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About Us

About us

A new look in 2025

Wildfire Today/ Fire Aviation is dedicated to news about wildland fire and aerial firefighting around the world.

This includes insights into major wildland fires, firefighter health and safety, community safety, prescribed fire, new science and technology advancements, Indigenous and cultural burning and land management, and the funding, resourcing and maintaining of wildland fire operations across the globe. And more.

The sites began in 2008 as a blog for Bill Gabbert, a long-serving and dedicated United States fire manager, who handed them to the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) before his death in 2023 to continue them with a new future.

The IAWF has rebuilt and refreshed Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation into a single site to better suit our current and growing readership around the world.

The original blog sites served us well over many years but, like all forms of modern communication, we need to ensure they are stable and secure, and more flexible for a range of content types, including articles, videos, photos, social media and advertising.

Advertisements display better on the new site and are better integrated into the flow of editorial copy.

Importantly, all the original content is still here – all 13,420 articles since 2008, plus photos and comments. Two decades of content is a valuable resource to build upon for all of us with an interest in wildfire.

For Wildfire Today we will continue to draw from the breadth of knowledge and resources of the global wildfire community, including the IAWF membership and the expertise gained from publishing Wildfire magazine and the International Journal of Wildland Fire.

Your support is appreciated. Your contributions are needed. Please reach out to us via the Contact Us page for news tips, contributed articles and photos, comments on individual articles, or for advertising options.

Wildfire Today/Fire Aviation is Edited by David Bruce, supported by writer Hunter Bassler.

Editorial content

Wildfire Today endeavors to source quality, diverse and fact-based content providing a range of views from experts in operations and practices, and in the academic and research community.

Wildfire Today has an inclusive outlook that reflects a breadth of evidence-based viewpoints and opinion. While no significant viewpoint should be ignored, this does not mean that all views can or must be canvassed. At times, Wildfire Today may publish articles or comments that take a position on controversial or newsworthy issues to the possible exclusion of other viewpoints.

Any views expressed in articles are the personal opinions of the people named. They may not represent the views of Wildfire Today or the International Association of Wildland Fire.

Comments and contributions

Wildfire Today is a site for people around the world to hear about best practices and to collaborate on developing smarter ideas for managing wildland fire.

We foster a culture of constructive criticism and feedback through published contributions and comments. We respectfully exchange ideas and encourage others to question and challenge what we publish and what is said by others.

Our standards are in place to ensure a space for an engaged, lively, respectful fact-based discussion.

Contributions of articles and photographs are welcome. Please submit your idea via our Contact Us page and we will get right back to you.

Anyone is invited to post a comment about an article in the comments section under a story, as long as it adheres to the following policies.

Comments must:

  • Advance the discussion and further inform our readers.
  • Be on-topic.
  • Succinct. Please don’t be surprised if your long form essay or copy/paste of a published article is not accepted.

Comments must not be:

  • Personal attacks.
  • Discriminatory or abusive. We have a zero-tolerance approach to abuse and encourage readers to report anything they think may be abusive.
  • Defamatory, breach copyright or put us in legal jeopardy.
  • Deliberate attempts to misinform, distort facts, provoke or misrepresent the opinions of others.

Wildfire Today will make every attempt to comply with the law. This includes laws around plagiarism, privacy, contempt of court, the use of confidential information and defamation. But just because material is legally fit for publication does not mean it necessarily adheres to our standards, and ethical considerations will always be taken into account.

Laws will be different in different jurisdictions around the world and contributors and commentors should acquaint themselves with local laws.