The 2023 wildfire season has certainly proved to be a memorable one, raising all manner of questions from how to respond to the health impacts of smoke and heat to how we can improve forestry management.
The recent report by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission outlined a number of recommendations.
These included putting a greater emphasis on proactive measures, greater collaboration between the different agencies involved and an expanded year-round workforce.
In a statement, secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said under the leadership of President Biden, the report will chart a “new path forward for the nation on wildland fire mitigation and management”.
The chief executive and co-founder of land resilience data platform Vibrant Planet, Allison Wolff said in an interview that the commission’s report is an “interesting turning point” in how we deal with wildfires.
“Previous recommendations were very suppression focused,” Wolff told me. “There was not enough focus on utilizing the knowledge that indigenous people have on managing these fire adapted lands with beneficial fires.”
She added the “big headline” was the report’s recommendation around shifting from reactive to proactive, and she said science-driven technology will play a key role in developing effective solutions.
“We have to move faster than ever before to keep ecosystems intact,” said Wolff.
“There are places in California where forests will convert to shrub and grasslands in 10 or 20 years’ time, if we don’t intervene at unheard of planning and management speed. Technology can enable speed and scale while improving scientific information.
“We can’t have 10-year planning processes that end in litigation,” she told me. “Our only hope is to use technology to understand what we’re dealing with at any given time, particularly for basic things like forest structure and fuel loads.”
Wolff said research shows there are 240 million acres in the United States that are at risk of a high-severity fire, and 1,800 communities within those acres that could potentially be affected.
She added the combination of healthy forest structures that were disrupted when 93% of trees in the west were cut down to build railroads, mines and towns 150 years ago.
Plus, Wolff said the unnatural accumulation of ladder and ground fuels due to fire suppression, plus climate change make for a “perfect storm”.
“Forests are literally exploding on us and the only thing we can do is get people out of the way once a fire becomes when a megafire,” she told me.
“We can’t suppress our way out of this,” Wolff added.
“We have to get thousands of workers rallied, mobilise them really quickly and train foresters and scientists to get out and do this work. We have to do this hard work, or we’re going to lose everything.”
The president and chief executive of the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, Pete Madden said in an email the commission report was “timely and comprehensive”.
“We commend their recommendations for proactive, collaborative approaches that engage non-profit organizations, the forest industry, and the health care community,” said Madden.
“We encourage market-based approaches to forest management, where appropriate, that will help quickly scale much needed forest health treatments needed to lessen the frequency and impact of catastrophic wildfires.”
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