Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future
The editor of Oregon Business is urging her state’s residents to let go of “either-or thinking” in the wake of this year’s calamitous wildfire season.
“Are fires in Oregon intensifying because of poor forest management strategies? Or are hotter, drier summers at fault?” Linda Baker asked in a recent column. “Letting go of either-or thinking is the first step in reckoning with the problem.”
She had no trouble finding agreement. [Read more…]
Treesource, a new online magazine promoting “forest journalism for a sustainable future,” will host a public forum in Missoula Oct. 24 on living with fire and the record-setting 2017 wildfire season.
Treesource president David Atkins said the publication fills a much-needed niche of providing in-depth reporting on forest issues, including wildlife, drinking water, carbon, wood products and a sustainable economy.
The new Montana-based online magazine recently received 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, officially designating it a tax exempt nonprofit publication. It has been live for about 6 months.
“We’ll provide the nuanced narratives so often missing in daily, hurry-up journalism by explaining why these complex and essential ecosystems are important to our everyday lives,” Atkins said. “Treesource approaches all of our work through the lens of sustainability, that is balancing environmental, economic and social facets of a story.” [Read more…]
Editor’s note: A timely new report from Bozeman, Montana-based Headwaters Economics explores how communities and counties in that state can learn from one another’s land-use planning strategies – as well as best practices in other states – to reduce the risks and costs of homebuilding in the wildland-urban interface. Here is the group’s introduction to the report, with links to the executive summary and full report.
Across Montana — like most of the West — wildfires are getting bigger, lasting longer, and causing more damage to homes and property, as the severity of the severity of the 2017 wildfire season demonstrated. This trend can only be expected to continue under a warmer, drier climate and as more homes are built in at-risk locations (known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI).
Land use planning is an important tool to reducing risk, but few Montana counties have fully integrated wildfire into their land use planning programs. [Read more…]
Will the 2017 fire season’s cost and calamities be enough to provoke change in how the U.S. Congress funds wildland firefighting?
Several Western senators believe it should be, as does Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
In a late-September briefing, Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo declared: “We have a crisis occurring now. We need to come together and say, ‘No more waiting – it needs to be on the next bill.’ ”
That could mean attaching a new national wildfire funding system to a hurricane relief bill for Puerto Rico, or incorporating it into the reauthorization bill for the federal flood insurance program. [Read more…]
It is the dry season in Western states, which means that large swaths of land are burning or smoldering and are likely to remain that way until the snows arrive. The 2017 wildfire year started earlier and has scorched more acreage than normal. It is also far from over.
As wildfire trends worsen, it is increasingly important for communities in fire-prone regions to learn from past blazes and adapt to a more flammable future. Communities located in what researchers call “the wildland-urban interface” are due for tough conversations about the future. [Read more…]