Fire Regimes: Rhetoric and the Local Climate Politics of Wildfire

Abstract

Fire history, topography, climate, and vegetation make up a fire regime: an ecological tool usedto determine a general pattern of wildfire in a particular ecosystem over time. By situating clashes between local politics and federal and state projects to scale policies regulating fire regimes, this project looks at how the ecological is impacted by the rhetorical through public debate. Here, I look at the role of science in mediating, further aggravating, and sometimes creating some understanding in relations between the state and locals around wildfire through definitions. First, I demonstrate how definitional rhetoric was instrumental in the United States Forest Service gaining control over the management of our nation’s forests. I then move 100 years in the future to the Oregon Labor Day Fires of 2020 where public officials (mis)used definitional rhetoric to rhetorically maneuver political arson rumors while evacuating residents. Lastly, I analyze the controversial Oregon Wildfire Risk Map created in the aftermath of the 2020 fires, showing how the public contested the state’s definition of “risk” and how scientists and public officials recovered the map by using the more scientifically specific definition of “hazard.” Together, I weave together a story of how tensions between the government and local residents came to shape and be shaped by wildfires in the American West.