lake in the late 1800s, by John Leiberg in 1899:
(p. 248) But the open character of the yellow-pine type of forest anywhere in the region examined is due to frequently repeated forest fires more than to any other cause.
(p. 249) The forest floor in the type is covered with a thin layer of humus consisting entirely of decaying pine needles, or it is entirely bare. The latter condition is very prevalent east of the Cascades, where large areas are annually overrun by fire. But even on the western side of the range, where the humus covering is most conspicuous, it is never more than a fraction of an inch in thickness, just enough to supply the requisite material for the spread of forest fires.
(p. 268) In other places fires have destroyed a certain percentage of the forest. The damage may vary from 10 to 60 per cent or higher. The destruction has not been all in one place or body. The fire has run through the forest for miles, burning a tree or group of trees here and there.
Zeke Lunders’s site
Good reading
https://the-lookout.org/
Check out his detailed analysis of firing ops on the Dixie Fire. Brilliant.
Kathleen, relist to the podcast. Did you hear the part where over 60% of the Dixie fire and the North complex fires were fire put on the ground by the forest service? It is hard to say how much of the 2024 Park fire was put on the ground by the forest service. I personally know what is like to be wiped out by the campfire. Nobody could’ve stopped that freight train anyway but just saying. There’s my street credentials. Did you know that there’s only a tiny strip of Butte County California that has not caught fire in the wild urban interface within the last seven years? There is too much fuel out there and the forest service hasn’t allowed anybody to go in and clean it up in decades. Go walk in the woods and you’ll see it for yourself, you can barely walk in the woods. The people who live in WUI areas deserve better than that from the USFS. All over the American west they need to adopt a CalFire style urgency to getting a fire out particularly when it’s near populated areas. They need to prosecute fire in that area at high speed. Not put more fire on the ground during red flag conditions. That’s doing it wrong and a recipe for disaster. If you want to have a fire out in the deep forest for the good of the forest, that’s fine when you do it the right way and during the right season, but when you run everybody out of California because they can’t afford to insure their properties because of Wildfire, you’re doing it wrong. Please do more research and rethink your theory. Maybe go live in the WUI and then worry about your home. It will change your thinking for sure. Particularly after you get a load of some of the costs of homeowners insurance these days. It’s a thing. Idealism is not a greater good than people, their lives and property. Not everybody’s going to be safe 100% of the time, but wiping out entire towns? We can and should do better than this. I agree with many of the points made during this interview.
Hey Tac, I live in the Caldor Fire burn scar. I have a PhD in forest policy and work every day in forest management. So when you say I need to do more research, I’ve quite literally spent my career doing research on these topics and live it daily.
Were you aware of the extent of intentional wildfire use in high fire season and red flag conditions? I’m curious because most academics have no idea of the extent of #holdthelineandburnitall firing operations across the West. Not blaming academics or politicians or even many firefighters. As Governors Gianforte and Little pointed out in October, the Forest Service has systematically and purposefully misled all of us about wildfire use. I only became aware of it because of my investigations in support of FTCA and Tucker Act claims. The significance of this lack of candor is virtually every study seeking independent factors for the scope, scale, and exploding costs of wildfires is erroneous on publication. How are we to understand the current fire environment if we don’t know the single most important independent factor in the Bush, Telegraph, Black, Dixie, North, August, Tamarack, Alice Creek, Beachie Creek, and so many more was intentional firing operations on an unprecedented scale? I’d be interested in your thoughts about the issue. Escalating firing operations are resulting in inverse condemnation of private property and a completely unacceptable loss of living forest ecosystems. Brush fields are fast becoming the tallest trees in the forest.
Thanks Kathleen, for your work on this, but why hasn’t USFS attacked wildfire with the same alacrity that Cal Fire has when wildfire threatens people and property in the WUI? Constitutionally this is job one of Government, yet this podcast was informative regarding USFS priorities regarding wildfires over that of the people who reside in the WUI, and burning more than necessary. It does beg the question why there isn’t more logging. If you have done the research, why aren’t forest management practices and efforts being taken to a improved level? Why isn’t the USFS going as hard on wildfires when life and property are threatened than CalFire? I have heard some say we have all the air resources we need. I see the same resources stretched. In the grand scheme of, the public benefit is questionable regarding how things are currently run. When will we start to improve? I apologize, but my tax dollars have paid for your research, but what have you improved for we the public? 🤷🏻♂️ Remember, how it is as a public servant … can you give us a fair answer for what we funded you? Did we get what we paid for??
