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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 · 04/09/2026
Great insight into a distinctive fire subculture
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Same thing has happened on Kaibab Plateau. Beginning in 1996 major burns have encircled the plateau and some sites have reburned. Not all high severity, but burn scars are the most visible feature in satellite imagery - Landsat ca. 1970s and Google Earth (need to add 200,000 acres for 2025).
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
It *is* a new world. We took stuff from a former world in deep time and released it in our own time to spawn a new world. Wildfires are among the ecological velociraptors that have resulted.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Warms the heart of a pyromantic...
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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 · 24/08/2026
Historically, (pre-industrial) forestry plantations were designed with fire protection in mind. Here's a forest schema from 19th century Germany which even accommodates a railroad.
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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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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Fire and sword - an ancient alliance. Here's Homer in the *Iliad* likening Achilles in his battle rage to a wildfire. Fire is no stranger to war, nor parched mountains, thick forests, and rolling winds to Europe.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
More premium prose from John Vaillant.
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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 · 07/08/2026
Theophastus (De Igne): 'Of all the substances fire has the most special powers' because only fire 'is naturally able to generate itself and to destroy itself: the smaller fire generates the larger, and the larger destroys the smaller.' Not bad for a student of Aristotle.
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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 · 30/07/2026
Yep. We're beyond adapting to fire. We have to adapt to a fire age.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
These megafires (and urban conflagrations) are a pathology of the developed world. A paradox that should give us pause.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Europe's historical solution is to embed fire in an agricultural landscape and its version of cultural burning practices. Modernity emptied landscapes or refilled them with feral fuels, and it replaced landscape burning with fossil fuel combustion and global warming. A bad collusion.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
And thank you for the kind words.
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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 · 14/07/2026
The Enlightenment deconstructed "fire" into combustion and abstracted it into energy. Fire in its natural habitat ceased to exist as a subject of formal inquiry. It returns in the hands of foresters, who only wish to control it. For good or ill, no academic discipline controls it.
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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
The other shows what seems to be a forest plantation. I was charmed by the sheep.
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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
The White Sage fire, further north, burned at the same time and triggered the evacuation of the park. The BLM won't release its fire docs under FOIA until the DB fire report is out. Ok, these were unhappy fires, but this is not how we can learn from them.
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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 · 30/06/2026
The US is doing to capitalism what the USSR did to socialism. I don't see this ending well.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
The Gila was an early adopter of the policy reforms of 1978 and one of the success stories in restoring fire. Was it enough? The forest is being stressed by near-millennial drought and seems to be holding.
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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 · 08/04/2026
Cooking, adaptations to smoke, now burns - fire has been in the human genome for a long, long time
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Yep. Fire is what its setting makes it, which is to say, the world we've made, and it is systemic. Its management is fundamental to ecological infrastructure.
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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
And the perennial favorite, the Oscar-favored beef drag, here by Frederic Remington.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
And what Oklahoma had instead of engines -
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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 · 26/02/2026
The pitch pine is a poster child for fire in the NE (USA) - what longleaf is to the SE, ponderosa to the SW, lodgepole to the NW, and sequoia to California. Some similar fire-adapted pines in Mexico. The pitch pine was also Henry Thoreau's favorite.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
In the early 20th century the date palm industry in Arizona was hit with a blight of some variety. The trees were saved by spraying them with oil and then burning them. Good fire, bad fire - even in palms?
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Burning Bush (publ 1991) tells the story of how Aussie foresters created an alternative fire strategy. WA was critical, but so was MacArthur in ACT, WWII, and several catalytic fires. The reforms were bracketed by the Stretton (1939) and Rodgers (1961) royal commissions.
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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 · 14/01/2026
A maturing Pyrocene, nudge by nudge, patch by patch, remaking the Earth.
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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 · 09/12/2025
A real loss. William had a marvelous vision of fire ecology that challenged notions that began with European forestry and went operational in North America. I always enjoyed hearing him denounce parochial assumptions as 'rubbish.' He'll be missed.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Thanks. I'm researching a fire history of the Kaibab Plateau - the Dragon Bravo fire is too big a provocation for someone who spent so many fire seasons there, but I want the whole plateau and the long history of fire not just DB. Looks like I'll be slogging thru FOIAs though.
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Steve Pyne @sjpyne.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Can you identify the fire? Is the photo yours?
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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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