January 9, 2025
Owl in America is a series of letters tracing the actions of the current U.S. administration from the perspective of an environmental lawyer. These notes follow how, in a time of rapid political and ecological change, governmental decisions are felt in the living world.
Hi all~
The Los Angeles fires are rightfully dominating the news cycle. Exploding overnight January 7 and into January 8, five fires have been driven by unusually strong Santa Ana gusts driving hot, dry air—likened to the blast of a hairdryer—across a chaparral landscape desiccated after having received no appreciable rainfall since May 2024. Thousands of homes have already been destroyed and lives lost. Waiting for the winds to die down—that is, after their predicted increase later tonight and through Friday, January 10—seems to offer the best chance of relief to beleaguered and heroic fire crews and rescue workers.
For those who may wonder whether wildfire has to be so catastrophic, I believe the answer is ‘no.’ Veteran science and environment journalist Andy Revkin put together a quick but important piece, “‘Wild’ Fire is Inevitable; Urban Home Ignitions Are Not” to help explain why American wildfires continue to be so destructive to lives and property.
It involves a framing error: unlike some other fire-prone countries, Americans have stubbornly focused on preventing wildfires rather than living with them. In trying to prevent wildfires, especially in landscapes like those across the western U.S. that have evolved to burn, we’ve done heavy damage to natural ecosystems—and spent untold sums—without measurably improving the risks inherent in large, wind-driven fires like the ones burning in L.A. right now.
Revkin quotes federal fire scientist Jon Keeley: “Nobody talks about trying to stop earthquakes. Wildfires require the same kind of approach.” Keeley echoes the sentiment of wildland fire scientist Jack Cohen, whose decades-long career with the U.S. Forest Service culminated in research showing how those living in fire-prone areas can change their approach to greatly increase the odds their homes will survive firestorms. Fire-hardening houses is simpler than most may imagine.
I cannot recommend more highly the film “Elemental.” It’s directed by longtime journalist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker Trip Jennings, and its executive producer is an old colleague of mine who is perhaps as knowledgeable as anyone on the science behind living with wildfire.
It honestly confronts what we’re in store for—the ongoing, inevitable return of big blazes after decades of fire suppression—and outlines the astonishingly simple changes we can make to reduce the human impact of wildfires. None of them involve ineffective boondoggles like “logging the forests to save them.” In the end, it’s a true feel-good film because it provides solutions that actually work.
In the midst of the heartrending chaos in Los Angeles, wrongheaded and callous posturing by incoming federal leadership comes as no surprise, especially to those who recall Trump’s statements during pretty much any of our previous national crises. I won’t give it any further airtime here, except to make note of one talking head that I thought would perhaps have faded into relative obscurity after his 2019 disgrace: Ryan Zinke.
Montana Republican Zinke was Trump’s first-term Interior Secretary and oversaw the initial efforts to reduce and/or revoke National Monuments in Utah and Oregon and open them up to industrial extraction. After he was drummed out of Trump’s Cabinet in 2019 for a series of ethical scandals involving travel on chartered jets owned by fossil-fuel political donors, plus misuse of government helicopters for personal trips (which seems tame now, compared to the misdeeds of current Cabinet nominees), Zinke returned to Montana. He has since resumed his seat as the state’s representative in the U.S. Congress, but is perhaps angling for a return to the executive branch.
Yesterday, he appeared on the Newsmax network to weigh in on who’s to blame for the L.A. wildfires: “California officials,” who, according to him, have not been logging enough trees and have thus brought about these fires. He displays no awareness of the fact that Los Angeles lies in what is, in broad terms, a chaparral (dry scrub) zone, surrounded by desert.
In California, only a small portion of burned homes are surrounded by forests: 80% of homes lost to wildfires each year are in grasslands or chaparral. It is clear that additional logging in faraway forests would do nothing to save those.
It is perhaps time to reacquaint ourselves with his visage and preferred headgear (he’s on the right, below); I’ve a sinking feeling we may be hearing more questionable ecological wisdom from Zinke in the next few years.
Screenshot from Carl Higbie Frontline on Newsmax Network, January 8, 2025
A quick note of better tidings: one of our best sources for independent science journalism, Hakai Magazine , announced last year that they’d lost their major source of support and would be closing up shop. A lifeboat arrived in the form of a partnership with bioGraphic , a publication of the California Academy of Sciences, which offered to combine with Hakai and expand its own mission to include Hakai ’s coastal and marine coverage. I received an email today sharing that a public fundraising effort at the end of 2024 has reached its goal, and initial funding for the new hybrid publication is complete. The combined coverage will include worldwide biodiversity and ocean stories. I very much look forward to seeing what these wonderful writers have in store for us in 2025 and beyond.
Talk to you soon, Owl
Sources:
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/08/california-fire-rare-climate-change-factors
https://www.latimes.com/california/live/pacific-palisades-fire-updates-los-angeles
https://revkin.substack.com/wild-fire-is-inevitable-urban-home
https://www.fs.usda.gov/main/angeles/about-forest/about-area
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ9mE0TzrX0&t=276s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Zinke
https://www.newsmaxtv.com/Shows/Carl-Higbie-Frontline/vid/ce7199d0-790b-11ee-b77d-d1eab829eb45
https://x.com/RepRyanZinke/status/1877068920219443548
https://practicingterraphilia.substack.com/p/responding-to-the-la-fires
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American
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