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The results of the November election portend many dire changes ahead that are upending the policy strategies and advocacy campaigns that many environmental and social justice organizations had hoped, even anticipated that they would be initiating in the coming year. Now, instead of moving forward on offense to score victories and make progress, most conservation groups are resigning themselves to playing defense against efforts to subvert or scrap environmental protection laws, regulations, policies and plans. A case in point: A year of hard work by FUSEE and FireGen working to craft paradigm-shifting language regarding Tribal inclusion and fire inclusion in the Northwest Forest Plan Amendment (NWFP) will likely be trashed by the Trump administration. Instead, what is expected from agencies will be boosterism for more logging bonanzas and firefighting boondoggles at the behest of Trump's corporate campaign donors. And we'll see another four years of political appointees censoring the word "climate" from government science and policy documents.
But while the NWFP Amendment and the word "climate" may disappear from official documents, the climate-wildfire crisis is not going away, nor is the demand for environmental justice by the Tribes, rural communities, and the young generation going to disappear. We will still need courageous, committed advocates for ecological realism, scientific truth, and social-environmental justice. As an independent voice in the wildland fire community FUSEE is not subject to agency gag orders that prevent us from speaking freely to journalists, elected officials, government workers or fellow citizens. This is why FUSEE was founded 20 years ago during the Bush-Cheney Administration and a Republic House and Senate. We didn't play partisan politics--we simply spoke truth to power, successfully defending the integrity of fire researchers and managers, and preventing firefighters from being used as political props for the logging and firefighting industries.
We would have liked to play on offense in 2025 promoting new laws and policies supporting ecological fire management. But now we must play defense: defend our rights to firefighter and public safety, our honor in professional and environmental ethics, and our desires to integrate fire ecology in fire management. We need FUSEE's voice now more than ever, and through the darkness many fear is ahead, people will be looking to FUSEE to show the light. We're bucking up, not backing down.
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