Fire Managers Aim for Pan-American Cooperation
Fire Managers Aim for Pan-American Cooperation
Source: The Forestry Source, December 2004
Foresters in the United States get plenty of news about wildfires when they occur here at home, but we don’t hear much about fire in the rest of the world. Yet wildland fire is as much a part of – and a problem in – forests and grasslands in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
On average, nearly 2.5 million acres burn each year in both Argentina and Bolivia. About 3.5 million acres burn annually in Brazil. In 1998, during a strong El Niño event, more than 2 million acres burned in Mexico and nearly 1.7 million acres in Guatemala In 2003, both Guatemala and Nicaragua declared national fire emergencies. In October, hundreds of fires burned across parts of Bolivia and Brazil.
The United States, Mexico, and Canada have long-standing agreements to cooperate with each other infighting wildfires. Although some other countries in the Western Hemisphere have made similar agreements with their neighbors, fire managers are seeking a greater level of collaboration.
Scores of fires in the forest lands of Brazil and Bolivia appear in red on this satellite image taken on 7 October 2004.
Source: NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center
“Ad hoc collaboration in training, information sharing, and emergency support is no longer sufficient”, said Mike Jurvélius, a wildland fire expert with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “To properly address the problem of forest fires, we need to establish networks, to develop strategies, and to facilitate exchange of personnel and equipment in the region.”
This was the theme of the Pan-American Conference on Wildland Fire, held in October in San José, Costa Rica Key personnel from all national forest agencies in the hemisphere attended the conference. According to the FAO, it was the first meeting of its kind
“Fire management today isn’t simply a technical matter of fire suppression,” said USDA Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth in his remarks at the conference. “Our commitment to sustainability has made fire management much more complex. It involves all kinds of social and human dynamics as well as complex questions about the ecological role of fire. If we’re going to adequately address these issues, then we’re going to need new and more effective kinds of international cooperation in fire management operations, policy, and research and development.”
Denny Truesdale, assistant to the deputy chief of the Forest Service’s Department of State and Private Forestry, which includes the Fire and Aviation Management and Cooperative Forestry divisions, said regional agreements would be beneficial for countries in other parts of the hemisphere, especially for smaller countries that do not have extensive firefighting resources.
“The regional strategy and the idea of networks is to develop relationships and connections between countries and to prepare them for working together before they need to cooperatively fight fires,” said Truesdale.
Sharing firefighting resources such as trained firefighters and equipment is one goal, but Truesdale said access to satellite imagery and other technology and methods of measuring and predicting fire behavior, such as the US National Fire Danger Rating System, are also vital.
“Many countries do not have the resources to establish the entire range of detection and prevention facilities that we have in the United States and Canada-just as individual states here wouldn’t,” said Truesdale. “Having some sort of regional network would give them access to more of these resources.”
Establishing personal relationships between fire management agencies also is important, said Truesdale. “Whether it’s as formalized as in the United States and Canada, where we meet once a year, or if it’s more informal, it’s important to know who to call when an emergency comes and you need something at 2:00 in the morning.”
With three main languages spoken in the hemisphere-English, Portuguese, and Spanish-the language barrier can be a significant obstacle to cooperation.
“Our ability to work with Mexico in some cases is limited by us not having enough highly qualified firefighters and fire managers who speak Spanish-and who also speak firefighting Spanish,” said Truesdale. “Instead of having El Salvador or Guatemala calling the United States for assistance, it makes a lot more sense for them to have a relationship already established with Mexico and to work with them.”
For information on international fire management networks, see the website of the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) at: https://gfmc.online/globalnetworks/globalnet.html
