EVENT: The Big Burnout: Wildland Firefighters and the West
As record-setting blazes grow more common, poor compensation is spurring an exodus of wildland firefighters, thinning America’s last line of defense against fires. For residents of fire-prone areas, the stakes could not be higher. In partnership with Source New Mexico and Outside Magazine, ProPublica will host an online forum examining these issues.
Stories about the land the park exists on, located at the convergence of the Great Plains, Great Basin, and Columbia Plateau, were originally seen as tall tales because they were too fantastical to be true, according to park nonprofit Yellowstone Forever. Eventually, however, formal expeditions verified that the land was indeed covered in multicolored hot springs and spouting geysers, paving the way for the area’s federal protection and park designation.
The people who originally pushed Congress to protect the area were crafting their own tall tale, unbeknownst to themselves. The park’s first leaders told Congress that the park could be protected and run without any funding from the federal government. That idea was soon disproven.
Yellowstone’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, was unpaid, and he and others quickly saw how the lack of funding made protecting the park’s wildlife and natural resources extremely difficult.
Essex County Herald, Vermont. September 02, 1920
Langford’s first annual park report to the federal government was filled with stories of squatters, poachers, and vandals creating problems throughout the area.
“A few months before … creating the park, several persons had located upon land at some of the points of greatest interest, with a view to establish squatter’s right of preemption,” Langford’s report said. “The reality of the land should be held alone by the Government, and be subject to such rules and regulations as may, from time to time, be adopted by the Department of the Interior.”
Langford’s report also marked a step toward the first national park’s first fire policy.
“It is especially recommended that a law be passed, punishing, by fine and imprisonment, all persons who leave any fire they may have made, for convenience or otherwise, unextinguished,” the report said. “Nothing less than a stringent law punishing negligence and carelessness can save the extensive pine timber fields of the park from destruction.”
The policy would soon become a reality not just for the park but for the nation as a whole. U.S. law mandates that anyone who starts a fire on federal lands and doesn’t extinguish it could face imprisonment for up to six months (on USFS lands) and no more than 12 months if on BLM lands.
The “most important law in the creation of eastern national forests” was established on this day 113 years ago.
The Weeks Act, signed into law by President William Howard Taft on March 1, 1911, allowed the federal government to purchase private land to protect the headwaters of rivers and watersheds in the eastern United States. The act nationalized the U.S. Forest Service, as neither federal nor state governments owned substantial forested lands east of the Mississippi River before the act’s passage.
According to the Forest History Society, in just 10 years Congress had rejected more than 40 bills calling for the establishment of eastern national forests.
Senators and congressmen opposed these measures for various reasons; some western representatives (and conservation groups) who supported national forests in principle resented the possible loss of funding to their eastern counterparts. Many fiscal conservatives agreed with House Speaker Joe Cannon when he declared “not one cent for scenery.”
Leadership on the issue came from a surprise source. Congressman John Weeks, a Republican from Massachusetts, was a former naval officer and a successful banker. Weeks was elected to the House in 1905, and two years later he was appointed to the House Committee on Agriculture by Speaker Cannon.
Congressman John Wingate Weeks
At first Weeks didn’t understand why — he had few farmers in his district, and he had little interest in agricultural issues in Congress. He was concerned, though, about the damage logging had caused in the White Mountains, near where he had grown up and where he now summered with his family. Speaker Cannon told Weeks that if he, as a businessman, could put together a forestry bill that he supported, then Cannon would get it considered in the House. The man who had once declared “not one cent for scenery” had changed his mind.
The Weeks Act not only paved the way for the National Forest System, but also established the nation’s first interagency wildland firefighting effort, an effort that continued and worsened the settler colonial practice of fire suppression through bans of cultural fire usage.
There were multiple reasons for prioritizing USFS fire control for the new forests, according to a system article published on the act’s centennial. A 1902 report described the biggest threats to Appalachian forests as being fires and logging. In 1910, a series of catastrophic wildfires now known as the “Big Blowup” devastated Idaho and Montana, killing more than 100 firefighters and destroying several towns. Forest reserve advocates used these and other fire events to convince Congress to establish an agency that would primarily focus on wildfire suppression.
“Fire lookout towers and trails were built and ‘forest guards’ were hired at a salary of $50 a month,” the USFS article said. “Because the Weeks Act provided matching federal funding for state wildfire management spending, state divisions of forestry also upgraded their fire control organizations.”
What wildland firefighters now affirm as an uninformed suppression effort was worsened through fear-based short-sighted decisionmaking, along with xenophobic attitudes toward the people who had long lived on the land.
The Karuk Tribe in California views the passage of the Weeks Act and the increasing catastrophic fires across the country as having a direct connection.
“The passage of the Weeks Act in 1911 following the Big Burn of 1910 made cultural uses of fire essentially illegal, and for the many decades following, less and less burning occurred while more and more vegetation grew,” the tribe’s website said. “Over a century of policies of fire suppression has created the conditions for the catastrophic, high-intensity wildfires we are seeing today. Warming temperatures and summer droughts further exacerbate these conditions.”
