It Only Takes a Spark

Today, I want to discuss something that is at the forefront of every Northwesterner’s mind: fire.

Growing up in a swampy, lush area of Texas, where our average rainfall is around 50 inches per year, my experience with fire was basically nonexistent. I remember a few houses in our area burning down due to electrical issues, the back pasture of some family friends catching fire while their parents weren’t home, and roasting marshmallows on an open fire at our family’s Deer Camp. Needless to say, I was not prepared for the crazy that is wildfires in the Northwest.

Then I moved to Big Timber, Montana and married into a ranching family.

Fires up here are more drastic than the fires I am used to. Because we live in such a dry climate, especially during a drought year, “fire” is a word you get scolded for uttering in fear that the very word itself may speak one into existence.

I’ve learned quite a bit about fires from my friends up here. 

Such as: if a fire starts in the mountains in the summertime and stays up in the timber, it could burn until snow falls.

Fires can smolder for months under the ground, and in some crazy cases, even years then BAM flare up again out of nowhere.

This sounds strange, but I’ve learned in my two years here that rain in the forecast often isn’t a blessing when it’s this dry. It usually doesn’t rain much, and really just opens up a spot for lightening which is common fire starter.

But the wildest thing to me about fires is just how quickly one spark can light up hundreds of acres — if the wind blows just right.

Our family and friends spent Friday night a few weeks ago fighting a grass fire on our place. Thankfully, it was caught early and put out before any more than 95 acres could burn to a crisp. And even more thankfully, we’d already grazed that pasture and didn’t need to worry about any cattle turning into unintentional BBQ.

Coincidently, the following Sunday, I saw a video circulating the internet from Big Horn County of a wild fire which was shared by an animal rights activist page, @climatesavemovement, on Instagram (screenshot attached below).

The caption accompanying the photo is as follows:

“Fires are also raging in the U.S. 

This video comes from Bighorn County, Montana and shows a trio of deer trapped behind a fence.

‘Cutting the fence would have scared the elk and deer more by pushing them into the fire,’ the firefighters said, “We had people walking along the fence to help them push them to the safe place.’

Our planet is in turmoil. Animal agriculture, which is fueling the climate crisis, is to blame.”

Okay…so a few things wrong with this entire post.

First and foremost, my red pen is rattling on my desk at grammatical errors I badly want to correct.

Second off, the animals in the video are elk — not deer.

This is interesting to me because a handful of major new outlets shared this video and all of them got this aspect of the post correct but the accounts who shared this video and the New York Post didn’t.

Furthermore, how can these animal activists expect us to hear them out if they don’t even know what kind of animal they’re fighting for?

The other thing that bothered me is actually not seen in the photo or the caption, but in the comments of this post. 

Countless people commented things such as “so they can film but not help?” and “how does cutting the fence not help?”

HELLO PEOPLE? HOW ABOUT YOU TRUST PROFESSIONALS TO DO THEIR JOB? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? OH WAIT, IT IS, BECAUSE THE SAME PEOPLE CAN’T TRUST FARMERS AND RANCHERS TO PROVIDE HARD FACTS ABOUT THEIR PROFESSIONS EITHER.

Lastly, and perhaps what grinds my gears the most, is the statement, “our planet is in turmoil. Animal agriculture, which is fueling the climate crisis, is to blame.”

So based on the context of this post, the original poster blames animal agriculture for wildfires.

I have many, many thoughts and colorful comments on what to say here but I’ll keep it to facts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a government funded, unbiased organization who does, in fact, correlate climate change and wildfires. They also show data to back up the claim that the number of wildfires per year has generally increased since 1980.

However, the only mention of “agriculture” in their information is listed in the sources section of their page — as in “USDA Forest Service.”

In other words, the most trustworthy source out there on climate information doesn’t connect agriculture, or more specifically animal agriculture, with climate issues.

Furthermore, whether you believe in climate change or not, it’s important to note that the EPA also, only credits agriculture AS A WHOLE (this includes crop production) for 10 percent of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, 10 percent to feed and clothe over 300,000,000 people is a pretty good bargain, in my opinion.

The original post I saw has over 5,000 likes on it. That post was, I know for a fact, shared two more times by other animal activist Instagram pages and received thousands of post likes on those separate posts as well.

This one little post gained an insane amount of traction in less than 24 hours — all it took was one little spark to start this wildfire…think about that next time you think “posting the truth about ag on my account won’t do any good.”

Because guess what? If the anti-ags can do it, dadgummit so can we.