Washington Post: “Fires Are Burning Throughout US—Here’s Where There’s Greater Risk”
RFF Senior Fellow David Wear comments on the landscape of wildfire risk in the US Southeast—a region that is facing an abnormally high number of fires this year.
There are more wildfires in the southeast than any other part of the country in a given year, said David Wear, director of the Land Use, Forestry, and Agriculture Program at the think tank Resources for the Future. Typically, the fires are smaller and confined to the spring and fall, he said — but spring is coming earlier and earlier.
“You have more wildfire events in February and January,” he said.
The Southeast is seeing an increasing number of large wildfires, according to researchers.
A study Wear conducted with members of the U.S. Forest Service that published in December found that the Southeast will face increased wildfire exposure as climate change worsens and the region’s population grows.
Fighting these fires is complicated, because around 90 percent of land in the Southeast is privately owned, Wear said. That means that any controlled burns — planned fires that are used to help mitigate the risk of larger blazes — must be done in coordination with many landowners. The Forest Service performs prescribed burns on federal lands.
