Torch your backyard

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Get your pyromanic kicks and help save the planet by torching your own backyard, like Richard Manning did.

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1/17 – Microsoft yields to permatemps Folks who live in the wide-open West amid vast fields and forests may have a moral duty to reintroduce fire into the landscape, says Manning in SIERRA magazine. “I’m trying to understand environmental restoration on the most intimate of scales, on land where I can’t blame loggers or federal bureaucrats for problems. The trees are too crowded for their own good — the result of fire suppression — and exotic weeds are pushing out the native wildflowers and grasses,” he says. He recounts how he is managing his own acreage with an eye toward healing what human management has wrought.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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