Will Joe Biden Save Us from uncontrollable Wildfires?

TL;DR, no.

No matter your political affiliation, we can all agree that wildland fire policy has been tossed to the wayside during the past four years of the Trump administration. From claiming we needed to “clean our floors” to gutting fire science funds, there hasn’t been any positive improvements federally, and we’ve had some of our worst fire seasons during Trump’s time in office, each summer seemingly one-upping the other for catastrophe.

Jean Beaufort, Public Domain

But the current catastrophic state of wildland fire can’t be blamed on any single administration or political party, though one could say that the blame resides squarely on the backs of European settlers that forced their way west while ignoring Indigenous land tending practices, imposing their European ideals on a diverse landscape that required a much more nuanced approach. But the truth is, blame doesn’t change shit. We’ve got work to do now.

We now have an incoming administration that believes in climate science. Can we take a breath? An inhale, maybe, of clean air. Upon exhaling let yourself relax for only a moment before acknowledging how fantastically the Obama administration fucked up forest management; how no administration to date has been able to approach forest management with the subtle nuances needed to wrangle (and embrace) fire across the United States.

This is because our land isn’t uniform. Go to the high altitude mountains of New Mexico, where serotinous Ponderosa and Jack pine cones expand and open with fire, and then to the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest, where fire is meant to snuff around in the duff for decades and explodes only within a long fire cycle, one that’s growing shorter and shorter as our summers last longer and longer. From there, check out the longleaf pines of the Southeast, which require frequent burning to thrive, and the cattle-ravaged shrublands of Nevada, whose fires have exploded as non-native species like cheatgrass have grown unchecked for decades.

A federal government isn’t going to be able to solve all those problems. If the Biden administration shifted its gaze from large scale thinning (which doesn’t really work and favors the outcome more for logging companies than ecological health) and instead focused on funding small and local organizations already working towards ecological health across the country, we could see real, tangible change. If the administration focused on lowering greenhouse emissions (fuck off, cruise ships) and checking the gluttonous wildland firefighting industrial complex that does almost as much harm as it does good, and let the smaller organizations focus on their microhabitats with support and encouragement, we might be able to save our wildlands and reintroduce a natural fire cycle to fire-starved landscapes.

Yes, I said fire-starved. The key to managing fires is to introduce more fire. We need to fund and support Indigenous groups, universities, as well as more localized state and federal resources, and educate the public about why fire is important, rather than saying we need to stop fires. Stopping fires isn’t the answer. It doesn’t and hasn’t worked.

Obviously, with the advent of climate change, this is a very complicated conversation, which I’ll continue to engage with.

Last year I wrote a piece for High Country News about creating a more full-time work force with the Forest Service and other federal agencies. As a former hotshot, I understand that one of the most alluring things about the job is that beautiful winter off, when you can relax and train and collect that unemployment check. But that’s not necessarily in the interest of our public lands. While having more resources in the summer will likely always be necessary, we do need to shift how we’re thinking about employing wildland firefighters, and if we can have more people employed year-round then we can have a higher change of reaching our prescribed fire goals. We’re not burning anywhere close to what we should be, primarily because of lack of resources, including budgetary and personnel, but also because we don’t have enough people working in the off-season, which is the best time to burn.

I know it’s been a while, but I’m back to writing Fires, and you’ll see me in your inbox every Tuesday. Next Tuesday you’ll get a newsletter about how bark beetles, a maligned insect, may actually be an important phenomenon in forest health. Please share widely.

Thanks for reading,

Stacy

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