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Steve Pyne

@sjpyne.bsky.social
3.4K followers 303 following 140 posts

Writer, fire guy (aka pyromantic), exploration historian, urban farmer. Recent books include "Pyrocene Park" and "Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico." Website: www.stephenpyne.com

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Reposted by Steve Pyne
Pepitas editorial @pepitaseditorial.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
«Piroceno» presentado por su autor Stephen J. Pyne youtu.be/MiPo-yfDBUA * @sjpyne.bsky.social Piroceno Viejo y nuevo orden de los incendios forestales. Vivir en la Edad del Fuego Traducción del inglés de Salvador Cobo Coeditado con @biblioteca451.bsky.social www.pepitas.net/libro/piroceno
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Reposted by Steve Pyne
Pepitas editorial @pepitaseditorial.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
«El Piroceno es la nueva Edad del Fuego que está cambiando nuestros paisajes» #Reseña del libro de Stephen J. Pyne, «Piroceno», por Ricardo Estévez para @ecointeligencia.bsky.social www.ecointeligencia.com/2026/09/piro... * @sjpyne.bsky.social Piroceno www.pepitas.net/libro/piroceno
ecointeligencia.com
El Piroceno es la nueva Edad del Fuego que está cambiando nuestros paisajes - ecointeligencia
El Piroceno se enfoca en distinguir entre el fuego ecológicamente necesario, el fuego destructivo y la combustión industrial que altera el clima
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Entrevista en El Mundo (España): www.elmundo.es/papel/histor...
elmundo.es
Piroceno, la Edad de Fuego que domina el planeta: "Ver arder los pueblos es como ver regresar la peste"
Los incendios forestales ya no se parecen en casi nada a los incendios forestales. Ya no son una muralla de fuego que simplemente avanza sobre un terreno; ahora se han convertido...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A mis colegas hispanohablantes - el editorial Pepitas ha publicado el piroceno en español. www.pepitas.net/libro/piroceno
pepitas.net
Piroceno | Pepitas de calabaza
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
A little comic relief - anyone remember the kid's book "Mr Pine's Mixed-up Signs"? I was told to make up a new batch for our urban farm...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
What Talleyrand said of the Bourbon monarchy: they learn nothing and forget nothing. www.activenorcal.com/the-firefigh...
activenorcal.com
The Firefighting Rule America Abandoned 50 Years Ago Could Be Coming Back - Active NorCal
The 10 a.m. rule shaped a century of firefighting. Now Washington may revive it, and California's fire community is split.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
A slow motion Ragnarok. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/c...
nytimes.com
Wildfires Are Turning Forests in the American West Into Shrubland
Towering woodlands in the West are being permanently replaced by tracts of spiky shrubs. Conditions “just aren’t normal anymore,” one researcher said.
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Reposted by Steve Pyne
John Vaillant @johnvaillant.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
My latest on the #wildfires burning across the Northern Hemisphere: time.com/article/2026... via TIME
time.com
What Happens When the World is on Fire
"From America to Algeria, dangerous blazes are occurring around the world, giving us a glimpse into an age ablaze," writes John Valliant.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Okay, I'm quoted in it, but this is still a good introduction to Europe's recent fires. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
Why Is Europe Burning?
“This is a structural issue in society,” a Spanish firefighter said, about worsening wildfires across Europe. “We’ve turned our backs on the mountains, on nature—and cities have never been so affected...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Irresistible contrast - we don't need Deep Space Observatories looking out to the stars to understand Earth's status in the galaxy. We just need to look around us. Earth is the fire planet. None else like it. www.wired.com/story/spanis...
wired.com
One of NASA’s Most Important Deep Space Observatories Hit by Spanish Wildfires
Flames burned through the Deep Space Communications Complex near Madrid, but NASA has been unable to assess the damage as a wildfire emergency grips the region.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
In 1928 Rene Magritte imagined the landscape on fire (Le Paysage en feu). A century later that ring of fire looks like a prophetic lens on Europe's Pyrocene.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Wildfire in southwestern France - not a new phenomenon, but not a welcome one either. Here's one of several fire paintings by Etienne Mondineu (ca. 1901).
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
A year ago the Dragon Bravo fire started (discovered on Fourth) - largest fire on record for the Kaibab Plateau and the ruination of the North Rim's developed area. The promised review is still not released. Anyone else think the agency is trying to just run out the clock?
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Heat domes now, fires to follow. For historical background to Europe's fire scene, Undying Fire is published! 40% the length of Vestal Fire; half of it abridged and updated from VF, and half new and reconceptualized. Univ. of Washington Press even offers a 40% discount (code WAUT).
