MetaFilter posts tagged with forestfire

The films of Jam Handy

Upton O'Good — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:20:17 -0800

Back of the Mike | Around the Corner | Behind the Bright Lights | Sky Billboards | Just a Spark Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy was an Olympic medalist and a creator of thousands of short films. His company, the Jam Handy Organization, was hired to create training and advertising for both American companies and the US military, including many educational films which showcased the technological cutting edge of the 1930s (and doubled as advertising for Chevrolet). Many of them are now in the public domain and can be found in the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive.

Why the West is ablaze.

clearly — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:56:30 -0800

Why the West is ablaze. Wildfires are burning throughout the western United States, charring roughly 3 million acres thus far this year and covering the west in smo ke. Campaigns such as Smokey Bear have molded public opinion to believe that wildfires are always harmful to nature. However, fire is an integral component to the function and biodiversity of many communities. To help address the potential for catastrophic fires, the House just passed the FLAME act, which will fund firefighting efforts and requires the development of a comprehensive strategy to address wildfires.

BLM Pulls Funding After Controversial Results Emerge

pwb503 — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 13:58:59 -0800

First it was announced that an Oregon State University graduate student was publishing a story in the journal Science. titled, "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk," which undercut Bush administration-backed arguments for post-wildfire logging. A week later it was made public that nine professors in the College of Forestry (which gets 10% of its funding from a logging tax) lobbied the journal not to publish the article. Among them was John Sessions, lead author of a report that pressed the U.S. Forest Service to expand salvage logging. After attention was brought to the professors' attempts to keep the article from being published, many worried about the university's reputation regarding academic freedom, if not the state of academic freedom throughout the academic world. However if it wasn't difficult enough to just worry about your own professors standing in the way of getting your data published, you also have to worry about the government pulling your funding if your data doesn't match the data they want to see.

"The Bureau of Land Management acknowledged Monday that it asked OSU if the three-year study led by graduate student Daniel Donato and published last month in the journal Science violated provisions of a $300,000 federal fire research grant that prohibits using any of the funds to lobby Congress and requires that a BLM scientist be consulted before the research is published."

"It's totally without precedent as far as I can recollect," said Jerry Franklin, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied Northwest forests for decades. "It says, 'If we don't like what you're saying, we'll cut off your money.' "

Photographs from the Okanagan Fire

synecdoche — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 15:56:51 -0800

Okanagan Moutain Fire Here are some photos taken of a forest fire in British Columbia. So far I've seen evacuation numbers ranging from 5000 to 15000 people so far.

josephtate — Sat, 24 Aug 2002 12:35:11 -0800

Smokey's Vault: all about the history of the campaign, the "real" Smokey Bear, and Smokey's unique place in American culture. Created in 1944, the Smokey Bear campaign is the longest running public service campaign in US History. Smokey's forest fire prevention message remained unchanged for 50 years until April 2001, when the Ad Council updated his message to address the increasing number of wildfires in the nation's wildlands.

drezdn — Sat, 17 Aug 2002 19:39:10 -0800

The war on drugs claims forest as casualty. A forest fire that burned out of control for almost two weeks and devastated over 50,000 acres near San Diego was caused by a helicopter looking for pot farms, a California Department of Forestry investigation has concluded. [link via disinfo]

Shadowkeeper — Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:45:02 -0800

Man who started campfire charged with two counts of murder Got a few questions for any legal scholars in the house. In a nutshell: How does a guy who neglected to put out a fire wind up getting charged with murder when two pilots accidentally crash into each other? The un-nutshelled version inside.