Gloria Brown

After completing forestry at Oregon State University the BLM offered me a field manager position in Baker City, Oregon. I was the first female African-American field manager ever hired in the BLM! My career spanned 33 years (1974 – 2007), and I can count on one hand the number of times that I was in a meeting in which there were other African-Americans. It is unusual to find an African-American female in a natural resource career, let alone as a forester. …Most of my experiences confirmed that BLM and Forest Service managers are treated with respect. I found that if you communicate with and listen to people, and if you have a good reputation for knowing your job and making good decisions, people are willing to give you a chance. …I did not experience any outright prejudice. Employees and the public were more interested in how well I did my job than the color of my skin. 

As residential populations flanking the Kootenai National Forest expand, and as wildland fires grow in intensity due to climate change, land managers are proposing new strategies to improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfire in northwest Montana’s Lincoln County, where thousands of forested acres have been identified as high-risk firesheds eligible for emergency intervention. The latest example of this is the Glen Sinclair Fuel Reduction Project on the Kootenai National Forest’s Rexford and Fortine Ranger Districts near Eureka, where District Ranger Seth Carbonari is proposing vegetation and prescribed fire treatments as part of a mitigation strategy to “reduce the risk and extent of catastrophic wildfires to the communities, forests and infrastructure within the wildland urban interface of Lincoln County,” according to the scoping document. Forest managers are seeking public feedback as they review the project under the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) categorical exclusion rule.

The future of our planet remains in our hands at the moment. But any solutions toward a sustainable future lie at the intersection of forests, climate and human rights. For nearly 40 years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has undertaken bold campaigns to hold some of the world’s biggest corporations accountable for business models that are linked to forest destruction, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and the marginalization of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights and livelihoods. We now find ourselves in 2024 — six years until the indisputable, internationally agreed upon deadline to cut global emissions by half if we want to mitigate the most disastrous effects of climate change. In developing our ambitious five-year strategic plan over the past year, we have reflected on the impact of our four decades of challenging corporate power and systemic injustice while considering how our campaigns can evolve to meet the growing urgency of our times.