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
In recent decades 1998 has been season of record for the Southeast - looks like it's getting a challenger. The year was also noteworthy for the smoke that poured across the southern US from Mexico's 'temporada catastrofica' which led to major reforms in policy and programs.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Researching for a fire history of the Kaibab Plateau - my response to the Dragon Bravo fire -I found the jobs and pay for fed firefighters in 1946. You could be a legit flunky (paid more than an unskilled firefighter). Glad to see smokechasing as a distinctive category. Highest paid? Head cook.
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Reposted by Steve Pyne
Jim Whittington🔥 @jimwhittington.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
If we all start thinking response is politicized (and I admit it sure looks like we are losing to the siege forces), if you demand that responders follow a party, it can do nothing but make disasters worse, response less effective, & recovery less equitable. Hands off Smokey. Free the Bear! 11/11
Smokey Bear poster with Smokey's face in front of a wall of repeated text that reads "Think" with the last one changed to "Thanks."
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Tall Timbers was on the national register - a loss all around. I had the privilege of serving on the board for 3 years. Not just a place but an exemplar of fire and land management. wildfiretoday.com/fire-burns-h...
wildfiretoday.com
Fire burns historic building at key fire research complex – Wildfire Today
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
With Nebraska burning, it might be time to post some historic images of fire control on the Plains. Start with firebreaks installed in the Sandhills - double plowed lines with the interior burned out.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Before GIS there were fire atlases - all analogue, with printed topo maps, data entered with heavy colored pencils, hard bound in canvas. Here's one from the Kaibab National Forest that was rescued, scorched, from a fire in the supervisor's officer. A fire(d) atlas?
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
O'Connor is among the best journalists writing about fire. And the New Yorker? Who would have predicted it would regularly publish pieces on fire? Amazing fire, insightful essay. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
What America Can Learn from Its Largest Wildfire of the Year
When Dragon Bravo ignited, in Grand Canyon National Park, officials decided to let it burn. Then the fire spread out of control.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
As reports tally up the 2025 fires, here's a long view back. I've updated and abridged Vestal Fire - now 40% as long, with half the new text completely rewritten, reorganized, and reconceptualized. The narrative still includes Russia. Should be published in spring, 2026.
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Reposted by Steve Pyne
juli g pausas @jgpausas.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
New paper: The role of fire on Earth doi.org/10.1093/bios... BioScience @aibsbiology.bsky.social Fire affects all major components of the Earth system: atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, anthroposphere, & biosphere. Fire is an intrinsic factor on our planet. 🧪🌍🔥🌳🌿🌐 wildfire
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Thread: August 20, the anniversary of the Big Blowup, a catalyst for the American way of wildland fire. (top) Post-season map of the 1910 season, with the Blowup circled in red. (bottom) Photo of the mine adit where ranger Ed Pulaski held his crew at gunpoint.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Shouldn't be a surprise - the fire practices of indigenous peoples in the highly fire-prone SW could locally override even climate signals. But that is what received understanding claimed. Here's the data to bring the Ndee into alignment with other premodern peoples. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest | PNAS
Identifying the influence of low-density Indigenous populations in paleofire records has been methodologically challenging. In the Southwest United...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Thread. Yet another avatar for Dragon Bravo - burning an isolated mesa in the Canyon, this time The Dragon itself (one of the Canyon's most apt placenames).
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Dragon Bravo keeps reincarnating - now it's a Canyon fire, sending a giant talon eastward from the Walhalla Plateau across the Canyon at its widest. Always had a Canyon fire or two each season, but - really?
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
In grad school I studied history of science, geomorphology, American West, and intellectual-cultural history, all aligning with the history of exploration, of which Great Ages makes a conceptual capstone. When I decided to write fire, my exploration stuff was my quasi-model. Just released in pb
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Quite a summer for European fire. I'm reminded of a passage from A.C.Clarke's 2001: "Beyond the reaches of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire.." Not a bad account of the maturing Pyrocene. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
theguardian.com
Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires
Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Thread on Dragon Bravo, which continues its serial reincarnations. Began as lightning fire in confine and contain mode (escaped). Morphed into urban fire (incinerated park's developed area). Swelled into proto-megafire (blew over major containment line). Now a free-burning megafire.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Dragon Bravo fire - blowing, going, gone. The Kaibab Plateau as microcosm of Earth, consumed in a slow-motion Ragnarok. This is where my life as a scholar on fire began. There is no way I cannot not take on this fire as a project and try to give it context - would be professional malfeasance.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
A fire that seemed to begin as a demo of how not to do confine-and-contain, complete with urban conflagration, is evolving into a master class on big-box-and-burn. Interesting cameo of the American wildland fire scene. inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-inf...
inciweb.wildfire.gov
| InciWeb
Incidents Page of for the Inciweb site.
