Tom Schultz, the head of the U.S. Forest Service, is calling for wildfires to be extinguished “as swiftly as possible this season.” But aggressive suppression policies are widely believed to be one of the key culprits in the current wildfire crisis.
Decades of aggressive suppression have led to dramatic changes in ecosystems across the West, and allowed for the buildup of trees, shrubs and other wildfire fuel. The Forest Service itself acknowledges that “rigorous fire suppression” has contributed to what it calls a “full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
Mark Kreider, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy, is concerned by the agency’s direction this fire season. He was lead author on a 2024 paper that identified another way that suppression leads to more dangerous wildfires.
“By doing fire suppression whenever and wherever possible, really we've only gotten rid of certain types of fires,” he said. “And we've kind of biased all the fires that do occur to be much more extreme.”
That paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, finds that “attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than expected from fuel accumulation or climate change. Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias exceed those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone…”
“Managing wildfires to safely burn under low and moderate conditions is thus a critical tool to address the growing wildfire crisis,” it continued.
He agrees with the Forest Service chief that suppression has a place to protect lives and property, but says he’s “disappointed” in the apparent digging in on putting fires out as quickly as possible everywhere.
“I think it will increase risk in the future,” he said. “I think this is a case of addressing short term risk without adequate consideration given to the long term risk.”
“Americans expect the Forest Service to always prioritize saving lives and property. Firefighters must be fully focused on wildfire suppression during the busy part of wildfire season," a spokesperson with the service's parent agency the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in response to a request for comment. "Prescribed fire and managing naturally ignited fire are critical to reducing wildfire risk and remains our focus outside of peak wildfire season.”
In his late May letter, Schultz said that “Fire seasons have been trending longer with more extreme fire behavior, coupled with unprecedented demand for personnel and resources, which has required us to adapt over the past several years.”
“With that in mind, we will continue to focus on safe, aggressive initial attack,” he continued. “We will make appropriate risk-informed efforts to fully suppress small fires before they become large, complex incidents to ensure we can protect lives, property, valuable timber and natural resources.”
The letter does say reducing wildfire risk is a “key component” the agency’s wildfire strategy, and mentions “crucial hazardous fuels reduction efforts” and other ways to to address fire risk. That includes so-called “potential operational delineations (PODs),” predefined areas with control features like roads and ridge tops that allow for the strategic management of wildfires that can do much of the ecological and fuels work of prescribed fire.
“Continuing science-based strategies, including [PODs], is critical to ensure we do the right work in the right places,” Schultz said.
“These are great tools to allow fire to burn safely,” Kreider said of PODs.
As to the aggressive suppression approach advocated by Schultz, Kreider said he’s curious about the “long game of this policy.”
“You could say we're going to kind of hunker down, hit fires really hard for one year to get us some space to then operate a little bit more safely,” he said. “But if it's just, ‘We'll do that for every year here on out,’ I think that is not sustainable.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
