![]() But what is happening this decade is the problem has kind of turned from this thing that we can manage to a monster." "This is a problem that's been building gradually for decades. "It's a great example of climate change as a kind of an accelerant," says Michael Wara with Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. If historically flawed forest management is half the problem here – battling most every fire - the other half is the world's warming climate with hotter, drier conditions igniting a Century of built-up fuel. Still, North recognizes the enormous challenge for managers: it's not popular or easy to intentionally light fires to clear out built-up fuel when states are being ravaged and citizens reeling from annual catastrophic wildfires. And that's not inherently the behavior that you often get in leadership in these in these positions." "You really need a pretty fundamental and aggressive change to what we're doing. "The people who end up getting promoted and often end up in the leadership positions are very good at being cautious," North says of his own employer the U.S. ![]() There needs to be a cultural shift in the public's understanding about both the inevitability of fire, he says, and a shift within the leadership of these agencies. Leaders in federal land management positions, North says, need to be much more supportive and bold in their use of targeted use of prescribed fire. Forest Service largely continue to embrace an antiquated 'fight every fire' ethos. He and others say a major obstacle to expanding controlled burns is institutional inertia in these large, risk-averse state and federal agencies. "But you can have much better outcomes when you're proactively putting the fire on the landscape rather than reactively trying to suppress it and then dealing with the inevitable escapes," he says North says the public has to realize that they're going to get fire one way or another. And yet we're obviously losing this battle every year, both in terms of cost, acreage and damages." "We have some of the best firefighting forces in the in the world. Forest Service who has long advocated for more controlled burns. "It's not something in which incremental, cautious decisions are going to solve the problem," says Malcolm North, an outspoken research scientist with the U.S. And critics say that new goal is nowhere near enough to meet this moment. In Colorado, three of the state's five largest wildfires have burned this year, including this still-burning East Troublesome blaze.īureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was the only federal agency to substantially increase prescribed fire use, the study said, likely due to tribal self-governance and a historic embrace of intentional fire.įederal and California officials recently signed an agreement to try boost that significantly: the new goal is to treat about 1 million acres a year with combined thinning and controlled burns.īut experts warn that states continue to set ambitious prescribed fire goals they never reach. But you know, I'm scared what will happen in the next 10 years if we don't get prescribed fire," says fire ecologist and professor Kate Wilkin with the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University. "Some people might say that they're scared of doing prescribed fire. ![]() ![]() The conditions set by that longstanding federal and state policy are now worsened by climate change, with fires growing larger, more frequent and more destructive. Experts say it reduces dangerous levels of highly combustible fuel and underbrush built up over more than a century of trying to snuff out most every forest fire. Vastly increasing the number of these low-intensity, carefully managed fires is key. (That's when trained staff deliberately set fires as a form of control.) They also want significant new investment in workforce training and infrastructure to scale up prescribed burns on public and private lands. has wildfire experts calling for a dramatic increase in the numbers of acres intentionally burned. This historically destructive wildfire season across much of the Western U.S. Top of the prevention strategy list for fire ecologists is more fire.
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