Also, regarding the interview, I don’t think he was asking for full containment. I think he differentiated that full containment nice to have when you’re near people in property, and maybe when you’re not it’s OK to let things burn. But he noted as well as many others such as a couple of governors of states and it’s not lost on a lot of us who have been hammered by Wildfire in the wild urban interface, that The forest service is better at kicking the can and they are putting in the fire out. It was awfully interesting to hear how they’re actually back burning even more than is necessary. Would you refute that 60% of the Dixie fire was unnecessary because of back burns? Would you say the same was true of the North complex fire? is it your opinion that 400 Seguro was a worthwhile forfeit so that the forest service could back off 25 miles away from a fire and start back burn? Why would anybody lie about these figures? You would think a guy who spend his entire life fighting fire and working for the forest service would want to see it at its best, and he’s not the only person who corroborates his observations.🤷🏻♂️ I think he’s asking for a more major approach. I agree with the fact that the Forest Service needs to aggressively stop fire when it’s in the path of civilians and property. They need to go hard. And it doesn’t always look like they do. Maybe the forest needs to burn, but it doesn’t need to burn near people. I can’t speak for everybody but I am quite sure that those people out there who have lost everything they ever had to Wildfire would rather still have it then having to rebuild. It would be ashamed to tell them that the real reason why they lost everything was because of a lackadaisical attitude on the part of the forest service. prioritizing forest silver people particularly in the wild urban interface is a wrongheaded thinking. I’m sure that the private companies that own massive amounts of timber would much rather have the timber to sell then have it all burned up due to a policy decision. This is really looking a lot more like a case that the government doesn’t have the people who pay its bills best interest in mind. That’s also very wrongheaded thinking. If I have said anything that you don’t feel like can back up, I hope you can prove me wrong. I’d love to know I was wrong, I’d love to know thatpeople in your job description are working your butts off to make my life better. That’s what governments for. That is why we allow ourselves to be governed, but governed is not the same thing as subjugated.
I agree with many of the things that Frank said. I'm concerned about his use of terminology though, which confuses the issues. Sounds like his main concern is around the use of fire as a suppression tactic, which I'm certainly sympathetic to as having been an Agency Administrator in the Forest Service for 20 years. I am concerned about disparaging the use of fire (lightning ignitions) in our large wilderness areas, which has been a very successful experiment for over 40 years. We are just starting to realize that investment in returning fire to these fire-dependent landscapes in the Bob Marshall, Selway-Bitterroot, and Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness areas. I'm also concerned about a broken suppression model that continues to emphasize the suppression of all fires, when you cannot keep fire out of the system, which has overwhelmed the system over the last 25-30 years. We need to step up the application of prescribed fire knowing that we do not have enough resources yet to accelerate such a change in fire management. We're certainly not going to "log" our way out of this wicked fire/fuels problem that we have created. Targeted silviculture/timber harvest in and around identified values at risk can certainly make a difference, and we are going to have to learn to live with wildland fire, if we're ever going to change the paradigm. I have in the past and do question the suppression tactics we implement on large, complex fires, but many Agency Administrators do not have the knowledge and exposure in fire management to have such a discussion with many of our CIMTs (Complex Incident Management Teams). The communications issues we have with our local partners, especially the states, need to be addressed by the agency. We are our own worst enemies when trying to explain what we're doing on a fire and why. I welcome the continuing discussion around fire suppression and management and hope to support the changes that are needed if we're ever going to meet the intent of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy.