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Reposted by Steve Pyne
Tom Swetnam @firescar.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
The Turkeyfeather Fire in the Gila Wilderness, NM has burned as a low-severity fire over about 24,000 acres (so far). This is a continuation of a fire regime that existed for millennia before the 20th century. This 🧵reviews the fire history of the Gila, as my colleagues and I have studied it. 1/18
low severity surface fire burning through a ponderosa pine forest
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Wondering what I might say about the WU scene now that it has gotten so technical (a good development, actually). Maybe contribute to its redefinition? How about - Owning the WUI: HIZ, HERZ, ITZ [www.stephenpyne.com/blog]
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Another round with poop in the coop - another free-associating parody....
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Amazing how the mind free associates when cleaning up chicken and sheep poop ...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Amid wildfires and political arson - a memento from a gentler fire era. A smokechaser lamp (yes, it works). What happens when a crew sits around the fire cache during a season-ending storm.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
For those who would prefer to hear rather than read the fire history of Mexico, Five Suns audio is 50% off. Same great narrative. www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...
audiobooks.com
50% OFF Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico
A climate defined by wet and dry seasons, a mostly mountainous terrain, a biota prone to disturbances, a human geography characterized by a diversity of peoples all of whom rely on burning in one form...
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Fennimore Cooper's 1830s social novels center on Aristabulus Bragg, who thinks everything can be bought and sold and he should have most of it, and Steadfast Dodge, who does "not know his own meaning, except as he felt envy of all above him.” Brag and Doge - with us still.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
On rebuilding after urban fires - here's Baudette MN , before and after the fire of Oct 7, 1910 (the other Great Fire of that year). Reconstruction was rapid for both humanitarian and economic reasons - winter was imminent and property values were threatened.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
This bears an uncanny likeness to the story of Little Smokey climbing a tree to escape a forest fire. Hmm. Barry the Bruin - Smokey the Bear for the WU? (Can figurines and comic books be far behind? Maybe an AI-generated Eddy Arnold singing a revised ballad?) www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/u...
cnn.com
California man finds 525-pound animal under his home after Los Angeles fires. The bear goes by Barry | CNN
A Southern California man returned home after evacuating last month’s devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires to discover an unexpected resident lurking beneath it.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
The Conversation asked for an update of my 2019 article on the Pyrocene. As the saying goes, all models are wrong but some are useful. Here's a thumbnail of my understanding of this metaphor-model. (I had no hand in the title.) theconversation.com/human-use-of...
theconversation.com
Human use of fire has produced an era of uncontrolled burning: Welcome to the Pyrocene
Humans have become a geologic force by cooking the planet – using fire on a scale that is altering land, water, air and ecosystems.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
The Hollywood Reporter asked for 700 words for a special section on the fires they have just published. Something looking at the fire itself.So I repurposed some sentences on 'fire as biology' and gave the notion a long leash. Alas, the title is *not* mine. www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/local-n...
hollywoodreporter.com
What Fire Wants: Understanding the Enemy
What long has been considered merely a chemical reaction perhaps is best compared to another all-too-familiar scourge — a virus.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Disaster fires invite photo ops from politicians. One of my favorites: Richard Nixon, then between jobs, in shirt and tie, standing on a shake-shingle roof, holding a garden hose, staring vapidly - somewhere, while smoke rises in the background from the Bel Air-Brentwood conflagration in 1961.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
A thoughtful meditation and reminder of the scale of the reforms needed.It's not just that people are moving into fire-prone lands; in Mediterranean Europe the problem is people moving out of fire-prone lands.It's not where you live but how you live on the land. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Best Time to Fireproof Los Angeles Was Yesterday
Can a city lose an entire neighborhood now and simply shuffle on, dragging the local memory like a ghost limb?
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Ok, an anecdotal image - but this is what structure protection looked like in the 1935 Malibu fires. What a change in scale and character - of fire, of the built environment, of firefighting capacity (CCC boys then). Only the inevitability of fire in some form is constant.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
A little historical context as Eaton fire moves toward Mt Wilson - photo shows the observatory watching fires from the 1924 season, which was considered monstrous at the time, and might be taken as the first of a century-long cycle of historic conflagrations.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Million year-old bubbles could solve ice age mystery
What is probably the world's oldest ice, dating back 1.2m years ago, has been dug out from deep within Antarctica.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Bauwelt, a German architecture magazine, is doing an issue on Los Angeles - City on the Edge and asked for a commentary on fire. My hard copy arrived just in time for the Palisades fire.
Magazine article on fire in Los Angeles
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
On 20 Dec 1977 the Honda Canyon fire on Vandenberg AFB killed 4 men - the base commander, the fire chief, the asst fire chief, and a dozer operator.The main outcome was that the base got a hotshot crew.A self-published book appeared in 2004, and a documentary in 2022.Why so little post-fire impact?
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