“Don’t want to start a wildfire, right?” are the last words in the USFS’s latest advertisement featuring Smokey Bear. Well, sort of.
While Smokey Bear does make an appearance, it’s not as a tangible being. Instead, Smokey seems to have become an omnipresent entity that can take over the bodies of humans in order to tell others how to not start wildfires.
screenshot from Smokey’s new campfire ad
The “Smokey Is Within” ad campaign shows the spirit of Smokey taking over two women: one attending a camp outing telling her friends how to properly douse a campfire, and another hiking on the side of a road who instructs a driver on how to not drag his trailer’s chains.
NEW Smokey ad — he’s in you.
Numerous boreal forests across the U.S. are still reckoning with Smokey’s legacy of fire suppression. Forest managers, including the USFS itself, have confirmed that a century of fire suppression is the root cause of the increased fuel loads and more intense wildfires we see today.
However, the vast majority of wildfires are still caused by humans — often in exactly the ways demonstrated in the advertisements. Smokey’s pivot toward personal responsibility, rather than bashing a living history of prescribed fires, might be a step in the right direction for the problematic bear.
The Colorado State Forest Service is requesting applications for the Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation Grant Program. The CSFS estimates that $7.5 million will be available for the 2023-24 grant cycle. The program assists with funding community-level actions in three major areas:
reducing wildfire risk to people, property, and infrastructure in the interface
promoting forest health and the use of woody material for forest products and energy
encouraging forest restoration projects
Colorado State Forest Service
As outlined in the Steamboat Pilot, there are two main types of qualifying projects for funding:
Fuels and Forest Health Projects — must reduce risk of damage to property, infrastructure, water supplies, or other high-value assets from wildfire, or limit the likelihood of wildfires spreading into populated areas. Projects must promote forest health through sciene-based forestry practices that restore ecosystem functions, structures, and species composition.
Capacity Building Projects — must increase community capacity by providing the community with resources and staffing necessary for forest restoration and wildfire risk mitigation projects.
The following individuals, organizations, or entities may apply:
Local community groups such as homeowner, neighborhood, or property associations located within or close to the wildland/urban interface.
Local government entities including counties, municipalities, fire protection districts, and other special districts in or near the interface.
Public or private utilities, including water providers, with infrastructure or land ownership in areas with high risk of catastrophic wildfires.
Nonprofit groups that promote hazardous fuels reduction projects or that engage in firefighting or fire management.
Applicants must demonstrate an ability to match 50 percent of the total project cost. Matching contributions can be cash, in-kind, or a combination of both, and may be in the form of private, local government, state or federal support for the project.
Contact your local field office for details. More information is available at CSFS.colostate.edu/grants or (970)879-0475. Applications are due in mid-October and awards will be announced in April.
One look at Louisiana’s traditional barbecue practice can set off alarm bells in the heads of firefighters.
The French Louisianan practice of Cochon de lait (co-shaun-du-lay) translates literally to “suckling pig” and involves pit roasting a young pig. Images of the practice show a long row of logs and hot coals blazing with high flames surrounded with split hogs hung on racks.
“Cochon de laits were originally cooked over fireplaces in early-American kitchens, but the most common method today is in an outdoor cooking shed, grill or open fire pit,” according to the state’s official travel authority. “A fire that is constantly maintained should cook a 50-pound pig in about five or six hours, giving you plenty of time to kick back and relax with family and friends. It’s a good bet you’ll find it at a variety of fairs, festivals and tailgates around the state.”
The very open flame barbecue practice, along with the state’s affinity with smoked meats, shows why Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards may have felt it was necessary to explicitly ask the state’s residents to not barbecue for Labor Day weekend — and the beginning of the football season this year — as numerous wildfires burn across the state.
“We know [Labor Day] typically involves a lot of cookouts and barbecues, especially with the return of football,” Edwards said during a press conference on Aug. 30. “I’m asking that people not engage in barbecuing and so forth outside where a fire can start.”
The request itself isn’t out of the ordinary. Louisiana has been under a statewide burn ban since August because of extreme heat, widespread severe drought, and ongoing wildfires in the southwestern portion of the state. The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry also banned prescribed burns, and Edwards prohibited all agricultural burning with an executive order. However, what media found especially unusual about the governor’s request was that it coincided with the weekend that rings in the final days of summer barbecuing and the beginning of LSU football tailgating barbecuing.
“Let’s be patient and not create more work for firefighters in Louisiana,” Edwards said. “We need to prevent what is already a serious situation from becoming worse.”
The state’s residents may need to be very patient. This year’s burn ban has already far exceeded the length of the state’s previous statewide burn ban in 2015, which lasted only 10 days. On August 7 Louisiana Fire Marshal Daniel Wallis expanded the in-effect burn ban to include burning on both public and private property.