Thanks for your comments. Please don’t imagine I’m opposed to using lightning fires in wilderness. I began my career at Saguaro National Monument in 1972 in the second year of our natural fire program (let-burn). I have a strong testimony about fire as a positive and inevitable force for good. I support firing ops as an acceptable tactic to tie in direct line. I support falling back to the next best ridge in indirect attack. I’m talking about something far outside normative fire fighting strategies. Lighting 300,000 acres of the Gila/Aldo Leopold on purpose using “emergency fire suppression” dollars to fly fire drone strikes and holding their free-range burning with heavy air tankers is a misappropriation at best. The FS has made the case for the Cohesive National Wildfire Strategy to the states…and the states aren’t buying any of it. Neither are the people most affected by unilateral ideological wildfire use strategies. You served as an AA line officer under regulations and policies whose sole legal underpinning was Tom Tidwell’s 2009 Chevron Deference memo that asserted wildfire use was the way forward without any input from anybody. No public involvement. No scoping. No disclosure of cumulative impacts. No alternatives. No recognition of administrative or substantive laws. The basis for the Cohesive Strategy is now gone. If the FS wants to continue burning millions of acres on purpose they’re going to have to start over. They are no longer legally sufficient. To my way of thinking, the desired future condition of any management strategy has to result in living forests and sustainable production of all the things our forests give us. It appears we have forgotten our mission and no longer pursue integrated land management. Neither the Organic Act nor NFMA contemplated wildfire use for active forest management. It’s no longer acceptable or legal to ignore our laws as of June 2024. Nor do alternative arrangements for emergencies granted by CEQ any longer apply to any form of wildfire use beyond normative firing ops. It’s a mess. Pretending wildfire use is settled science is a bigger mess. The FS must make the case for wildfire use in open public forums and actually engage “partners” instead of dictating policy absent law.
Again, I agree with your concern that some firing ops are indiscriminate and not tied to some strategic/incident objective and are unnecessarily burning large acreages for no good reason. Many of our land management plans are too old and require significant updating, but many plans are permissive to use lightning ignitions to accomplish land management objectives, regardless of the “Chevron” decision and are legal. I wholly agree that we are far from walking the talk with the Cohesive Strategy but it still is a legitimate pathway to pursue. The states also have ownership in this “wicked” problem we have and very often fail to acknowledge our more comprehensive land management vision and mission. I’m all for transparency and public engagement, and we need better socio/political license to change our fire management paradigm. We can’t keep fire out of the system, we need to find where we can utilize fire, whether prescribed or natural ignitions, to reduce and breakup fuels over vast acreages in order to lessen the exposure to the values at risk that we care about.
Thanks for your comments, Supervisor Mark. Please order your people back to their offices. Spend the next four months helping facilitate the return to the public facing integrated Forest Service. Wash your uniforms. Polish your badges. Get your employee directory back on line so we can find you. Kick out the fear, have faith, and lead your people out of their wilderness of uncertainty. Let us know if we can help.
I’m serving in a different role now that I’m a retiree going on 11 months. I will continue to lead externally for the paradigm change that is so desperately needed in wildland fire management. I look forward to working with all who have a passion for this business of fire management considering all perspectives and convictions. This evolutionary change will not come easy, will not be simple, and cannot be relegated to just having employees back in the office or starting up the timber program again. This “wicked” challenge revolves around the way we treat the firefighter workforce, the lack of trust from the public, lack of honest dialogue with the public, cooperators, and government officials, and a false assumption over how much control we really have over the wildland fire environment. I look forward to this enormous undertaking.
Great interview. Kudos, Frank, for standing up against the insanities that have been taking place within the Forest Service over recent years with the “use” of fire across the West. Burning up our National Forests is not a solution to our wildfire fuels problem. Out-of-control forest growth cannot be controlled over the long term without aggressive mechanical entries ahead of time that will include the removal of larger trees and allow for the safe re-introduction of fire later onto the landscape. It’s that simple. It will take a huge effort, but it can be done. All we are lacking is a national will. That national will will not be forged without doing what you are doing, i.e., calling out the unwarranted destruction. As a forester buddy of mine (with extensive experience in protecting old growth timber stands through the wise use of all tools available to him) stated recently, “This isn’t rocket science”. We know what to do. It’s time to get with it. The hardcore “environmental” movement’s little experiment has been tried. It didn’t work. Let’s get back to dealing with reality. Your approach is the only way to make that happen. What has been happening is a national disgrace. Thanks for speaking the truth.
What an excellent interview, why can we nor have this man in a position of governance!!!
👍
Esprit de corps,
can do ,
good neighbor policies
I forgot to add, he brought up lots of stuff I never thought about, ie, I didn’t know they were using VLATS on the Shoe Fire to control the fire they put on the ground 😂😂💰💰
I don’t think I mentioned the Shoe Fire. There are plenty of examples across the West from the past decade and there will be more until building litigation stops it altogether pending compliance with the law and obtaining a public license and informed consent by all those interested in or affected by this major, soil disturbing, federal action.