Sonoma and Butte counties see natural lessons in wake of megafires

The 2004 tsunami that hit Asia caused significant damage in the islands of the Seychelles, destroying roads, homes, and shoreline. A teacher determined to restore her home through tangible action took a lead role in helping her students take conservation into their own hands by working to restore the mangroves that can protect their island from future storms.

Led by Portugal and Spain, European nations have shifted their responses to wildfires from a heavy emphasis on suppression to a more prevention-based approach. Climate change has increased fire risk greatly. By letting smaller fires burn, to reduce the fuel available to future megafires, and with other forest-management methods, Mediterranean countries have had no large blazes so far in 2020. Portugal, three years after a massive fire killed at least 120, registered its lowest number of fires in a decade. In Spain, prevention includes Fire Flocks, herds of sheep and goats whose grazing cleans up forests.

Prescribed burns are considered the best way to contain catastrophic wildfires, and fires sparked by lightning or by Native Americans once burned more land in California than has burned in 2020's record-setting fires. But burning its way out of danger is hardly a simple matter for California now. Obstacles are many. Long-standing policies of aggressive fire suppression, plus climate-change-induced drought and pestilence, have amassed more fuel for fires. Dense populations in fire-prone areas, make for daunting logistical and financial obstacles.

After 2017's devastating wildfires, the state of California and businesses committed billions of dollars to thinning forests and other fire-prone areas to contain the spread and intensity of wildfires. But the state's "fire deficit," a legacy of more than a century of policies to suppress fires rather than let them periodically consume the fuel on the ground, has been too great to solve the problem quickly. Experts say wildfires like the record-setting conflagrations of 2020, worsened by climate change, will continue without even greater efforts by California and the federal government.

In the Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood of California, one neighborhood was designed and built to protect homes from wildfires. Included in the design were certain regulations, like regulating weeds, brush, and mulch, and installing noncombustible siding and roofs. Because of climate change, the strength and frequency of wildfires have increased across the state, prompting residents, firefighting professionals, and legislators to become more resilience- and prevention-oriented.

The most destructive wildfire in New Mexico’s modern history started as a prescribed burn managed by the United States Forest Service. These fires are meticulously planned and executed to remove flora that increases the risk of extreme wildfires, and the vast majority of them go as planned. The Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak Fire did not, leaving officials and locals to assess what went wrong and rebuild the impacted communities.

Volunteers from the Butte Prescribed Burn Association trains landowners to conduct controlled burns on their properties, which reduces vegetation that fuels intense wildfires and opens up space to bring back native plant species. The trainings have made residents in high fire-risk areas feel more secure and the association has also helped them with things like applying for grants to fund prescribed fires.

As a way to soften the impacts of a future storm, an artificial oyster reef was installed in New York City. This green infrastructure can absorb the shock of waves and decrease the amount of flooding, as well as build up the shore over time effectively reversing erosion. Environmentalists argue that this type of barrier is more cost-effective than traditional seawalls and will adapt to sea level changes over time.

A 3-year pilot is developing a traditional fire management program for First Nation communities using cultural burns, a practice banned for over a century. Cultural burns are used to reinvigorate the landscape so that seeds and berries grow and animals return. The low intensity, slow burns also reduce wildfire risks and other issues linked to climate change, such as infestations. Stories about cultural burns are being recorded from tribal elders to preserve the rich cultural knowledge about traditional fire management techniques. First Nations hope to be able to use cultural burns on their tribal lands.

California’s wildfires historically were contained through periodic but limited burning. But “misguided fire police” over many decades, focused on overzealous fire suppression, has accumulated more dry fuel, resulting in wildfires that have grown progressively larger and more dangerous. Climate change only increases the likelihood of more fires. And the inventory of unburned acreage that has accumulated is now so great that it makes it increasingly difficult to ever catch up.