JACKSON, Wyo. — Many western landscapes are seeing increasing risks of extreme wildfires, and prescribed burns aren’t just supporting the local landscape but providing a space for researchers to better understand and control fire behavior.
According to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), accumulating fuels, climate change, expanding development in fire-prone landscapes, past land use practices, drought and an overuse of fire suppression tactics have set the stage for wildfires that are larger and more out of control than they used to be.
The most recent data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) shows that in 2022 there were 68,988 reported wildfires in the U.S. covering 7,577,183 acres, an increase from 2021 when there were 58,985 reported wildfires covering 7,125,643 acres. While many ecosystems are “fire-adapted,” or dependent on fire for growth, reproduction and resiliency, the USFS emphasizes that the current size and scale of wildfires does more harm than good.
In January 2022, the USFS launched a 10-year strategy aimed at addressing the wildfire crisis in places where wildfire poses the most immediate threats to communities. Prescribed burning is presented as one of the keys to returning low-intensity fire to western landscapes.
“After many years of fire exclusion, an ecosystem that needs periodic fire becomes unhealthy.”
U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy
“After many years of fire exclusion, an ecosystem that needs periodic fire becomes unhealthy,” the USFS strategy states. “Trees are stressed by overcrowding, fire-dependent species disappear and flammable fuels build up and become hazardous. Prescribed fire can help alleviate these issues by reducing hazardous fuels, protecting human communities from extreme fires, minimizing the spread of insect pest and disease, recycling nutrients back to the soil and more.”
While Wyoming is not one of the eight states included in the strategy, in May 2023 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced an investment of $63 million to expand wildfire barriers in western states including Wyoming. The NIFC data shows that in 2022, Wyoming wildfires totaled 25,766 acres across the state, putting Wyoming in the top 25 worst states for wildfire acres burned last year.
According to Teton Interagency Fire, there have been six local wildfires in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in 2023, all of which are out. The USFS has been regularly implementing prescribed burns to reduce hazardous vegetation and support habitat in and around Teton County, most recently near Pine Creek Pass and in Teton Canyon in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
Prescribed fires are based on burn plans written by specialists who identify the best conditions for trees and plants to burn with the best results in the safest manner. The USFS burn plans consider temperature, humidity, wind, vegetation moisture, forest density, conditions for smoke dispersal, elevation and historical data. Prescribed fire specialists then compare conditions on the ground to those outlined in the plans before initiating a burn on a given day.
Because of the methodology behind them, prescribed burns are suited to research that can provide insight into better wildfire management practices going forward. The USFS explains that efforts to contain big wildfires that are out of control don’t have room or time for researchers to jump in, but prescribed fires offer opportunities for research before, during and after a burn event.
While fire behavior and effects can often be different between wildfires and prescribed burns, the USFS claims that prescribed fire research on fire behavior, smoke science, meteorology and fuels management, among other things, can still inform wildfire managers.
However, a 2020 Fire Ecology research paper on prescribed fires and wildfires concludes that there are gaps in the cross-applicability of wildfire management and prescribed burn practice. The paper also notes how climate change is challenging decades of fire control knowledge that has been a basis for productive prescribed fire management, effectively destabilizing the protocol that managers are trying to understand.
The 2022 Calf Canyon and Hermit’s Peak fires in New Mexico, which merged into the state’s largest fire in recorded history, are one example of this climate change challenge to prescribed burns. The New York Times reported that both the Calf Canyon fire and Hermit’s Peak fire began as USFS prescribed burns, and ended up burning over 340,000 acres together.
However, Randy Moore, an American soil scientist and forester serving as the chief of the USFS, emphasizes prescribed burns are still crucial for reducing the threat of extreme wildfires despite the risk. According to Moore, 99.84 percent of prescribed burns still go as planned. Additionally, the USFS burn plans contain outlined contingencies that include ordering additional pre-identified firefighting resources on standby.
Yet despite the continued push for prescribed burns, in September of last year Moore acknowledged in a statement on the USFS website that climate change, along with a number of other factors, is influencing fire behavior in ways that have never been seen before.
