Wildfires Consume Funds Flagged for Prevention
20:19 minutes
This year, the U.S. Forest Service has spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting wildfires, cutting into funds originally set aside to prevent them. Fire historian Steve Pyne compares the way we manage fires today to how we manage health—focused on emergencies, and not prevention.
Segment Guests
Chris Topik
Chris Topik is former staffer at the House Appropriations Committee and director of “Restoring America’s Forests” at the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia.
Steve Pyne
Steve Pyne is a fire historian at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
Related Links
- The Daily Beast: Colorado Blazes Remind Us That National Policy on Fire Needs a Fix
- Los Angeles Times: Let It Burn? Yosemite Park Officials Won’t Say That, but It’s Policy
- Arizona Republic: A Fire History of America (1960-2011)
- Rolling Stone: The Great Burning—How Wildfires Are Threatening the West
- Earth Island Journal: Mission Impossible
Meet the Producer
About Christopher Intagliata
@cintagliataChristopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer. He once served as a prop in an optical illusion and speaks passable Ira Flatowese.