Forest Service fire experts blocked from attending major fire conference
Source: The Missoulian
Forest Service fire experts blocked from attending major fire conference
ROB CHANEY rchaney@missoulian.com Nov 1, 2017 Updated 40 min ago
Several of Missoula’s top federal fire scientists have been denied permission to attend the International Fire Congress later this month, leading conference organizers to suspect censorship of climate-related research.
“Anyone who has anything related to climate-change research — right away was rejected,” said Timothy Ingalsbee of the Association for Fire Ecology, a nonprofit group putting on the gathering. ... “Most of the folks from the Missoula fire lab, the vanguard entity in the Forest Service — all but a handful got cut. We were expecting about 44 scientists from the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and only six or seven have been permitted to attend," Ingalsbee said. "Those folks are doing critical analysis on fire suppression effectiveness, which is a new area of research.”
“I reject that outright,” Rocky Mountain Research Station Director Colin Hardy said on Wednesday. “As a leader of scientists and manager of climate science research, that’s simply not true.” ... Hardy said the Forest Service allowed his lab to send six people to the Orlando conference. He had 20 applicants.
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The scientists no longer attending include Matt Jolly, who was to present new work on “Climate-induced variations in global severe weather fire conditions,” Karin Riley on “Fuel treatment effects at the landscape level: burn probabilities, flame lengths and fire suppression costs,” Mike Battaglia on “Adaptive silviculture for climate change: Preparing dry mixed conifer forests for a more frequent fire regime,” and Dave Calkin, who was working on ways to manage the human response to wildfire. ... “None of his crew is coming,” Ingalsbee said of Calkin’s research team. “That was another targeted area for rejection, even though the great frontier of fire management is people management. That’s about crew cohesion, safety, public expectations, homeowners — all that stuff. They’re doing the most amazing work on risk assessment.
Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/forest-service-fire-experts-blocked-from-attending-major-fire-conference/article_127599f5-a92f-5411-a76d-1f7cb95461c9.html
Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/fahrenthold
Big news from @RobChaney1: Trump administration halts climate change/wildfire experts from attending natl conference
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...can resist fascist liars.
I have this on a t-shirt which I wear whenever I visit a national park. The NPS rangers and staff don’t seem to mind. Park visitors? If they object, they behave well. Others nod approvingly.
lab is here in my hometown and people are really pissed about this decision. While this decision is par for the Dotard administration, it is a travesty for our country. Ask Santa Rosa if fire science is important. 
