In case you aren’t following media news, there was a recent Gallup poll on confidence in various institutions. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in that sector.
The news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process. The legislative branch of the federal government, consisting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, is rated about as poorly as the media, with 34% trusting it.
In contrast, majorities of U.S. adults express at least a fair amount of trust in their local government to handle local problems (67%), their state government to address state problems (55%), and the American people as a whole when it comes to making judgments under our democratic system about the issues facing the country (54%).
But perhaps this is simply a transition, and more trustworthy sources of information will replace the media as we know it.
I see folks like The Hotshot Wakeup as a vanguard of a new and better media ecosystem. For one thing, he knows the territory, knows the people, and has been around for awhile. Trust is something that develops over time, when he turns out to be correct and when he acknowledges that he got it wrong. So it makes more sense to trust humans rather than institutions. We can trust District Ranger X and not “the Forest Service.”
So let’s look at some THW stories and how other media covered the same stories.
- Arrested burn boss.
MM (mainstream media) “remember Bundys” “employees will be afraid to conduct prescribed burns.”
THW “things got out of control, probably a one off.”
2. North Carolina FEMA threats
MM repeats rumor (?) of large group, focused on FS being called off.
THW reports in real time that FS folks were called back the next day, turned out to be one person threatening.
3. Oregon Department of Forestry
Apparently there were articles in the MSM about ODF. Three managers called THW to share their side of the story.
They also all agreed that this was a major distraction from the real issues with ODF right now. They are coming off a record wildfire season in Oregon and have major budgetary issues. Last month, they had to ask the state for emergency funds to continue funding the agency for a total of $42 million. Their employees just finished a rammer season, and the first week back in the office, they are all being bombarded with this story instead of focusing on close out, end of season duties, and decompression.
They saw this as an opportunity for media folks on both sides of the political aisle to use this story as ammo during a very contentious election cycle, and they were not very happy about that. Quite frankly, the timing couldn’t have been worse for the agency and their employees.
And that’s it. That’s the story from three managers inside ODF who feel like the agency they love and have spent their lives working for has been dragged into the mainstream media for political gain on both sides. So much so that they reached out and asked me to tell their story.
4. Bridger Aerospace
MM- Here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal op-ed on how political forces are trying to take down a fire aviation company,
Yet the closer Mr. Sheehy came to winning the nomination, the more hostile the environment became for Bridger. Late last year the company started getting strange inquiries from lenders and regulators—leading some managers to suspect that people were lodging accusations against it in hope of triggering lenders to pull loans or provoking a public regulatory rebuke.
After Bridger weathered that storm, the assault went public. In early August, NBC and the Washington Post ran negative articles a day apart making strikingly similar suggestions of a coming Bridger financial collapse, based in part on the anything-can-happen disclaimers that public companies are required to file. NBC also quoted Marc Cohodes—a short seller who has praised Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “great” and who routinely bashes Mr. Sheehy and Donald Trump—accusing Bridger of existing “for insiders and the Park Avenue billionaires at Blackstone.”
Mr. Cohodes, who owns a Montana home, then made public a letter he’d sent demanding the federal government probe Bridger over “false statements” on a federal form, and asking Gallatin County commissioners to investigate Bridger’s use of local bonds it received. The letter was signed by seven other Montana businesspeople, most donors to Democrats and to Mr. Tester. “The bottom line is [Bridger’s] going to go broke,” Mr. Cohodes told a Montana outlet.
The negative headlines mostly failed to explain that a Bridger employee had accidentally ticked the “SDB” (socially disadvantaged business) box, instead of the “SDVOSB” (service-disabled veteran-owned business) box on a federal form that tracks demographics. Or that the Gallatin Commission issued a statement that it had received a “politically motivated” inquiry that seemed to “stem from a misunderstanding of conduit private activity bonds.
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The Tester campaign has amplified the attacks and has an ad claiming the company is “failing.” This is appalling, given the attacks are a huge hit on employees, some of whom are veterans and all of whom were issued stock. Local residents who invested in a hometown company have also been harmed.
Planes are capital-intensive and Bridger does have debt; it’s also growing and has posted record revenue and contract awards. Bridger Chairman Jeffrey Kelter says in an interview that Bridger “is a Montana company with 200 employees and a mission to protect lives and property, whose growth trajectory has been consistently great.” He points to a board of directors with heavy hitters from banking and investment, and notes this has been a “very, very good year for Bridger.” After decades in executive roles, he finds “for a small company to get this level of negative attention is unprecedented.”
