Firefighter

• ST. CHARLES, Mo., Feb. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- ROYAL CANIN® U.S., a division of Mars, Incorporated and leader in pet health nutrition, has announced its 2023 charitable product donation totals in honor of National Love Your Pet Day.
• At Royal Canin, we believe that every pet should have the opportunity to thrive through nutrition.
• In 2023, Royal Canin North America fed more than 1.6 million pets through product donations, equivalent to more than 11.8 million meals and 5.3 million pounds of product.
• "We know that pets make our lives better, which is why we are excited to celebrate National Love Your Pet Day with this impactful news," said Daryn Brown, President, Royal Canin North America.

A wet winter and spring followed by a hot, dry summer can be a dangerous combination in the Western U.S. The rain fuels bountiful vegetation growth, and when summer heat dries out that vegetation, it can leave grasses and shrubs ready to burn. In years like this, controlled burns and prescribed fire treatments are crucial to help protect communities against wildfires. Well-staffed fire crews ready to respond to blazes are essential, too.

• Moore told agency employees to expect budget cuts from Congress in 2024.
• However, taken at face value, budget cuts could be interpreted as a reduction in the firefighting workforce, compounding recruitment and retention challenges that the Forest Service is already facing.
• We study wildfire policy and fire ecology, and one of us, Camille Stevens-Rumann, has worked as a wildland firefighter.

The fire funding fix

• The fire funding fix allows federal firefighting agencies to access up to US$2.25 billion in additional disaster funding a year starting in 2020 and increasing to $2.95 billion in 2027.
• Prior to the fire funding fix, fighting fires – suppression expenditures – consumed nearly 50% of the U.S. Forest Service budget.
• The fix protects agency budgets, ensuring that a high-cost fire season will not completely consume the budget, and that allows more funding for preventive efforts and all the other programs of the Forest Service.

Prevention is a rising priority

• The Forest Service has also made fire prevention a higher priority in recent years.
• That work won’t be completed before the 2024 fire season, but fuel treatments will be underway.

Prescribed burning must be done when conditions are safe to limit the potential for the fire to get out of control, usually in the spring and early summer. However, climate change is expected to shorten the prescribed burning window in the western U.S.

Staffing is still a concern

• In 2023, over 18,000 people were employed as federal wildland firefighters.
• The government boosted firefighters’ pay in 2021, but that increase is set to expire unless Congress votes to make it permanent.
• The agency has started many initiatives to recruit and retain permanent employees, but it is too early to assess the results.

Everyone has a role in fire protection

• Homeowners can reduce the fire risk to their own properties by following defensible space recommendations.
• Several states also have programs, such as Colorado’s Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation Grant Program to support community investment in wildfire mitigation.
• Consistent funding is crucial, and homeowners can help by taking defensive action to reduce wildfire risk on their property.

Camille Stevens-Rumann receives funding from US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the US department of Agriculture. She used to work for the US Forest Service and works closely with Federal, State, and non-profit organizations that help manage forests across the western US Jude Bayham receives funding from the United States Forest Service. He is on the Protect Our Winters Science Alliance.

• Gallatin, Tennessee, and Rogersville, Alabama, Feb. 15, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Servpro Industries, LLC (“SERVPRO”), a leader in property cleanup, restoration, and construction, announced today its partnership as the official national title sponsor for the Firefighter Challenge League (FCL).
• “We are thrilled to become the national title sponsor of the Firefighter Challenge League,” said Brett Ponton, Chief Executive Officer, SERVPRO.
• This partnership reflects our appreciation and support for the heroic work firefighters perform every day.”
  “The Firefighter Challenge League is excited to welcome SERVPRO as our national title sponsor,” said Russell Jackson, President of the Firefighter Challenge League.
• For more information about SERVPRO and the Firefighter Challenge League, visit servpro.com and firefighterchallenge.com .

• Since colonisation, 100 native plant and animal species have become formally listed as extinct due to human activities.
• In emergency situations, there is a long-held convention that official responders such as firefighters first attempt to save human life, then property and infrastructure, then natural assets.
• We found the people we surveyed valued one human life more than the extinction of an entire non-human species – a result both fascinating and troubling.

What are we willing to lose?

• In such emergencies, our choices reveal in stark detail the values we ascribe to different types of “assets”, including plant and animal species.
• Our priorities will become even more crucial under climate change, which is bringing worse bushfires and other environmental catastrophes.
• If nature is always saved last, we can expect recurring biodiversity losses, including extinctions.

Making the hard choices

The survey involved 2,139 Australians. Respondents ranked the assets they would save in a hypothetical bushfire, choosing from the following options:

• Saving a person who had not received evacuation warnings was rated highest, ahead of saving a person who ignored evacuation advice.
• The remaining options had negative scores, meaning that respondents were more likely to choose them as least important than most important

• Next in line would have been the wallaby population, then a relatively less consequential loss of koalas.
• But the results were the opposite: people prioritised the koalas over the wallabies, with less concern for the shrub and the snail.

The results are revealing

• We take several key messages from the survey results.
• First, the conventional hierarchy of protection during fire – prioritising human life, then infrastructure, then biodiversity – does not always reflect societal values.
• In the Black Summer fires, the attempts to save crucial populations of the imperilled Wollemi Pine showed such protection of biodiversity assets is possible.
• And finally, our results were troubling for the conservation of poorly known species, the extinctions of which are increasing around the world.

Rethinking our priorities?

The world is becoming more perilous. There’s a high risk of losing much of the nature that surrounds us, supports us and helps define us as Australians. We must think carefully about what future we bequeath to our children and to future generations. This may require reconsidering our priorities – and in some cases, making different choices.
John Woinarski is affiliated with Charles Darwin University, the Biodiversity Council, Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Invertebrates Australia. Stephen Garnett works for Charles Darwin University. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with BirdLife Australia.