Clarifying wildfire and public values
The term "values" is perhaps one of the most muddled and confusing terms in wildfire management discussions today. Sometimes it's used to refer to tangible things, as in "we should send a crew to do values protection" (i.e., we should send firefighters to protect that house). Other times it's used to talk about slightly more abstract - but still physical things - like the habitat of a particular species, land used for hunting, or a kind of ecosystem. And, in other situations, it's even more ambiguous, being used to describe things like what the public "values" (i.e., priorities like preventing smoke or reducing house loses or access to old growth landscapes). In " Values of the public at risk of wildfire and its management ," Kathryn Williams, Rebecca Ford, and Andrea Rawluk from the University of Melbourne take up the challenge of clarifying this messy and confusing term. They have a more specific goal as well, though: to identif...