'Cheerleading for a broken system’: fire exclusion in the Klamath National Forest
“Really what I was pointing out was that we have to stop playing the short-term game of just cheerleading on our firefighters as they fight these impossible battles, and die, while not addressing the root cause which is, we need to be proactive about managing fuels on the landscape. So, my plea to Rachel was to be truthful with the public, to be honest about these trade-offs, to not treat every fire suppressed as this major victory, and to really start to be culpable. That fuel accumulation that we have out there on the ground is the responsibility of the state and federal fire management agencies who strictly focus their efforts on fire suppression and fire exclusion, and they don’t get their offense on the field in off-season to any meaningful degree to deal with the fuels problem.”
I've been reading and listening to a lot of podcasts over the past few years about fire and our forrests and the point above is one that keeps coming up over and over again. We aren't approaching managing our forrests correctly or telling the truth to the people who live near or in them and until we do, the fires will keep burning hotter and more out of control.