Fighting Fire with Fire: How Fire is Being Reintroduced to the Western U.S. Landscape

Federal agencies and local communities are embracing the indigenous and forest management practice of prescribed burns, intentionally starting fires to cle

ar overgrown forests.

Prior to European colonization, small wildfires regularly erupted in North American forests. These fires remove dead plants, insect populations and invasive species, improving the health of the forest.

The United States wildfire response in the early 20th century was to suppress all fires.

This led forests to become overcrowded and increased the risk of dangerous mega-fires that spread to over 100,000 acres.

“When fires burn naturally, it’ll be much worse than if they were to accept the inconvenience of a prescribed burn,” said the author of Megafires, Michael Kodas.

Excessive fuels in forests allow wildfires to burn hotter, longer and higher, making them dangerous to communities and difficult to control.

Wildfire-prone forests have plants that only germinate seeds when exposed to extreme heat. These species thrive in forests that are regularly exposed to natural fire.

Prescribed burns are scheduled during low-risk conditions and usually do not threaten communities. When preparing for a controlled burn, forest officials create a burn plan. Burn plans calculate for a variety of conditions including weather and smoke.

Fire officials are typically required to obtain permission from state agencies to conduct a controlled burn because of air quality concerns. Each state and region differ in air quality requirements for prescribed burns.

When conducting a prescribed burn, officials will start a fire at the top of a slope and slowly lead the fire downwards.

Prescribed burn sites have contingency resources in case the fire becomes uncontrollable.

While the U.S. Forest Service is shifting its approach to reintroducing prescribed burning, indigenous fire practices have existed for over 50,000 years worldwide.

North American indigenous groups used cultural burnings as a form of forest and land management. Besides forest management, cultural burns provide other resources that enhance the lives of the tribes.

Indigenous groups believe that fire revitalizes the earth and gives way to new growth. They saw it as their responsibility to manage the health of the forests.

“Fire belongs in the hands of the people,” said Margo Robbins, the executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council.

European colonizers smothered cultural burnings and viewed wildfires as threats to communities.

In the early 20th century, U.S. federal agencies limited prescribed burning practices. Wildfire mitigation strategies focused on complete fire suppression.

Without experiencing regular small fires, forests became overcrowded, and the risk increased for large and uncontrollable wildfires.

Fire suppression strategies ensured that wildfires became a rarity in fire-dependent ecosystems.

“We have this mythic view that our forests are always going to be green, but the reality is that every forest looks blackened and charred every once in a while,” said Kodas.

In 1988, a lightning strike started a fire that burned over 70,000 acres of ‘America’s Crown Jewel,’ Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone had been severely deprived of wildfire and fire officials chose not to immediately suppress it. This sparked a backlash from politicians, including former President Ronald Reagan.

The park’s policy was changed in 1975 to allow naturally ignited fires and suppress human-started ones.

Two months after it began, fire officials decided to suppress the Yellowstone wildfire. This started a national conversation about wildfire response strategies.

“10 years after those fires burned in Yellowstone, the forests were much healthier compared to the forest right before the fires,” said Kodas. “They’re flourishing again.”

The U.S. Forest Service began reintegrating prescribed burning as a wildfire mitigation strategy in 1995.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 by the Biden-Harris administration adds $5 million in additional funding to the U.S. Forest Service to mitigate wildfires.

Many people are apprehensive of prescribed burning because of the less than 1% risk that it could become uncontrollable. On April 22, 2022, two prescribed burns in New Mexico combined to become a destructive fire.

In response, New Mexico governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed a bill that bans prescribed burns during red flag warnings. Red flag warnings are issued during conditions of warm weather, low humidity and high winds. The combination of these factors increases the risk of uncontrollable fire.

The U.S. Forest Service adapted to include indigenous groups in discussions involving fire.

Since reintroducing fire into forests, the U.S. Forest Service collaborates with 24 tribes to facilitate cultural burnings.

The typical season for wildfires is actively changing as climate change alters the seasons. The height of the wildfire season in Idaho is shifting from mid-August to mid-September. Longer summers mean a longer wildfire season.

Wildfires increase in number and severity when exposed to more human populations. A 2022 study found that Americans are migrating to wildfire-prone areas which makes wildfires more frequent.

Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute, Mahalia Clark, studied ten years of American migration patterns to find that if trends continue more people will be at risk due to wildfire.

“It might be that the mountainous forested areas out west, that happened to be very wildfire-prone, also happened to be extremely scenic and desirable, pleasant areas to live,” said Clark.

Human-initiated wildfires are not just started by abandoned campfires, but infrastructure like power lines can start fires in dry climates.

“More human infrastructure, more human activity, human traffic; You're just increasing the risk of any kind of small accident sparking a fire in these very dry conditions that could then easily get out of control and become a wildfire,” said Clark.

The reasons for how wildfires start vary by region but the National Park Service estimates that 85% of wildfires in the United States are started by humans or human infrastructure.

The population increase in the West is leading people to live in more wildfire-prone areas. Idaho and other states are experiencing a housing shortage because of the growth in population.

Referred to as a ‘Fire-adapted community,’ McCall, Idaho, is changing the physical landscape to persist through an average of 70 wildfires per summer.

Adjacent to McCall, the Payette National Forest is reverting to fire-thriving trees like the ponderosa pine tree. This is a natural method to reduce the severity of wildfires.

The U.S. Forest Service is logging and thinning trees that are less adapted to fire in overcrowded forests.

Before European settlement in the United States, ponderosa pine forests dominated the Idaho landscape. These trees naturally burn every 5-to-15 years. Now, densely packed trees, like the douglas fir, that prefer moisture are packed into the Payette National Forest. These trees are also less resilient to wildfires.

In ponderosa pine forests, the trees are spread apart more and receive greater sunlight.

Regular burns in ponderosa pine forests are less severe and low to the ground.

“It’s a species of tree that thrives on wildfire,” said Brian Harris, the public affairs officer of the Payette National Forest. “That’s what nature has done with the ponderosa pine.”

The Payette National Forest is returning to this historic firefighting regime by clearing these additional fuels to give the ponderosa pine tree the space it needs.

Every fall and spring, the forest service initiates multiple prescribed burns to clear out the over-abundant surface fuels.

The U.S. Forest Service is following the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. The Payette Forest has been provided with the Southwest Idaho Landscape Project which is working to reduce fuels over a 1.7-million-acre footprint.