Pyrophobia: Confronting a National Resistance to Proactive Fire Use
“You can’t fireproof the forest,” John Gould, former smokejumper and manager of the Alaska Fire Service, told me. There is simply too much land to manage and not enough people to devote to the task. In this resource-constrained environment, the United States’ response to wildfire has typically been reactive and ad hoc by design.
Over the past two months, I spoke with many practitioners on how to better prepare for the growing risk of wildfire. From my conversations with fire ecologists, smokejumpers, Hotshot crew members, representatives of federal agencies, executives of private companies, and retired leaders, my main takeaway is this: there is no one solution to fire. The optimal way forward comes from taking both proactive and reactive steps. The current national approach to firefighting tends to favor the latter. Nowhere is this bias more evident than in how the United States approaches prescribed burning. Prescribed burning is the controlled ignition of fire to reduce fuel, the flammable parts of forests, brushlands, and grasslands that increase the risk of more destructive wildfires. Although fire managers have reached a broad consensus on the value of such fuel management, the United States must overcome institutional and cultural resistance to its use.
The Need
Fundamentally, the risk of wildfire has increased due to three trends. First, drier conditions due to climate change have resulted in faster and more intense burns. Second, decades of improper management have led to a buildup of hazardous fuel. Finally, expanding construction in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), where private homes and businesses intersect with vulnerable forests, has created a population in the United States particularly vulnerable to wildfire.
Mitigating this growing risk requires proper fuel management. Indeed, stakeholders across the United States already recognize this need. In 2014, under the Federal Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement Act of 2009 (FLAME Act), federal landowning agencies in partnership with local, state, tribal, and private stakeholders published the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. This non-prescriptive document provides a collaborative framework to both public and private landowners on how best to manage the increasing threat of fire. Among its goals, the strategy names resilient landscapes as one of its most important and emphasizes the need for fuel management to sustain forests and protect lives and property. Every fire professional I spoke to was incredibly supportive of its recommendations.
However, ten years later, many of these recommendations remain unheeded. In 2023, the intergovernmental Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) published its Addendum Update to the National Strategy. Their outlook is noticeably bleaker than the optimistic tone taken in 2014. The WFLC makes clear that the existing fuel management system requires a significant increase in “proactive use of fire” to keep pace with the growing wildfire threat.
The Obstacles
Why then, given the broad consensus on the importance of fuel management in reducing the effects of wildfire, have we not done more?
First, bureaucratic hurdles can stall prescribed fires from occurring. Every state has a set of laws that govern the timing and location of prescribed burns. They also require that federal landowners such as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management obtain certain approvals from state and local authorities before conducting burns on federal lands. However, until environmental conditions such as wind, moisture, and presence of protected species are ideal, states may decide not to sign off. This provision leads to holdups in the permitting process that slow down proactive fire use. According to federal forestry officials I spoke with, state and local governments may perceive little benefit from prescribed burns on federal land when the reduced air quality can harm their residents. The resulting smoke can drift over communities, causing health hazards and reducing visibility.
Next, questions remain about who will carry out the federal fuel management programs. The Forest Service’s 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy underscores the need to expand the fire workforce to meet the demand for prescribed burning. Yet, firefighters frequently do not receive overtime and hazard pay for fuel management work. Particularly, Hotshots, the federal government’s elite firefighting crews, have little financial incentive to take on such projects. According to the 2023 Interagency Hotshot Crew Programmatic Review, fire program managers are often hesitant to approve overtime to save on costs per acre of prescribed fire work. Moreover, unlike crews conducting emergency fire suppression, those working on fuel management projects do not receive hazard pay despite encountering similar risks of injury and the long-term impacts of smoke inhalation.
Finally, and most importantly, fire agencies and the wider public have an institutional aversion to prescribed burns. According to several of the practitioners I spoke to, a dichotomy exists between those who support expanded fuel management and those who favor fire suppression above all else. For much of the 20th century, suppression was the sole means of fire management. In the wake of the 1910 Big Blowup, in which three million acres of the United States burned in two days, the Forest Service and other fire agencies implemented the 10 a.m. Rule. Essentially, every fire must be suppressed by 10:00 a.m. the day following its report. In the decades following World War II, efforts to cut costs and a greater understanding of fire ecology necessitated a more balanced approach. Since 1970, agencies institutionalized this change. They let certain fires burn and worked both suppression and fuel management into their plans, at least in theory.
In practice, the fire management community remains hesitant about the prescribed burning necessary to maintain the nation’s forests. Largely, this aversion stems from fear. Several of the experts I spoke with expressed that many of the leaders in agencies that deal with fire are not firefighters or fire ecologists themselves. As explained by Tom Nichols, the former National Park Service Chief of Fire and Aviation, “They’re just not comfortable with fire.” They see fire the way many outsiders do: scary and destructive rather than helpful.