“This new burn ban order … prohibits ALL private burning, with no limitations,” the Office of Louisiana State Fire Marshal said. “The already extremely dry conditions statewide, and the concern over first responder safety in these dangerously high temperatures, have worsened as wildfires spread across Louisiana and significant rain relief remains elusive in weather forecasts.”
Time will tell whether Louisianans will obey the burn ban to stop further wildfire tragedies, or stick to tradition and risk igniting more fires.
Fire season is already under way in Oregon, with some small fires burning in the southwest part of the state, and state and federal officials are talking about options for funding firefighting efforts.
On May 17, Governor Tina Kotek announced she was adding over $200 million in funding for the state’s wildfire protection system to her budget request to the state legislature. “We need to continue to support things that have worked,” Kotek said in a press conference covered by KEZI-TV. “We need another $207 million to continue our advancements in wildfire protection, in both resilience and protection and response, and I would hope legislators would support that.”
Oregon Dept. Forestry
In Washington, D.C., Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden are working on legislation to create national recreation areas across the state. That distinction would require wildfire prevention strategies in the region. “The bill requires the Bureau of Land Management to take preemptive steps to reduce wildfire risks in the new recreation areas,” Wyden said at a Senate committee hearing, “including the construction of new roads to implement fire risk reduction plans and for public safety.”
Fire departments and districts have also received additional funding for firefighters, engines, and risk reduction programs. Much of that funding comes from 2021’s Senate Bill 762.
“Senate Bill 762 was a major investment in in fighting wildfire in Oregon, and it was a huge help for not only the Oregon Department of Forestry but other wildfire agencies in the state,” said Jessica Prakke, PAO with the Oregon Department of Forestry. The legislation provided $220 million to agencies to modernize and improve wildfire preparedness, response, and resiliency. “It was a huge investment in protecting Oregon from wildfire and it has done an immense amount of good across the state,” she said.
She said the funding also expanded the state’s network of wildfire detection cameras. One such camera caught a fire caused by a lightning strike in Lane County. On the night of May 15 a camera alerted ODF staff to smoke in between Sharps Creek and Mosby. A staffer monitoring the cameras dispatched fire crews to the site, and they had the fire under control within three hours. Prakke said there are now nearly 100 cameras at 60 sites across the state. The system also uses a mapping system to help pinpoint smokes for dispatchers and first responders.
Prevention is the key for a successful season, said Prakke. “The best way to stop wildfire is for people to keep wildfire prevention at the top of their mind,” she said. “About 70 percent of all wildfire in Oregon is human-caused, and so the less that we can contribute to wildfire on our parts, the less our resources are strained to fight other causes of wildfire.”
A Douglas County non-profit will receive $9 million in prevention grant funding, the second highest award in the state of Oregon. The U.S. Forest Service awarded $9,151,505 through its Community Wildfire Defense Grant program (CWDG) to the Douglas Electric Cooperative, according to a KEZI News report. The non-profit electric utility serves 11,000 meters in a 2,500-square-mile territory that includes Douglas, Coos, and Lane counties in western Oregon.
In Grant County, the town of John Day received two grants, including the state’s largest award of $9,907,344 earmarked for Grant County’s evacuation corridor and fuels management, Forest Service officials said. (This is the same Grant County that arrested a burn boss on a USFS prescribed fire last fall.) The Blue Mountain Eagle reported that Prairie Wood Products also was awarded a $1 million grant as part of an effort to strengthen the wood products economy and promote sustainable forest management. Through the Wood Products Infrastructure Assistance grant program, the Forest Service is providing funding to wood processing facilities to improve, establish, retrofit, or expand facilities that purchase and process byproducts from ecosystem restoration projects on federal or tribal lands.
The Forest Service’s CWDG program invests a total of $23.5 million to assist communities, and often partners with The Nature Conservancy. “In 60 years of working with wildland fire, The Nature Conservancy has learned that successful wildfire adaptation efforts are inevitably grounded in communities,” said Marek Smith, director of TNC’s North America Fire program. “The Community Wildfire Defense Grant program provides an important opportunity to deliver needed resources to communities that are doing the challenging work of living sustainably with wildfire.”
The 2021 Bootleg Fire on the Chiloquin Ranger District of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership photo
Some of the 100 funded projects — including the Chiloquin Wildfire Risk Reduction and Education project in Oregon — are led by TNC or its partners.
“We’re grateful for support of TNC-involved projects, and we’re deeply grateful to see a broad slate of funded projects that are diverse in terms of scope, communities represented, and geography,” said Smith. “A better future with wildland fire requires that outmoded ideas and approaches are transformed by the vision and experience of diverse communities.”
Forest Service officials said the CWDG program funding is made possible through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, part of which prioritized low-income communities at risk of a wildfire hazard. An additional round of funding will be announced later this year.
