Sure there are massive ones that the FS and BLM alone can’t accomplish (like fixing USAjobs) and that should be on the list, but also small ones that would make a difference. Good ideas from other agencies that the FS and BLM haven’t adopted are candidates, but not broader policy issues.
So anytime one occurs to you, you can post it as a comment in the new “Simple Fix” tab above. If we get enough of these we agree on, I’ll organize a formal letter making recommendations as we did for the employee directory and asking for signatories.
In the 2025 “Chief’s Letter of Intent for Wildfires”, please include: “…we will strive to put out all wildfires immediately with a strong initial attack; no exceptions.”
That’s it for now. Thank you.
Very respectfully,
Hi Michael,
I see you post this sort of thing on here all the time and I really don’t understand how this strategy would work. Anytime there is a lighting bust during a wildfire preparedness level 5 situation, followed by a few windy days, and air resources are grounded due to smoke (which happens across northern CA every 3-5 years), there is absolutely no way put out all fires and things take off in multiple locations at once. It’s the 2% fires that are not suppressible that burn most of the acres.
The science clearly shows that mechanical treatments, that do not include a fire component, are not all that effective. At the same time, getting Rx fire implemented at scale has been really tough and many believe it’s not feasible under the current paradigm. Even if we try to do a mechanical + pile burning, those treated stands will need to be maintained multiple times before they accumulate enough timber to be able to log them again. Given all that, I just don’t understand how your strategy of putting out every fire will be effective. I don’t know any fire science folks that support a total suppression strategy. I really would be interested something to point to that demonstrates (through modeling?) how a suppression + mechanical strategy would work. Is there anything you can think of that shows how this works?
A new modeling study (yes, modeling, so some salt is needed) suggesting that the most important means to deal with wildfire is to manage wildfires for resource benefits. This just happens to be one I read yesterday, but there are many other studies out there suggesting the same thing: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s42408-024-00339-y.pdf