Wildfires are getting worse, but forests can become more resilient

On July 13, 2021, a power line collapse caused a wildfire to break out in Northern California. After burning for three months, the Dixie Fire ravaged nearly one million acres across five counties and become the second largest wildfire in Californian history. Over 1,300 homes and structures were destroyed and over $1.15 billion accrued in damages. In the aftermath, it was determined that while an electrical spark started the fire, extreme climate change driven drought and heat caused it to burn out of control.

These changes aren’t going away — the megadrought in the U.S. West is now the most extreme in at least 1,200 years and has yet to subside. The wildfire season is longer and more destructive than ever before, and the worsening crisis has led the Biden administration to reinforce efforts to control wildfires and invest hundreds of millions into new mitigation and resilience.

In tandem, the Forest Service is currently considering new rulemaking with attention towards climate resilience to update their outdated management practices. The severity of the Dixie Fire and similar wildfires are a dire warning that climate change impacts have outpaced the agency — and it seems that Chief Randy Moore has heeded it.

Of course, wildfires aren’t a new or inherently bad phenomenon. They have always been a natural ecological process, and in many cases controlled low-level blazes are critical for maintaining balance in the ecosystem. 

But the shockingly destructive fires of recent years are not ordinary. Over a century of fire suppression and mismanagement have caused some mature and old growth forests to become unnaturally dense with smaller, younger trees. When ecologically intact, the compositional characteristics of these older forests should make them more fire resilient. This unnatural density — combined with climate change driven aridification — has instead created conditions that threaten even the most resilient old trees.

One of the easiest steps that the Forest Service can take — as Ross Reid (a.k.a. @nerdyaboutnature) succinctly and eloquently explains — to mitigate these intensifying fires is thus to improve stewardship and conservation of these mature and old-growth forests. Intervention that targets these overly dense stands will help ensure we do not lose our oldest trees to unnaturally lethal blazes. 

A recent inventory compiled by the Forest Service determined that only 18% of U.S. forests are old growth, the eldest and most resilient stage in the forest life cycle. However, that inventory also determined that 45% of U.S. forests are mature, presenting a significant opportunity to restore old growth that can withstand worsening wildfires. If we do so, we can mitigate the damage that is done to our communities and ecosystems by these extreme events with simple conservation management.