US West struggles to hit goals of fighting fire with fire
KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — The thick scent of smoke hung in the midday air when a trail along the Kings River opened up to an ominous scene: flames in the trees and thick gray smoke shrouding canyon walls.
Firefighters were on the job. In fact, they had started the blaze that chewed through thick ferns, blackened downed trees and charred the forest floor.
The prescribed burn — a low-intensity, closely managed fire — was intended to clear out undergrowth and protect the heart of Kings Canyon National Park from future wildfires that are growing larger and more frequent amid climate change.
The tactic is considered one of the best ways to prevent the kind of catastrophic destruction that has become common from wildfires, but its use falls woefully short of goals in the U.S. West.
A study published in the journal Fire in April found prescribed burns on federal land in the last 20 years across the West has stayed level or fallen despite calls for more.
Prescribed fires are credited with making forests healthier and stopping or slowing the advance of some blazes. Despite those successes, there are plenty of reasons they are not set as often as officials would like, ranging from poor conditions to safely burn to bureaucratic snags and public opposition.
After a wildfire last year largely leveled the city of Paradise and killed 86 people, the state prioritized 35 brush and other vegetation-reduction projects that could all involve some use of intentional fire, said Mike Mohler, deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Despite the push for more burns, there are disastrous reminders of prescribed fires blowing out of control — such as a 2012 Colorado burn that killed three people and damaged or destroyed more than two dozen homes.
Overcoming public fears by teaching about “good smoke, bad smoke, out-of-control fire and prescribed fire” is just one hurdle before firefighters can put match to kindling, Mohler said.
“It’s the difference between fire under our terms and fighting fire on Mother Nature’s terms,” he said.
It can take years to plan and clear federal, state and local environmental and air pollution regulations.
A burn among giant sequoias once took 13 years to accomplish, said Michael Theune, a spokesman for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
In the American West, where the landscape is steep and downed trees, brush and other fuels have built up over decades of fire suppression, the so-called burn window can be short because of hot, dry conditions.
Relaxing environmental restrictions has cleared the way for more prescribed fires in some cases.
Oregon recently changed air quality rules for planned fires to strike a balance between smoky winter skies and bad summer blazes.
California proclaimed a state of emergency to allow it to fast-track brush clearing.
Most states and federal agencies in the U.S. West have ambitious goals they don’t achieve, said Crystal Kolden, a University of Idaho forest and fire science professor whose study concluded that not enough prescribed fires are being done in the region.
“They know they need to be doing more prescribed fire, they want to be doing more prescribed fire,” she said. “They are simply unable to accomplish that.”
Opponents cite the threat to wildlife and release of greenhouse gases. In California, some environmentalists opposed intentional burns because they can destroy natural drought-tolerant shrubs and replace them with flammable invasive weeds and grasses.
Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute said reintroducing fire through prescribed burns is appropriate in the Sierra Nevada, where more frequent lightning-sparked fires and blazes historically set by Native Americans are believed to improve forests by clearing brush to allow taller trees to thrive and opening sequoia seed pods so they can reproduce.