Forests need to burn every once in a while to stay healthy. But catastrophic mega-wildfires are awful and need to be prevented. Consider:
According to data analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey, the 2018 wildfire season in California released CO2 emissions equivalent to around 68 million tons of carbon dioxide. This number equates to about 15% of all California emissions - on par with the annual emissions produced by generating enough electricity to power the entire state for a year.
Wildfire pollutants such as black soot are not only harmful to humans and other lifeforms but may accelerate ice melt in the polar regions. For example, scientists have traced soot from wildfires to Greenland, where they darken the ice and snow and speed up melting. Wildfire pollution thus appears to have been a significant factor in the record surface melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
Just this week, Chris Dickman, a professor of ecology at the University of Sydney, estimated that over a billion animals had been killed by the currently raging wildfires in Australia.
Now for some good news.
In December 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 13855, in which he directed the Department of the Interior {DOI) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to take specific actions to reduce the wildfire fuel load of federal forests and rangelands: The DOI was required to:
Treat 750,000 acres public lands to reduce fuel loads;
Treat 500,000 acres of public lands to protect water quality and mitigate severe flooding and erosion risks arising from forest fires; and
Reduce vegetation through forest health treatments by offering for sale 600 million board feet of timber from public lands.
Reduced fuel loads on more than 1.4 million acres of DOI-administered lands, covering nearly two times more acres than required under the Executive Order;
Protected water quality on more than 1.4 million acres of DOI administers lands, nearly three times the acres required; and
Planned for harvest or offered for sale more than 750 million board feet of timber to reduce vegetation giving rise to wildfire conditions, exceeding the target by 25 percent.
The primary fuel reduction method used by the DOI was “vegetation treatment”, which includes thinning and timber harvest; controlled burns, chemical treatments; targeted grazing; mechanical removal; mowing or cutting; logging; and fuel breaks, or gaps in vegetation that limit fire spreading or speed of spreading. Vegetation treatment is still a method in progress. Done wrong and it could increase fire danger, e.g., controlled burns that go bad. And, of course, care must be taken to protect the critters. But we are moving forward.
Another bit of good news: the USDA Forest Service improved forest conditions and reduced wildfire risk on over 4 million acres through timber harvest, removing hazardous fuels like dead and downed trees, and combating disease, insect and invasive species infestations. Timber harvest volume more than tripled in 2019 from 22 to 89 million board feet. Note that done carefully (e.g., avoiding some trees that benefit the forest) and in conjunction with restoration efforts, logging is a legitimate vegetation treatment tool. The Obama administration also pushed to increase federal land timber sales but was much less successful.
A final bit of decent news: in 2019, wildfire activity in the US was significantly less than the average for the previous ten years. There may be no connection with the federal government’s recent efforts to reduce catastrophic wildfires, but it’s still nice to know.