Eric B. Kennedy

The past three years have felt remarkable for Canadian and North American observers of wildfire. In Canada, the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 was followed by two frantic years in British Columbia, each establishing records for area burnt. In the US, California has dominated the fire scene with blazes like the Mendocino Complex, Tubbs, and Camp making the flames visible and visceral to the public. This built towards a climax in and around Paradise, California, where over eighty people lost their lives in November 2018. Traditional and social media, pundits, and the broader public discourse has emphasized the rapid onset and 'new normal' of these fires in reference to the past 3-5 years in North America. Yet, this is a terribly short-sighted view: big and destructive fires have always been with us. While these fires have indeed been unique in their own ways and notably catastrophic, an ahistorical view on the history of fire doesn't help us any in understanding how to live wit...

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...