climate warming

  • Media Distortion of SW Indigenous Fire Management

    George Wuerthner

    Ponderosa pine in New Mexico Blue Range Wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner  A  new paper, Indigenous fire management and cross-scale fire climate relationships in the Southwest United States from 1500 to 1900 CE,  was recently published. Based on solid scientific research, it makes the important point that indigenous fire management was local rather than landscape or…

  • Rewilding the West and the 2023 Farm Bill

    George Wuerthner

    The Rewilding the West proposal calls for the restoration of wolves across federal lands. Photo George Wuerthner  The current Farm Bill, which Congress passed in 2018, is set to expire in 2023. Congress will undoubtedly enact a new Farm Bill. The Farm Bill provides an opportunity to incorporate the provisions of the Rewilding the West…

  • Good Fire Bad Fire Dualism

    George Wuerthner

    The Bridger Canyon Fire by Bozeman burned during a period of high winds and extreme drought. The resulting snag forest is considered by some to be an example of a “bad” fire. Photo George Wuerthner  I continuously read articles by journalists and others who expound on fire issues that promotes several inaccuracies. Here’s just one…

  • Climate Not Fuels Drive Large Blazes

    George Wuerthner

    Active forest management is viewed as a solution to large blazes, but fails to acknowledge that climate is driving wildfire. It is true that if you completely remove forests, you won’t get a forest fire. Photo George Wuerthner  Proponents of “active forest management” or logging as a means of reducing large wildfires are looking in…

  • Why Prescribed Burning Is Not A Panacea

    George Wuerthner

    Prescribed burns are perceived to be a panacea for reducing wildfire, but there are many problems with implementation. George Wuerthner  Many people in New Mexico are calling for an investigation of the practice of prescribed burning in light of the recent immense Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak wildfires that began as prescribed burns. The combined…

  • Indigenous Burning: Myth and Realities

    George Wuerthner

      Forest Service using drip torch for prescribed burning. Photo by George Wuerthner  There has been a spate of articles in various newspapers and magazines, asserting that if the Forest Service were following burning practices of Indigenous people, the massive wildfires we have seen around the West would be tamed. Here are some representative of…

  • Walden on Wildfire–Misinformation Again

    George Wuerthner

    In a message on wildfires I just got from Congressman Greg Walden, he asserts, “A lack of management has left us with overstocked federal forests full of fuel just waiting to burn.” Unfortunately, his statement is full of misinformation. He neglects to put this into context. In the decades between the 1940s and 1980s, the…

Subscribe to get new posts right in your Inbox

‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

Latest Posts

×