US West learns to live with heightened threat of wildfire

As Einar Jensen examines a ranch house for fire risk, it isn’t the towering trees that catch his notice. Instead, he zeroes in on the small evergreen shrub under the deck.

“We call junipers little green gas cans,” he tells Jessica Kinkelaar, who owns the home and surrounding 35-acre horse ranch where Mr. Jensen is conducting a wildfire risk assessment. “They should be removed from within 30 feet of any house.”

Most people, he says, “think wildfire mitigation is clearcutting.” The reality, he tells them, has more to do with understanding how fuels burn and knowing which species act as a buffer and which as tinder.

Already this summer, wildfires in Colorado have burned more than 450,000 acres. More than 140 buildings have been lost in the Spring Creek Fire in southern Colorado, and the entire San Juan National Forest was closed for more than a week due to two fires. In California, nearly

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