Mr. Sheehy stepped away from Bridger in July to minimize any conflicts and focus on his campaign. But he’s unhappy that Bridger employees are bearing the fallout of these attacks. “Certain things should be out of bounds in politics,” he says, “A sitting senator trying to destroy a business in the state he is supposed to represent is one of them.”
THW reached out to both sides, Sheehy spoke to him and none of the many Tester offices answered his requests for comments.
I totally understand the political angle, and that Montana is important for the whole country because of the Senate and so on. I guess political entities have bought into the idea that “the ends justify the means”. If we circle back to the media, it means that we basically can’t trust them to achieve escape velocity from any politically convenient narrative.
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As THW shows, it’s not really that difficult to listen to both sides, be even-handed and let the chips (so to speak) fall where they may. It may be a tough business model, though, as in our world there are many foundations and not-for-profits seeding MSM with stories that support their worldview.
And yet, reporters’ knowledge and experience over time can provide essential context for our understanding, plus are closer to people on the ground observing situations in real time. Bottom line: I see a much more vibrant, diverse and trustworthy news ecosystem struggling to be born.
As a former reporter and public affairs officer I have been on both sides of this issue. I remember being surprised when so many of the reporters I dealt with were simplistic, sensationalist or sort of followed the same “new thing” again and again with out being very enterprising. That said I think a free press and the journalism profession is essential. I think some of the distrust of media& politicians is part of general distrust in institutions that has been happening past decades, hasn’t been helped by Trump calling any critical reporting “lying media” and branding of the “liberal press” by conservatives. I agree with you, Sharon that Hot Shot Wake Up Call is a refreshing breath of nuanced good subject matter journalism among naive generalists that go for the same simplistic labels again and again. I thought Greenwire had some of that flavor too. Anyhow, hope you are right. Better more insightful journalism definitely needed and tough when community journalism has such a hard time competing with other media AND the predators are out there gobbling up so many news outlets just for money.
Cindy, you bring up another interesting point. There are many outlets (including E&E News and Greenwire, Bloomberg, various legal news sources, that most people (and even some NGOs I know) can’t afford. I tried the “equity and justice” angle with E&E (clearly TSW is not a business) but no go.
I also don’t think Trump and conservatives are the problem. I hang out in non-Trump space and folks there are concerned about obviously wrong stories like “Lab leak is a conspiracy theory”, “Joe Biden is healthy and hearty” and many others. The problem was not just biased coverage, but having the go-to answer for us skeptics being “you are fed lies by conservatives.” When it turns out they are wrong.. they don’t apologize nor seem to care.
Uri Berliner wrote an interesting essay on how media lost trust based on his experience at NPR https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust.
In partial agreement have you read this article on why people spread conspiracy theories? If you can’t get past paywall I have a copy in a document I can send to your email.https://theconversation.com/some-online-conspiracy-spreaders-dont-even-believe-the-lies-theyre-spewing-237730
I think the expression “conspiracy theories” is just a current usage that distracts us from the question of whether something is true or not. We used to have plain English words to say “true” or “not true”. Now we have “conspiracy theories” “misinformation” “malinformation” and so on. It’s almost as if the words have transferred from being about accuracy and truth, to the intent or questionableness of the people making the claim.
The flip side of this is “if we are the right people with the right intentions, whether something is true or not does not matter. ” I would say, from the Gallup poll, people aren’t buying that.
It probably takes a subject matter expert to tell if it’s good subject matter journalism, so it may be that to reach a naive generalist audience, nuanced good subject matter journalism would not be effective. That’s especially true where the audience is more interested in validating its opinions than challenging them. So I am agreeing with you about the value of professional (general) journalism.
I also think it is fair to call out the right wing for launching an offensive (years ago, but which Trump has gone nuclear with) against neutral reporting, which encouragers “forum shopping” for news.
Umm.. many folks in the media are upfront about objectivity being passe..
“Among the news leaders who told Heyward and me that they had rejected objectivity as a coverage standard was Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press. “It’s objective by whose standard?” she asked. “That standard seems to be White, educated, fairly wealthy. … And when people don’t feel like they find themselves in news coverage, it’s because they don’t fit that definition.”
More and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, in increasingly diverse newsrooms believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.
