Here in Oregon, as in much of the West, wildfire and resulting bad air quality are increasingly a part of our lives. Even this month in October, the air in my hometown of Portland, OR was the second worst in the world after Seattle. We last shared this dubious distinction in 2020 after severe September wildfires. We know wildfire smoke carries a great deal of PM2.5, which can have devastating health consequences. However, we also live in an area of the country where wildfire has historically been critical to maintaining healthy, diverse and resilient ecosystems. Some trees need fire to release their seeds. Indigenous peoples across North America have used fire to benefit their ecosystems, enhance biodiversity, as well as for ceremonial purposes. Colonization of the West has led to fire suppression and exclusion practices resulting in accumulation of fuels and increased wildfire risk. Moreover, climate change is leading to prolonged drought, extreme wind events, infected and diseased forests, drier climates and more. The combination of these two events has resulted in increased intensity, severity and frequency of wildland fires.
This affects not only us in the West, but increasingly people around the world as the heavy smoke from these fires travels.
So what do we do about this? I always admonish that people not light things on fire and breathe them into their lungs, but could a small dose of fire help prevent more catastrophic fires? We do not have the ability to completely prevent these fires, and our land needs fire, so how do we balance those risks in a changing climate? This is a source not only of fear in our communities but also conflict! Here in Oregon, a Forest Service worker engaging in a prescribed burn was actually arrested by the local sheriff’s office! These are super challenging and high-stakes decisions, and there are no simple solutions.
The American Lung Association has released a report diving into this very challenging and complex issue, and I also wanted to invite someone on the podcast who struggles with this complex, life-and-death issue every day.
Bodie Shaw is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, and previously served as the national wildland fire director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and has worked as the acting Chief of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID. He is a veteran of the US Air Force, and previously taught at Oregon State University. He has lectured widely on tribal interests as they pertain to natural resource management. In 2008, Shaw was the first to participate in an international exchange program between the U.S. and Australian governments and lived Down Under with his family from August 2008 to March 2009 while developing a new trilateral wildland fire/bushfire agreement between the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. He currently serves as the Bureau of Indian Affairs deputy regional director of Trust Services for the Northwest Region. He also previously served on the board of the American Lung Association of Oregon, and came on the podcast to discuss their report from the perspective of someone who lives this work every day.
I work in the ICU and am constantly forced to make life-and-death decisions with imperfect data. Many of the medications I use also have severe potential health impacts, and we only use them if it is necessary to prevent larger scale harm or death. The analogy with needing fire to fight fire seems consistent. The above chart would suggest that the components of a prescribed burn are less harmful than that of a wildfire. Our Forest Service, communities in fire prone areas and more are also faced with increasingly challenging decisions. The ALA report did find that prescribed fire has risks and benefits. The risks obviously are of PM2.5 burden, which is well-known. However, though we need more research, there is evidence that the composition of prescribed fires (generally more biological material) compared to escaped wildland fire has lower health impact.
Based on the above, they also cost far less than an out of control wildfire. Furthermore, prescribed fires are generally conducted when meteorological conditions are more favorable, fuel consumption and therefore smoke production is less, and atmospheric conditions align to support adequate smoke dispersion with wind patterns that allow smoke to move away from populated areas, hospitals, schools, and roadways.
In addition, there are ecosystem benefits to prescribed fire, such as decreasing the hazardous fuel load, the removal of invasive species, reducing pest and disease spread, recycling nutrients back into the soil, and promoting the growth of species that rely on fire for seeding. Based on the above charts, we are not matching our prescribed burns to where they are needed (or the prescribed burns are preventing the catastrophic burns that we are seeing in areas where prescribed burns are not done).
The windows of time for safe prescribed burns are narrowing, the stakes are high but the cost of inaction on fuel reduction is also very high. We need a response from the whole of our communities, from individual home owners making their homes property resilient to community planning to locate communities in areas of reduced risk, to ongoing research in how to reduce fuels safely in our forests. Obviously, our escalating wildfire tragedies stem from the twin root causes of a colonialist mindset ignoring the wisdom of Native peoples as well as human caused climate change. To address those root causes, we certainly need a renewed commitment to our Native communities as well as curbing greenhouse gasses. We also need a year round approach to fire management and climate change resiliency in the West as well as more science to help us make some of these high-stakes life-and-death decisions. I am so grateful to our wildland firefighters, like Bodie Shaw. They and the members of our Forest Service are literally putting their lives on the line to help protect our communities.
TLDR= maybe a little fire is okay to prevent bigger fires
To Do
- Got to Firewise.org to learn how to protect your home and family.
- Learn more about health impacts from prescribed burns from the ALA report “Can Prescribed Fires Mitigate Health Harm.”
- Tell your representatives how important it is to ensure a professional and well-funded, year round proactive approach to decreasing the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
- Learn more about the health of our wildland firefighters and outdoor workers by listening to “The Health of Our Heroes” episode from Season One.
- Learn more about the impact of wildfire smoke and how to keep you and your family safe during smoke events by listening to the “Our Health in Wildfire Season” episode from Season Two.
- Donate to the American Lung Association who works hard to help navigate challenging health concerns such as their evaluation of health effects of prescribed burns.
