By Benny Seidman
WASHINGTON, DC, January 14, 2025 (ENS) – Amidst far-reaching climatic and political changes, one opportunity for bipartisan environmental restoration has been overlooked. The National Prescribed Fire Act was introduced for the third time in May 2024 by a bipartisan group of legislators to support the preventative fire management technique of controlled burning – setting fires in safe conditions to mitigate the risk of larger, more dangerous wildfires.
But this iteration of the bill died as it was never voted upon in Congress before January 3, 2025, when the 118th Congress concluded and the 119th Congress opened, seating those elected last November.
Initially introduced in 2020, and again in 2021, the first National Prescribed Fire Act died in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The second version, in 2021, got through hearings in the same committee, where it also died. The bill has never been considered in a vote on the Senate floor.
The bill sought to create a multi-million dollar fund for the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior to implement prescribed burning on a much larger scale than exists today while reducing regulatory and liability barriers to controlled burns.
A key focus of the bill was to train and equip a diverse workforce including women, veterans, tribes, and formerly incarcerated individuals for the arduous task of safely burning a variety of landscapes.
Today, wildfires are growing larger and more severe as they blaze across the wildland-urban interface. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection more than a million acres were been burned in California in 2024 alone. The year 2025 has opened with half a dozen major fires in the Los Angeles area burning 40,588 acres to date, fires that have claimed 25 lives.
Congresswoman Kim Schrier, a Democrat, pediatrician, wife, and mom, who represents parts of western Washington state, including sections of Seattle, explained the practical importance of expanding controlled burning, saying, “My bill, the National Prescribed Fire Act, takes a sensible approach to forest management to lower the risk of catastrophic fires that harm our air quality, forests, economy, health, and communities.”
The latest iteration of the bill gained broad bipartisan support and was jointly reintroduced in May 2024 by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, and Representatives Schrier and David Viladao, a Republican who represents California’s Latino-majority 22nd District – all fire prone regions.
With the ending of the 118th Congress on January 3, the bill must be reintroduced for consideration in what looks to be a less environmentally-friendly legislative session with Republicans in charge of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, although with slim majorities.
Benefits of Prescribed Burns
Fire experts say prescribed burning has many benefits. By reducing fuel loads, prescribed fires help native plants compete and thrive, providing more habitat for native animals. Prescribed fires also can help control pest and disease outbreaks in forests.
The U.S. Forest Service says that conducting prescribed burns in the right season and under optimal conditions can:
- Decrease wildfire intensity and severity
- Reduce the threat of future wildfires in the same area
- Create a buffer area for communities and firefighters
- Reduce ladder fuels and debris from logging or thinning
- Promote new growth of trees, plants, and fungi
- Minimize the spread of invasive species, insects and disease
- Provide forage for wildlife
- Increase subsistence and recreational access
“Prescribed burning reduces slash, competition for nutrients among seedlings, and fuel for wildfires. Where tree species are ecologically dependent on fire for regeneration, fire also serves as an essential forest management tool. Periodic, low-intensity prescribed fires usually have little effect on water quality, and revegetation of burned areas reduces sediment yield from prescribed burning and wildfires,” says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its Watershed Academy Training program.
The intensity and severity of burning and the proportion of the watershed burned are the major influences on streamflow and water quality. Fires that burn intensely on steep slopes close to streams and that remove most of the forest floor and litter down to the mineral soil are most likely to affect water quality by increasing sediment and nutrient pollution in the water.
Many ecosystems depend on fires, and plant species such as the lodgepole pine require heat to release seeds for reproduction. Historically, ecosystems like savannas burned at low intensity every few years, renewing the system by recirculating nutrients and creating opportunities for species to reestablish themselves. These low intensity fires creep along the ground, maintaining diversity without destroying the forests.
Native Americans have used low-intensity fires as a land management tool for centuries, using fire to clear areas for hunting, travel, agriculture and medicinal plants, recognizing it as a force for good.