This aversion is apparent when examining the money allocated for prescribed burns. Total federal funding for fuel reduction rose steadily from 2014 to 2019. However, according to a 2019 study by Crystal Kolden, very few geographic areas experienced an increase in prescribed burns during that time. Almost all increases occurred in the southeastern United States and Alaska, while more vulnerable western states actually saw a decrease. Kolden attributes this disparity in large part to the greater cultural acceptance of fire and its effects in the southeastern states, especially compared to the “social barriers” present in the West.
Compounding the fear of fire itself is the fear of a prescribed burn that becomes uncontrollable. Those in charge of fire management do not want a burn they approved to escape containment and destroy the very property or lives they sought to protect. Indeed, their fears are justified. In 2022, the Forest Service carried out prescribed burns in New Mexico that quickly spread. The resulting Hermit’s Peak Fire destroyed hundreds of homes in the state’s WUI and led to lawsuits from residents and calls for more burn restrictions from lawmakers. The Forest Service placed a 90-day moratorium on such fuel management in response, holding up necessary work in the face of a significant but singular setback. According to a 2005 study by the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, only 1% of prescribed burns result in escapes or near misses. Even then, land managers often avoid prescribed burning in the hope that a big fire will not happen, preferring the risk of having to fight a larger fire later.
Culture also plays a large role in institutional aversion. Many fire professionals I spoke to agree that those involved in suppressing wildfires receive greater deference compared to those studying fire ecology and specializing in fuel management. Logically, this thinking makes sense. In the case of a fire, federal fire agencies must always remain ready to respond with suppression to keep it under control and preserve lives. Thus, there is an urgency for fire suppression that is not present in fuel management. A similar bias exists in the military, where more credence is given to the combat specialties compared to those in support roles. In the same way that the army will always need infantry, fire management will always need fire suppression. However, in practice, the result is a system dominated by advocates of one solution to wildfire problems, when the true way forward comes from both proactive and reactive steps.
The Way Forward
So, what can be done about our lack of prescribed burning? Fortunately, the federal government has already made some progress. The Forest Service recently began an effort to boost the amount of prescribed burning in U.S. national forests with its 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy. The Biden administration announced in 2024 an additional $500 million to add to the $2 billion already allocated for this strategy, specifically for use in the WUI.
Nonetheless, funding for federally prescribed burns largely applies only to federal lands. Unfortunately, despite state, local, and private lands also requiring such fuel management, these landowners display varying degrees of willingness to do so. To paraphrase one Forest Service official I spoke to, the federal government has carrots but not many sticks. Federal agencies should expand emergency management grants used to incentivize private landowners and ensure they are advertised to maximize participation. At the same time, state and local governments must increase burning on the lands they own. In the same way that the federal government compelled states to raise the drinking age by threatening to withhold highway funding, so too must legislators act to ensure prescribed burns are taken seriously.
To further build federal capacity, adding additional hazard pay for fuel management work would incentivize many firefighters to take part in the vital prescribed burning that helps mitigate destructive fire seasons. Treating this work as an equal partner to suppression work will create a system far more adaptable to the increasing risk of wildfires.
Ultimately, the United States needs a cultural shift when it comes to prescribed burning. News media frequently publish stories of destructive wildfires, yet they rarely do so on the good that fire can do. This is not to say that the media should not discuss the danger of wildfire, especially as climate change continues to exacerbate this perennial challenge. However, the normalization of articles like The New Yorker’s “Catching the Fire Bug” or National Public Radio’s Picture Show feature can serve to educate the public on “good fire” by telling engaging and personal stories of life near controlled burns. To further raise awareness of how the same power must be harnessed to reduce the harm of larger blazes, the federal government should run a nationwide campaign of public service announcements, use well-known characters like Smokey the Bear, and conduct social media outreach. Proposed legislation from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden also calls for integrating outreach with private ecological organizations such as the Longleaf Alliance to expand reach and combine resources.
In fire agencies, the fear is less of the fire itself and more of the consequences of failure. The men and women who manage fire must have the confidence to take risks, and the agencies themselves must be willing to stand behind their choices even in the event of failure. Changing institutional culture will not be easy, but the consequences of not doing so will be much harder.
The United States must make difficult choices about how to confront the issue of fire. Of course, we cannot “fireproof the forest.” However, if we continue down our current path, talking about prescribed burning without performing it at a significant enough scale, we will continue to see larger, more frequent, and more destructive fires. If we instead choose to take proactive steps now, confronting our national fears, assuming risk, and setting aside the resources to conduct the number of burns necessary, we can start to turn back the tide and avoid a painful future. We must choose to act.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: Bureau of Land Management Oregon via Flickr