The USFS wildland firefighting system now largely understands the benefit of managed fire and makes an effort to include tribes in its decisionmaking. There is more work to be done, however, as climate change further exacerbates the cracks in the system that firefighters and managers are trying to mend. For better or for worse, it all started with the Weeks Act.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore spoke Thursday with loggers and others in forestry about forest fires, logging, and sustainability at the 86th annual Oregon Logging Conference at the Lane County Fairgrounds in Eugene.
The Register-Guard reported that Moore gave the keynote address at the conference before taking questions from attendees, many of whom were critical of the Forest Service’s management of federal forests in Oregon. After his speech, the newspaper questioned the USFS Chief and didn’t get much for answers, which Moore is well known for. Asked about an escaped RxFire last summer east of Eugene, and another over in Grant County that resulted in the arrest and arraignment of FS burn boss Ricky Snodgrass, Moore said he’s confident the agency has the ability to managed prescribed burns.
Referring to the temporary pause in 2022 after the Calf Canyon / Hermits Peak Fire, Moore then said, “If you remember, I called a 90-day pause … And really, it was to do a check on how we were doing prescribed burning, but also to look at what has changed.”
He explained that people are “on different sides of the aisle with climate change,” and that the climate is different today than what it has been. “And because it’s different it’s creating conditions that we have never seen before, particularly as it relates to fire behavior. And so, as we look at the prescribed burning, we do have the ability.”
Regarding the budget, the chief said, “Going in now, of course, you know, we don’t have a budget. The federal government doesn’t have a budget. Our expectation is to have the same level of firefighters we had last year. And so, we’re looking at roughly 11,700 firefighters…. Now, with an uncertainty around budget, could that be potentially compromised? Of course. We also have a housing issue, a mental health issue, with our firefighters. So, all of that plays into whether we’ll be able to recruit and retain firefighters.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack back in June 2021 announced that Randy Moore would serve as the 20th Forest Service Chief. “Randy Moore has been a catalyst for change and creativity in carrying out the Forest Service’s mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests,” said Vilsack. A year later in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Moore said the 2022 fire staffing was near 90 percent, but he acknowledged that the agency in some areas was staffed at about 50 percent.
Moore was warning a week ago that the agency faces budget cuts that could affect thousands of employees. He sent an all-employee letter noting that funding gaps will affect salaries and information technology, among other things.
He noted a 5 percent cost of living increase but said it will come out of available funds. He had no details on which part of the agency’s budget will be cut for the new fiscal year, but warned that the USDA is developing budget cut guidelines.
Jack Thomas with Jim Lyons in northeast Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness.
Moore was also asked about the planned update to the Northwest Forest Plan, which was developed by Jack Ward Thomas and a small army of experts back in the early 1990s. The comprehensive plan was accompanied by a regional monitoring program and ongoing research, and became a multi-agency effort to conserve biodiversity, especially including old-growth forests, the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, and other species associated with older forests on federal lands in western Washington and Oregon and northwest California. It was also designed to protect salmon habitat and to provide forest products for timber-dependent economies. The NWFP was envisioned to be a 100-year plan with the flexibility to adapt to new conditions, threats, and knowledge — of which there have been many.
Asked what changes Oregonians might expect in the forthcoming update to the Northwest Forest Plan, Moore said, “I think that’s to be discovered. I think that we need to sit down and have public meetings. We need to look at what are the expectations that our publics are having for their national forests and then how can we provide that within the context of the laws that guide us.”
Kansas’ recognition as a top fire state has long been overdue.
The state experiences at least 5,000 wildfires annually, which ranks it among the top five states for number of wildfire incidents in the country among the likes of Texas, Oregon, and Montana. Kansas is also a top prescribed burning state in acreage, with well over one million acres burned yearly, according to the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils.
Despite this, Kansas is far from the first state many think of when wildfires are mentioned. A large reason for this, according to Kansas Forest Service Interim Fire Management Officer Eric Ward, is that wildfires have been chronically underreported throughout the state.
“The lack of reporting has been identified for years as a problem,” Ward said. “The problem is that, unlike many states, wildfires are nearly 100 percent a local responsibility.”
The Kansas Governor’s Wildfire Task Force final report of 2023 estimated that around 30 percent of the state’s wildfires go unreported annually. Ward attributed the underreporting to two aspects of the state: the lack of federally-owned land and the state’s designation as a “Home Rule” state.
In the nation, Kansas has the third-least amount of federally owned land compared with privately owned land, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report. Only 253,919 acres of Kansas’ total 52,510,720 acreage, or 0.5 percent, is federally owned. The only other states with such a low federal land ownership are Connecticut and Iowa, both at 0.3 percent.
Additionally, Kansas has been a Home Rule state since 1961 by constitutional amendment, meaning that local jurisdictions, to an extent, have greater autonomy — and state interference in local affairs is limited. Kansas is also a “Dillon’s Rule” state, meaning that local governments only have powers that are explicitly assigned to them.