For millennia, tribes used fire to help manage the ancient sequoia groves, which were adapted to thrive in a fire-prone environment, but “California banned cultural burning back in 1850 as part of legislation designed to forcibly remove Indigenous people from their ancestral lands,” according to the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
The U.S. government, seeing fire’s potential for destruction of timber resources, established the U.S. Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture in 1905 with a policy of strict fire suppression. As a result, fire has been largely forced out of the American landscape since the early 20th century.
This intensive fire suppression has caused the unsafe accumulation of flammable vegetation, resulting in far more costly and destructive mega-fires like those raging across Los Angeles today. Click here to see the latest L.A. fire activity.
This effect is demonstrated by a University of Montana study published March 2024 in the journal “Nature Communication.” Lead author, Mark Kreider, PhD, and his team used computer simulations to model the effect of different fire management techniques on fire behavior. They found that suppression of low and moderate intensity fires caused fire intensity to increase.
This effect is compounded as the changing climate triggers more extreme storms, droughts and other weather events that spark increasingly devastating wildfires.
“The result is akin to the over-prescription of antibiotics: in our attempt to eliminate all fires, we have only eliminated the less intense fires (that may best align with management objectives such as fuel reduction) and instead selected for primarily the most extreme events (suppression bias) and created higher fuel loads and more “suppression-resistant” fires (suppression paradox). Through regressive fire suppression, we are effectively bringing a more severe future to the present – experiencing average fire severities that would not otherwise happen for a century,” Dr. Kreider explained at the end of the study.
“It may seem counterintuitive, but our work clearly highlights that part of addressing our nation’s fire crisis is learning how to accept more fires burning when safely possible,” co-author Phillip Higuera, University of Montana professor of fire ecology, said, connecting their findings to the world of fire management policy.
Today, it is broadly agreed that fire itself is a necessary tool in preventing large destructive fires.
“Prescribed fires are the underfunded, often overlooked, and less expensive fire extinguishers backed by science, which every state needs in their back pocket,” Senator Wyden explained. “I’ve seen on-the-ground results firsthand throughout Oregon and want to see more investment in this proven firefighting approach throughout the state and across the country.”
Why Aren’t We Doing More?
Despite this broad understanding and support for expanded prescribed burns, they are not being implemented on scales necessary to curb the spread of “mega-fires” which now threaten large swaths of the American west annually.
Today, forecasters are warning of renewed strong winds that could cause “explosive fire growth” across Southern California that are expected to restart to Los Angeles fire emergency.
The biggest concern extends from late Monday through Wednesday morning, when sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (80 kph) and gusts up to about 68 miles per hour (110 kph) are expected, the National Weather Service warned.
Forecasters called it a “particularly dangerous situation” and designated it as a red flag warning.
Strong winds and dry conditions in an area that has not received rainfall for more than eight months helped fuel the fires that have already killed at least 24 people and caused billions of dollars in damage since they began a week ago.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s General Technical Report 158, published in 1995, deals with controlled burns, acknowledging that, “…the present use of this tool falls far short of its potential” and addresses the question “Prescribed fire: Why aren’t we doing more?”
This report states that “economics will play a significant role in our ability to sustain fire-adapted ecosystems, particularly when we consider the cost of restoration that now confronts us… We are stalled in our efforts to do more prescribed burning.”
Thirty years later, with recent science indicating that investments in prescribed burning are worthwhile, we remain stalled in our ability to preserve fire-dependent ecosystems and our lives within them.
A rare opportunity to rectify the mismanagement of U.S. forests was lost as the 118th Congress concluded without voting on the National Prescribed Fire Act.
Featured image: Palisades Fire at peak intensity threatens the Pacific Palisades section of the City of Los Angeles in this photo taken by a camera on the roof of a high rise building in Downtown Los Angeles January 7, 2025 (Photo by Toastt21 via Wikipedia)