“There is some confusion about the value of good reporting versus point of view,” said current Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who noted that many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education. “We stress the value of reporting,” she said, “what you are able to dig up — so you (the reader) can make up your own mind.”
“The consensus among younger journalists is that we got it all wrong,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, told us. “Objectivity has got to go.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms-news-reporting-objectivity-diversity/
As we used to say, “they need to pick a lane.” Either we should listen to them because they add objective value, and can be trusted, or they are off in their own space and their pieces are basically op-eds. And that’s why I think it’s important that we who are experts attempt to tell more of the whole story.
I didn’t use the word “objectivity.” By “neutral reporting,” I simply meant facts as opposed to opinions. I understand the point about needing different perspectives on facts to fully understand them, but you don’t get your own facts, right? Rush Limbaugh and Fox have not been interested in the reader making up their own mind.
Right you are Sharon, I would assume a reporter would look at the data shown in the story, and see the decline in media trust began about 1976. However, a red herring attachment of blaming Donald Trump exemplifies the very point of mistrust! It certainly applies to all sides of the political spectrum, with far too many examples to build any future trust in message delivery…..
After we lost Cronkite, it all went to hell in a hand basket…..
Lazy journalism, like AP’s, network tv, merely re-prints agency biased press handouts. Government leaders are appointed by majority party officials.
Nobody can cast disparagement on any “minority” actor in government or politics. So things like the late Senator Jackson-Lee and her .50 cal AR-15 with no fact checking on where in the hell is there teen age kid with a shoulder held .50 calibre anything? Or fact checking a network lead teleprompter reader correcting a debater whose statement is correct? Bring in the clown cars. Everyone who believes different from you is a threat to democracy? Unserious? I tire of being chastised for reading the statements and reports published by scholars, government PR folks, and people who are doing the work, and then using the information to disagree with the delegated experts.
Or, printing the record of fire following Chief Randy Moore like a trailer while he bangs the drum for prescription burning and end runs congressional statutes of process and procedure. PODs are but one example. Defend and suppress a 50 acre fire start in a 20,000 acre “fire shed” with a POD plan is not what congress demands by its planning statutes and a litany of federal court decisions to send proposals and existing plans back to be created only under the letter of the law. Nor is the Chief’s instructions to use “unplanned ignitions” as prescribed fire “for resource use” involve any planning but acting on his decision and then mediate or litigate at a later date.
Better, don’t tell the public that the Tribes and their society of slave holders is the be all and end all of successful use of fire. That is no more true than using a machine gun to hunt game because you can use “unplanned weaponry” to manage game animals or predators. Better, tribal use of cascade pesticides to kill elephants raiding crops, and a secondary benefit of also killing any predators that consume the vast trove of protein a dead elephant is. (Same pesticides with Spanish language labels have been found in the garbage of season illegal marijuana grows on Federal land, including USFS, USPS, BLM, Indian Affairs, ad nauseam. That aboriginal fire changed the mix of species to “fire adapted” was serendipity. Not planned. Setting fires was planned. Unplanned fire was two indigenous kids chasing one another with a fire brand to burn their hair or whatever kids do unthinkingly somehow becomes “wise use.” Holy crap! Endless Smokey the Bear for 75 years, and still we have abandoned campfire conflagrations. “Prowlin’ and a growling’, and sniffing’ at the air….” Humans are lazy, incompetent out of their small home territories. Humans are 85% of the “unplanned ignitions.” I doubt that has changed since 1492. Humans are human. Imperfect. The “Bell Curve” measures the range of competency. Anomalies and genetic train wrecks are part of the human experience. Disease and accidents, warfare and weather take a huge toll. But the primary threat to a human is another human: disease vector, agent of mayhem, basically stupid due to the inherent diversity of the range of intelligence and experiences. I include all humans in my wide brush painting. Equity is to own it. Own that humans are extremely flawed, diverse, and you must include them all in the benefits and harms, as the equity in the formula.
