The government has to do more to reduce the intensity of wildfires, starting with removing far more vegetation from federal forests, the Biden administration said Thursday in a new strategy document.
Climate change is causing rising temperatures and longer droughts, which together have made wildfires more frequent and devastating. This year’s wildfires, including the Palisades fire near Los Angeles, are expected to be even worse than usual, because much of the West has been stuck in an unusually bad drought.
As that risk grows, the Agriculture Department, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said it must double or even quadruple the amount of vegetation it removes from its forests each year. That leaves less fuel for fires that do ignite, making them easier to contain.
The amount of vegetation being removed each year “is not enough to keep pace with the scale and scope of the wildfire problem,” the department wrote. It called for treating an additional 20 million acres on National Forest System land by 2040, as well as 30 million acres on other federal, state, tribal and private land.
The strategy also called for more so-called prescribed burns, in which smaller fires are set intentionally to burn up vegetation.
Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, said it had long been clear that the government needed to reduce the fire risk by more aggressively thinning out forests.
The bigger question, he said, is whether the Biden administration actually follows through, adding that what’s needed is a clear plan to hit those higher targets. “Anything short of that is not enough at this point,” Mr. Wara said.
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