Wildfires

Prescribed burns are widely recognized as an effective wildfire mitigation tool. Now, using satellite imagery, land management records and fire emissions data, a team of researchers has put hard numbers to those impacts.

For millennia, Indigenous peoples have intentionally set fires to care for the land. Colonization and fire exclusion largely put an end to those practices, though the tradition endured. Now, California tribes have opened the door to a new era of cultural burning - a potential model for the rest of the West.

Project Pinecone will send nearly a quarter million pine seedlings to the Sawtooth National Forest to revive the once-vibrant landscape that was devastated by the Wapiti fire.

Nationwide, the percentage of household income spent on homeowners insurance premiums nearly doubled between the early 2000s and 2022 – jumping from 1.2% to 2.1%. That’s according to recent analysis by the Insurance Research Council, an industry-supported nonprofit. Their projections suggest it could already be at 2.4 percent.

The Forest Service's new chief recently published a letter that called for wildfires to be suppressed "as swiftly as possible." That may sound prudent to many, but it raised eyebrows among some who study fire policy. They worried that it may signal a return to aggressive suppression that has been linked to growing wildfire severity.

Last year, 10,000 acres burned in the Boise foothills, and now volunteers head out to water and weed part of the landscape.

With 16-hour days for weeks straight, long separation from friends and family, and regular exposure to serious immediate and long-term risks, wildland fire pushes people to both their physical and mental limits. But the recently launched federal Wildland Fire Therapy Service is now available to help those workers ease the mental strain of battling wildfires.

The 4th of July, statistically, is one of the heaviest days of the year for wildfire starts. And this year the holiday comes amid heightened risk for major blazes.

President Trump has signed an executive order on wildfire policy, which seeks to speed responses to wildfires and address what it calls “reckless mismanagement.”

Federal forecasters are predicting unseasonably high temperatures this summer. Local wildland firefighters are preparing for a hotter, drier and potentially longer fire season.