Because of this combination, the duty of reporting usually falls to local jurisdictions, some of which fail to file the proper paperwork.
“[Kansas Forest Service] supports local fire departments as requested on major incidents, but as a home rule state, the local jurisdiction is still in charge, and responsible for reporting,” Ward said.
“With the vast majority of departments being small volunteer departments, some simply ignore the state law that requires reporting. And no one at any level of government wants to prosecute a local volunteer fire chief for not doing paperwork. So, many simply never get reported.”
Research suggests Kansas and other wildfire-prone states are projected to have 30 more days per year of extreme wildfire risk in the near future. To meet the current and future wildfire challenges, the state appointed a new State Fire Marshal last November and released a new wildfire risk tool last October. However, until wildfires are accurately reported in the state, Kansas won’t be getting the recognition of a top wildfire state that it deserves.
Kansas’ recognition as a top fire state has long been overdue.
The state experiences at least 5,000 wildfires annually, which ranks it among the top five states for number of wildfire incidents in the country among the likes of Texas, Oregon, and Montana. Kansas is also a top prescribed burning state in acreage, with well over one million acres burned yearly, according to the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils.
Western Oregon’s recent ice storm cleanup, after one of the worst winter storms in history, is now in the mop-up stage, and firefighters with the Oregon Department of Forestry have teamed up with the City of Springfield to help. For most of a week now, they’ve worked in the Thurston area of Springfield east of Eugene, clearing downed trees and sidewalks. A team of 14 started by clearing students’ paths to area schools.
“We noticed that right after the ice storm, they were using the streets to walk because they weren’t able to access the sidewalk,” ODF forester Kolten Vickers told Albert James with KEZI News in Eugene . “So we started around schools, and now we’re branching off into other parts of neighborhoods.”
Vickers has been with ODF for five years, but this is his first time cleaning up after a winter storm. “Primarily I assist with fires during the summers,” he said. “But with ODF having incident management teams — it’s all incidents. So storm recovery falls under that response.”
Local resident Patty Gori regularly walks the neighborhood with her dogs and was grateful to see the clearing work. “It was a mess,” she said. “But now, it’s amazing. They got so much cleaned up in the last couple of days, I just can’t even believe it.”
Who ya gonna call? Firefighters. Besides clearing streets and chainsaw duty, ODF sent an IMT to coordinate a unified response to the storm.
“You don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes,” said Joe Hessel, from a longtime firefighting family in eastern Oregon. “You see firefighters digging a fireline or public works crews working on city streets. At some point, somebody’s trying to organize that chaotic potential into something that makes sense. That’s what we’re here helping the city do.” Hessel serves as a deputy incident commander for this post-storm incident, but he’s usually an incident commander with a state team. He said the storm response effort was started and led by Lane County and the City of Springfield, but on January 25 they transferred command over to the city, with the IMT from ODF still assisting.
“In large part, the city staff and departments are doing the work, just like when we were with Lane County,” Hessel said. “We’re helping at the highest level to coordinate and put a plan together to ensure that the right work is getting done at the right place at the right time.”
“We do train for incidents outside of wildfire,” he explained. “The ICS system we use on wildfires carries right across to pretty much any other incident. We’ve been to Florida and helped the State of Florida in hurricane response. We’re prepared in the event that there’s an earthquake or a tsunami here. Last year one of our teams, a short team like we have here, went to a county and helped out with a cyber attack and planning for how to manage and deal with that.”
“ODF is great, they do this type of work for a living in fire management, so they have a lot of experience in incident management,” said Ben Gibson, operations maintenance manager with the City of Springfield. “They’ve been a great resource to our emergency operations center staff in helping us move forward smoothly.”
Oregon Department of Forestry logo on a truck door.
Hessel said both his team and the local crews have learned a lot from each other, and he hopes the information shared between the groups can go a long way in responding to future events. “That transference of skills and knowledge to each other will benefit pretty much either entity,” he said. “And then we’ll actually develop some products we’ll leave behind — some written documents, like a debris removal plan that could be used next time, or a contact list with names on it.”
Eugene and Springfield and the surrounding area endured a record-breaking winter storm with snow and ice and rain and high winds. The storm caused widespread power outages and severely damaged at least 60 percent of the trees at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum. The storm took out powerlines at the arboretum and necessitated a safety closure, according the a report by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Brad Van Appel, longtime director at Mt. Pisgah, said there was about an inch of ice on the trees and it was more than most of them could take.
“We have 209 acres, much of it full of trees,” he said. “I think nearly every tree took some damage.” For those wanting to help, the arboretum and its sister organization Friends of Buford Park are looking for volunteers, and they can sign up online.
Also of note, ODF is looking for a Wildland Fire Supervisor to manage the fire program down in Klamath Falls. This is a permanent benefited position. $4,918 – $7,244 monthly depending on experience. Recruitment closes January 31.
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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack back in June 2021 announced that Randy Moore would serve as the 20th Forest Service Chief. “Randy Moore has been a catalyst for change and creativity in carrying out the Forest Service’s mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests,” said Vilsack. 
