Summer wildfires will be with us again soon, although there is hope that a cold and wet winter (still with us in much of Idaho, central Oregon, the Greater Yellowstone) will mean a less active season in these areas. Much of the West is as ready, or more ready to burn than last year.

Overall each year is worse since the 1980s and firefighting threatens to consume the entire budget of land management agencies.

The FLAME Act (Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act) proposes to create a permanent fund for reliable monies for this, rather than relying on the luck of the political year for congressional appropriations and/or presidential support.

The details of when and how to fight fires will, of course, remain very controversial.

Up in FLAME. High Country News. By Evelyn Schlatte

Related. Montana fire prediction. Good news for western Montana, bad for eastern. Great Falls Tribune.

 
About The Author

Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.

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‎"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

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