Indigenous fire was weaponized: burn out your enemy’s territory. It was defensive: If we burn it now, it cannot burn us out next month. Besides, setting fires walking with your face to the wind, going home or to winter living, is a crap shoot. 330 Million souls become victims of set fire crap shoots. Then, but only if you live in New Mexico, FEMA was forced by a budget addition to a Ukraine DoD spending bill, to pay $3.85 Billion to fewer than 10,500 victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon escaped prescribed fire under Chief Moore’s watch. And it was he who was “transitioning” from R-5 Forester to Chief as the Dixie Fire became the largest ever in CA. Not the deadliest, that was Camp Fire that claimed 84 lives, (or more or fewer depending on which stats you see), undeniably on Moore’s watch as R-5 Forester. Note: HermitsPeak-CalfCanyon sign up ends election week. Prescient. To date about 10,500 victims have collected claims adding up to <$1.5 Billion. Where will the other $2.35 Billion going and to be spent within the Dept of Homeland Security? That needs, like a Wilderness fire, "watching" as a suppression action as described by Chief Moore. I have read this week, alone, a half dozen referrals to spendings by the Feds of that amount and less as described as a lot of money for a questionable government activity or dole.
Dry land farming described in the 19th century as to be followed by increased annual precipitation. Ballyhooed "best science" and always by speculators' claims when selling railroad checkerboard sections to ill educated farmers as the norm of those who left crofting for a farm of their own.
Prescription fire has zero to do with pre-Columbian indigenous fire, which was a path to eliminate very inconvenient trees, underbrush and inedible plants, starting with inhabitation by migration of groups of humans from Asia as the Ice Age entered a "glacial warming period" about 16,000 to 20,000 years ago. Humans followed mega fauna of the Ice Age, hunting them to extinction. Hardly the environmentalists as social science explains. Better, now call them "indigenous survivalists intent on that end result." The next minutes were critical to them living or dying, and "next century" an abstract idea yet to be conceived or considered. Fire. Random and spatially indiscriminate, at random intervals. Random is also a pattern. Hardly the scheduled demands for prescribed burning as a form of reducing fire hazard in a society that damns logging and litigates at the drop of hat. Metes and bounds were not relevant to aboriginal fire setters. Our today, now, climate imperative "depends" on carbon sequestration which is hardly the outcome of a prescribed fire in landscapes of overloaded fuels in West Coast and Western Interior forests.
Wilderness, roadless, land defined as now "preserved" for the legerdemain of "prescribed fire" for "returning resilience to the landscape" is hunting ducks from a punt with a small canon filled with shot and shrapnel on the bow. Returns were a boat load of ducks to count, like acres "treated" by fire from unplanned ignitions, and sell for money or as "wise use." Waterfowl hunting canons are not selective logging, but mere flock clearcuts with zero attention to sustained populations for the future. Forests now enrolled for a century of welfare payments for existing and getting fat and fatter with fuel is no guarantee that conflagration will not consume the "carbon sink for pay" and the neighborhood as well. Covid for forests, just as the virus consumed the over fed, health compromised, aged dumped collectively into "group homes" where they died without ever saying goodbye to a loved one. As we have seen in the Chief Moore regime, the unforced error of deficit spending has the consequence of uninhibited inflation which unlike fires, never ends. Inflation creates the new base for all costs. And always higher, more. Rural lives, economies, lives, assets have been consumed by "protection and preservation of the last…" A man made, university origin virus of death based in preservation killed economies and people, including the USFS, now at half its former staffing, and solely dependent upon congressional funding now there are no billions flowing into the various funds in every Region, Forest and Ranger District on timber buyer contributions on top of the stumpage payments. Rock replacement for roads, P-R for reforesting clear cuts, slash disposal slush funds now eaten by fire three decades ago, road us fees for every mill per volume of logs hauled, and the 25% paid to the county of timber origin of the gross revenues collected by the USFS. All that has happened is a now base cost for everything has been established by the market and the fight to get back to any sense of financial comfort is ongoing and getting nowhere. I get it. Start fires and you will have escaped fires and you gain budgets and personnel dependent upon those governments' budgets. My grandfather got a Dad whipping in his youth in Denmark for selling pigeons for meat and if one returned to the coop, immediately selling it again. He always voted for union Democrat candidates in the U.S. when he became a citizen. But, no matter who was President, the Lauersen home had a framed photo of the current President and First Lady on the wall of the dining room. Respect.
