Setting ‘good fires’ to reduce the West’s wildfire risk

The wildfires burning across the American West for the past two months have scorched millions of acres of land and scarred the region’s collective psyche. As residents wait for the ashen air and ambient dread to lift, the devastation from Southern California to northern Washington has surpassed that of even the “Big Blowup” of 1910. 

The weeks of uncertainty – marked by orange skies and lung-stinging smoke, emergency warnings and mass evacuations – have burdened people with acute fire fatigue. Or most people. As flames incinerate wide swaths of landscape, Jeremy Bailey suggests that the West needs more fire.

That’s right: more.

“When I wake up, I’m not thinking about where to put fire out. I’m thinking about where I can put fire on the ground,” says Mr. Bailey, director of the Nature Conservancy’s prescribed fire training program.

Prescribed burning involves setting fires on public or private lands under controlled conditions. The process targets brush, grasses, and other accumulated vegetation, along with dead and downed trees, to improve ecosystem health and reduce the fuels that power wildfires.

“Every day is a burn day,” says Mr. Bailey, a former