Prescribed Burns Are More Dangerous Because of Climate Change

CLIMATEWIRE | The head of the Forest Service says in a new report that climate change is making prescribed fire increasingly dangerous even as the controlled burns remain essential for thinning the nation’s forests to prevent wildfire catastrophes.

“Climate change is leading to conditions on the ground we have never encountered,” the report says. “We know these conditions are leading to more frequent and intense wildfires. Drought, extreme weather, wind conditions and unpredictable weather changes are challenging our ability to use prescribed fire as a tool to combat destructive fires.”

The Forest Service report comes days after a Congressional Budget Office analysis of wildfires said an increasing number of acres are being burned each year, due in part to climate change creating “hotter, drier conditions that are more conducive to wildfire.” In addition, forest management for much of the past century has “allowed vegetation to grow denser,” and the dense vegetation is fueling wildfires, the CBO said.

But Moore said in the report that the Forest Service “must do more prescribed burning to improve the health and resilience of our forests and grasslands.” The New Mexico fire began as the Gallinas-Las Dispensas prescribed burn aimed at thinning the forest of trees, brush and woody debris. But the Forest Service relied on an environmental assessment that was done in 2006 and “had not been revisited within the 16 years” since the assessment “although a change in fuels conditions likely occurred in that time,” the report says.

Mother nature use to do prescribed burns all the time.

Agreed. We must be proactive.

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