Prescribed fire without finite boundaries, which are now non existent, is a recipe for economic disaster and there is NO statute in the federal law the requires the US Government to pay victims from prescription fire and unplanned ignitions. None. Except, of course, when a Speaker puts a rider in an appropritations bill to send financial aid to Ukraine. A budget item mandating FEMA pay victims of a USDA-Forest Service Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico prescribed fire that became the largest wildfire in NM history. All at the urgings of Biden appointed Sec of Interior Deb Haaland, (former Congresswoman from N.M.), and both Senators and the Democrat N.M. representatives, which was how/why Mother Superior Pelosi described it as an urgent and reasonable outcome FOR NEW MEXICO. ONLY. Name another State with a National Forest or Interior Dept lands that victims of "unplanned" ignitions get paid for their losses. Mostly, their fire insurance is cancelled for the future and replacement housing costs have inflated from the values of 2022, and with no path to fire insurance you cannot get a mortgage loan to replace the dwelling. Better, since it was constructed, a litany of "green" mandates have increased the cost to build, fire or no fire. From framing to earthquake resistant design, to roofing for fire preventions, to buried utilities and the list goes on and on. Off the grid? Still need a mandatory wiring installation for solar panels and EV charging and no LNG lines for use of LNG for cooking, and heating.
My contention is that without logging PODs are useless. I once contested and won an argument with a R-6 Forest that removing the road prism from the timber base was a faulty conclusion, in that roads created a micro watershed along a corridor of light with no competition on or under the road surface for nutrients, sunlight and water: two trees on either side of the road prism were getting extraordinary growth stimulus from above and under the road. I merely counted and recorded the DBH of roadside trees, and their height, and went two chains into the adjacent stand and ran a two tree strip on either side of a compass line. On a square foot of road prism plus the two tree strip on either side, the increase in the volume of wood along the road two trees in made up for the road surface lack of trees. I never did the same for power line rights of way, but the wide ones still have more wood adjacent to the R/ W than the interior stand enough to disqualify the zero applied to the right of way width. And what is worse, all the limbs grow to the light, and the lean of adjacent trees is always towards the power line or across a road.
So PODs must be "sanitized" by a road side logging job to have a defendable space from which to reduce crown fire and have a place to start prescribed fire from or extinguish ground fire with engines, tankers, and mobility. Start at the bottom of a road, and log, taking every tree under 16" DBH. Cut-to-length processor can use the cut tree in its grapple to limb dead limbs 15 feet up from the stump height. Chip the undersize and brush, blowing the chips onto the forest floor. Have a pulp sort if possible. And a merchantable log sort. Work uphill to the road's end of junction with the next segment of the POD perimeter. Create and leave a chain long and half chain deep clear cut on flat ground for piling material to burn. It can become a vehicle turn out. Then the Congress needs to budget for a contracted brush long reach roadside brush cutter that works when conditions permit to hit every POD perimeter and chip all new growth along the side of the road on a schedule. Prevent new growth, and you can spray if allowed or chip if not. Then the POD has a modicum of a chance to do what is planned and that be the line in the forest where fire must be stopped. If you don't prepare and maintain, we might as well put a paper wrapped hoop in every pit toilet house. Same mentality. Neither is a lifetime solution unless the paper is changed and the vegetation regrowth is reduced to meaningless as fuel. (I read the original study design for pit toilets. Secret of success? 12" Minimum diameter of vent pipe. Too big to be compromised by spider webbing. Just do the math of volume potential between a former 4" or 6" vent pipe and a 12" vent pipe. $125,000 USFS study. Worth every cent of expense.)
AI is sucking up the power for EVs. Where are the planning instruments for increased green electricity? What is the build out time frame? Using what? We do not have, nor have planned and permitted for increased electricity, except for the bird killers of solar and wind, and offshore wind is the end of seasonal migrations of sea birds along the shores. I have no idea how many song birds get whacked on their night migration flights either flying into turbine towers and the turning blades. There is a Chicago group that has counted dead birds on routes around skyscrapers and LED light enhanced commercial and government buildings. Birds migrate at night using stars as reference points. Urban lighting has "fouled" that resource. Collect Species, age, gender, date are all recorded. And even then, the 3-5 Billion killed by house cats, housed or feral, is scoffed at and there is no hue and cry, just as there is none for lighted urban locations on flyways, or offshore wind farms, and desert super solar collectors that concentrate rays and send them to heat water to make steam.
This country has people who count and record and get paid by the same governments that punish some, and not those whose mechanical stuff kills birds yet not others who do the same and get a congressional pass. A judiciary pass. We teach K-12, at one time, our youth to be critical thinkers. Now we have a Congress and judiciary that cannot think critically. Sad. Getting sadder. Only "enemies of the state and non-believers" say a word about government edicts that are wrong, make no sense, and are favors to a few, and punishment to the many.
