![]() 1 Fire professionals have long called this dilemma “the fire paradox.” Given the severity of recent fires, though, it’s worth considering a less neutral term for this vicious cycle. It’s such a ubiquitous pattern, and such an entrenched and difficult problem, that it deserves naming. Cascadia is stuck on a wildfire treadmillĬascadia, along with the rest of the West, is caught in a vicious circle: the more we suppress fires, the worse they get and the worse fires get, the more we suppress them. It’s a lot more complex.” Still, it’s clear-especially in seasonally dry inland ecosystems-that forests need more fire, not less. As William Bagley, a seasoned fire professional and emergency manager for the Klamath Tribes, told me, “Fire’s not rocket science. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to our wildfire problem. There is good evidence backing them up.Įven with more flexible policy and some redistribution in funding, federal and state wildfire response still does not follow science-based recommendations to allow wildfires to burn when conditions are low-risk and to use intentional controlled fires to restore forest health and climate resiliency. That is what the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation claim in their lawsuit against the US government. More low-intensity fires could have prevented the megafires that turned 700,000 acres of forest into a “moonscape” and incinerated more than one billion board feet of timber.
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