<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Trump administration issued a directive this year calling on federal agencies to aggressively suppress all fires \u2014 including the smaller, milder ones that forests evolved with to keep them healthy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have an imbalance within our natural environments because, basically, almost every ecosystem within Utah has developed out of an adaptation of fire,\u201d said Bradley Washa, a firefighter and professor of wildland resources at Utah State, \u201cand we have removed that fire from those ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n A warming climate is taking a toll on Western forests, Washa said, but it\u2019s difficult to pin any single fire event to climate change.<\/p>\n Through his work on the ground, he continues to see how small things \u2014 like removing a firewood pile or clearing overgrown brush \u2014 can make the difference between a home surviving a wildfire or burning to the ground.<\/p>\n Still, \u201csome of our fuel treatments and defensible space concepts are designed for your average fire,\u201d Washa acknowledged, \u201cnot these extreme events.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Wildfire prevention has always been a challenge in the West. Hotter, drier weather is making it worse.<\/a> on Jul 31, 2026.<\/p>\n![\"Crews](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP518546632685_Nebraska-controlled-burn.jpg\")
\n <\/figure>\n
After surveying the destruction, lawmakers laid blame on a lack of forestry management. If the forest had been thinned, with \u201ca lot fewer trees per acre, and maybe even some controlled burns to take the underbrush out, there\u2019s just not the fuel there when these fires start to make them catastrophic fires,\u201d Representative Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Arkansas, told Salt Lake City\u2019s FOX 13 News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But these traditional fire prevention methods may no longer work, one researcher cautions, with a changing climate that makes hot, dry weather increasingly the norm.<\/p>\n \u201cWeather and climate override the effects of fuels in determining what happens in forested landscapes,\u201d said Dominik Kulakowski, a professor of geography at Clark University in Massachusetts whose research focuses on climate and mountain ecosystems. \u201cThe implication of that is that we\u2019re losing our ability to manage forest fires.\u201d<\/p>\n Larissa Yocom, a professor of fire ecology at Utah State University, agrees that today\u2019s extreme wildfires defy the usual approaches to prevention, but she doesn\u2019t think they are the West\u2019s \u201cnew normal \u2014 yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Climate change, which stokes intense heat, longer droughts, and extreme weather, has been the primary driver of wildfire risk in the Western United States for the last two decades, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n The severe snow drought that afflicted Utah over the winter is 14 times more likely in Utah and other Upper Colorado River Basin states compared to the start of the industrial period when humans began releasing climate-altering pollutants into the atmosphere, according to research published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a><\/p>\n Forests in the West evolved in response to fire, and fire has long been part of their normal ecological function, Kulakowski said. But fires are now changing faster than forests can adapt.<\/p>\n Fuels like dry shrubs and drought-stressed trees are a secondary factor that contributes to wildfires, and they\u2019re what most forestry treatments have focused on \u2014 like creating buffers around homes known as firebreaks, thinning forests, and scheduling prescribed burns<\/a>. Yet fast fires can jump interstate highways and blow past firebreaks hundreds of yards wide, Kulakowski said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen examples that embers from these dangerous megafires can travel … about a mile,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we can do to protect ourselves is becoming increasingly difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n The country\u2019s most expensive, deadly, and destructive fires in recent decades moved extremely fast<\/a>. Utah\u2019s own Cottonwood Fire exploded by 20,000 acres overnight<\/a> in late June as firefighters evacuated homes and struggled to keep the blaze contained.<\/p>\n As long as the trend of warmer and drier weather conditions continue, so will the megafires. And as extremely hot and large fires increase, the ability for forests to regenerate decreases, Kulakowski said. \u201cThe soil is being sterilized,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are fewer surviving trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Fewer trees mean fewer seeds to help forests regrow. In some cases, the types of forests that do re-sprout may look different \u2014 aspens may dominate where conifers once thrived, for example. But in parts of the West, Kulakowski said, it appears no forest vegetation is regrowing at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIn which case, we\u2019re talking about ecosystem collapse,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about forests disappearing from parts of the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n Other fire experts in Utah say traditional fire-treatment methods still work and should be deployed across forests. \u201cWe have a lot of examples where managing fuel is still beneficial and makes a difference,\u201d said Yocom, the professor at Utah State.<\/p>\n A bipartisan group of lawmakers from Western states, including Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, and Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat from Colorado, have sponsored the Fix Our Forests Act after spending months negotiating the best ways to manage woodlands and prevent catastrophic wildfire. The bill creates \u201cfireshed management areas\u201d \u2014 fire-prone lands that pose the biggest risk to communities \u2014 where federal agencies would streamline and speed up fuel treatments. It has yet to receive a full vote in the Senate.<\/p>\n Yocom acknowledged, however, that there\u2019s little forestry managers could have done to prevent some of the large wildfires that have burned across Utah this season.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the most extreme conditions, those on-the-ground factors get overwhelmed,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n If forestry managers allowed more fires to burn in shoulder seasons in the spring and fall, and during cooler weather and milder conditions, wildfires might be less intense and have different effects on forests, Yocom said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not preordained that we are stuck with this kind of fire,\u201d Yocom said. \u201cThe only type of fire we\u2019re \u2018allowing\u2019 to happen right now are the ones that are burning in the conditions where we literally can\u2019t do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Burned](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Eagle-Point-Tour-fk-4451-e1785196644656.jpg\")
Francisco Kjolseth \/ The Salt Lake Tribune<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n