prescribed fire

“What played out in L.A. could easily occur in other communities, other cities across the West and even outside the West,” said Kimiko Barrett, the senior wildfire researcher at Montana-based Headwaters Economics.

Fire crews are starting to do some prescribed burning in Grand Teton National Park this week. The efforts help reduce future wildfire risk by burning dead wood and brush in the cooler late fall conditions.

The Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchange – or KTREX – has been held Northern California since 2014. Part of what sets it apart from similar efforts is the central role played by the Karuk Tribe, and the emphasis on their cultural burning practices. Like many Native people, the Karuk have a time immemorial tradition of burning on their ancestral lands, and many point to it as a key inspiration for thinking of new and better ways to live with fire.

The study's lead author says that land managers could do fuels treatments in the wake of such burns to extend that mitigating impact.

In the wake of the devastating Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in 2022, the U.S. Forest Service paused prescribed fires – which started the infernos – to review the agency’s program. A newly released Government Accountability Office report looks into how well the agency has implemented changes since then. While acknowledging that changes necessary to resume burning have been made, the government watchdog says more work remains.

Beneficial fire is an essential part of confronting the wildfire crisis. But for now, there’s not enough people to do the work. A prescribed burn this spring in Central Idaho shows how partnerships can get more workers on the line.

Prescribed fires and other forest treatments have a proven track record of reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But a new paper argues that an overreliance on those practices has come at the expense of efforts to make homes and communities more resilient.

Home insurance is becoming a more uncertain market, in large part due to climate-fueled disasters like wildfires. Some states in the West are taking steps to address the situation, like Oregon where a 2023 law requires insurers to account for home-hardening measures in their underwriting models. In California, they’re trying to take it a step further.

The Bureau of Land Management is planning about a dozen prescribed burns in Wyoming this year in an effort to mitigate future fire risk.

Prescribed fires and mechanical thinning efforts are increasingly common land management tools intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But research into their long term effectiveness is somewhat limited. A recent study looked at the effects of such interventions over more than 20 years on a dry, low-elevation research forest in Montana, and found that the combination of thinning and burning was the most likely to reduce fire risk.