USFS: what ever happened to the old saw that "you must break eggs to make an omelette." AI designed hens issuing containerized chicken and duck yolks and whites? Why is fire "watching" still a budget item on the spending side and POD preparation also a cost but it has the potential to produce SOME offset in costs (timber sale $ value) which none will talk about or consider? I know the reason for it to fail: All the conversion facilities are dependent upon and are matched with the available 40 year rotation of non carbon sequestering millions of acres of private, government and tribal forest lands. In a word: The US no longer has the facilities to make US steel, appliances, ships, nor wood from forests with trees too many that they are burned, and never salvaged, only for standing dead trees to become the fuel for the next iteration of wildland unplanned ignitions. That thinking goes right back to the paper covered hoop in the outhouse. At some point, none can grasp nor willingly grab onto the problem. Pretty much like PODs: burn the house down instead of fixing the plumbing. Urban renewal is no different. Fuel loaded forests are blighted with unburned fuel. We allow them to burn and disallow logging for profit or reasonable husbandry of the landscape. Slums are decadent housing overloaded with fuel, but affordable. Fixing the problem with "gentrification" becomes "racism" and that from a blind and deaf economist and the academic socialist hatred for the free market. Isn't racism when you do nothing and let the Philadelphia row houses burn, a block at a time? Prevent the fire from consuming more than one block. Say! Urban PODs! And from Chief Moore and POTUS Biden government. Moore should be promoted to HUD Secretary. The outcomes are the same whether it is the rural vast "unclaimed public domain," still US Govt land, and urban low cost "affordable" housing." Affordable due to "you get what, you pay for." And that is exactly the situation with Federal grazing and timberlands. Urban interests control the slums and the public forests, and are a blight on both.
By definition, Wilderness, roadless areas, National Monuments, forests enrolled in government/corporate welfare carbon sequestration for a century are the greatest existential threat to private property, private timber stands and industrial forests: Large fuel reservoirs unstoppable at private property lines.
Land use is THE limiting factor for affordable housing. Whether that is unrelenting desires to burn instead of log, or "saving" land for AI 1000 acre campuses now farmland, but not for long if political gain is in play. Designation of Wilderness, which has become a super fuel source blow torch aimed at private land, qualifies as "an existential threat of magnitude."
The denial of the "Tribes" and the US, by not addressing tribal institutional slavery in Congress, that slavery which was close to universal among the indigenous peoples, finally was addressed in the post Civil War era and 13th and 14th Amendments that ended slavery, also forced Congress to re-write all all previous Treaties to demand the signers cease holding slaves forever. Pre Civil War Cherokee tribe losing Georgia to the Georgia statehood land demands, and that tribe being exiled to what became Oklahoma, had an official US Govt roster of all "livestock" they trailed to OK Indian Territory noting over 1000 Black slaves. Chinook tribe on the lower Columbia River being the middleman trader of slaves captured along the NorthPacific shoreline and traded upriver with Interior tribes for dried bison and other meat, the currency was slaves for goods. Obsidian for cutting edges and arrow-lance points, and other plant materials and crafts. Later for anything metal, and guns, needles and threads, dyes, buttons, decorative clothing accessories. Also females were most prized and with them came institutional memory of coastal tribe culture and knowledge. "Exchange students." "Visiting professors." Indigenous women were survivors and talented. Sarah Winnemucca had never seen a White person when she had her "coming of age" ceremony at age 16 or so. 12 years later she gave a moving speech in perfect English to the US Congress. She was defending the rights and ways of indigenous peoples to the law makers of the U.S. And did that without Indian school, bilingual teachers, working maybe 8 months a year. Adopted by a White preacher and family during Paiute war with US government forces. ONI area.
The definition of "controlled burn" seems amorphous and without bounds under federal law. How is "suppression" conflated with "prescribed fire from unplanned ignition?" How is standing afar, leaning on a shovel, defined as "monitoring" and "monitoring" officially defined as one act of "suppression?" How does Congress audit and control spending under shape changer USFS policy? How is the litany of federal congressional statutes dumped into the Federal Register, as consequentially demanding a level of planning that courts have expanded and embellished now be addressed and defended enough to enable any agency to actually operate and do "good" for America?
A map of statutes and court decisions about "How to not get there from here or any other place."
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Apologies to Pogo, and Mr Kelly.