Short Wave - Wildfire Season Is Here To Stay

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

Californians face a terrible new normal as wildfire season grows longer and more intense. Jennifer Montgomery, head of the California's Forest Management Task Force, explains three key factors at the heart of why the state is now at such high risk. It turns out, one of them goes all the way back to Spanish colonization. Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter: @maddie_sofia. Or email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Today on the show, we're talking California wildfires. Tonight, a statewide emergency in California and two new fires igniting near the Karkina's bridge. A statewide emergency declared, The wind conditions were lethal last night. Hundreds of thousands forced to evacuate. Look at the mandatory evacuation zone here. It is now stretching all the way to the coast.

In intentional blackouts by PG&E, leaving a million plus without power. to prevent its equipment from igniting fires. It's because of dry conditions and high winds predicted. This could be the new normal for Californians. But it's not that fires in and of themselves are new. It's that fire season is getting longer. What we see now is significant fires in October and November, and really even into December.

Jennifer Montgomery runs the California Forest Management Task Force. And she says on top of a longer season, the fires are getting hotter and more. intense. So we are not burning as many acres as we burned historically, but the difference is we are burning at much higher intensities now, much greater severities. Today in the show, we talk to Jennifer about how we got here, three factors at the heart of why California's at such high risk for wildfires right now. And it turns out one of them goes all the way back to Spanish colonization. We're talking with Jennifer Montgomery about three factors that contribute to fire

in California. All right, let's get to it. Factor number one, the way we're managing our forests. For the last 100 years or so, forest management has mostly been focused on suppressing fire, basically stopping fires wherever they start and trying to prevent them from starting in the first place. Frankly, none of us has done a good job managing the forest for the last 100 years or so. And basically just kind of taken an approach that, you know, if the forests grow, that's good. Fire is bad, and when fire starts, we go in and we put it out.

What we have discovered is that not all fire is bad and not all trees are good. The thing is, that approach has led to a forest that's super dense and unhealthy, basically full of kindling primed and ready to burn out of control. But here's the thing. Our forest haven't always been this way. It turns out the fire suppression approach to dealing with wildfires is rooted in European settlement. Indigenous people who lived on the land here in California actually pretty robustly utilized fire for resource management. And then the Spaniards came and they settled on the landscape in the mission system.

And they really did not embrace cultural fire. And they disincentivized it in ways like beatings and imprisonment and killing of the indigenous people. And so, you know, really this idea of fire exclusion, fire suppression, began with the Spanish settlements, and then continued when we had the gold rush. I think people think like fire to prevent fire doesn't make intuitive sense. Absolutely. So it is a difficult concept to think that, you know, putting fire on the landscape to help reduce the impacts of fire. It's problematic. It confuses people. I've read a little bit about prescribed fire, and my understanding is you can basically kind of,

of burn out the trees that have been allowed to grow and the small growth and kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the kind of like the understory. If you can reduce the understory proactively rather than through an uncontrolled wildfire, you create a much safer environment where when fire does come through that land in an uncontrolled fashion, because you don't have all that fuel on the ground and then the latter fuels, they're called, which carry the fire up into the crowns of the trees, you end up with a much healthier burn. But right now what we have is thousands and thousands of trees per acre fighting for a limited set of resources. And by thinning it, either through hand-thinning or mechanical thinning of our forests or through reintroduction of fire, you give the trees that remain a lot more nutrients, a lot more water, and more sunshine, which is what they need to grow and be healthy.

Factor number two, climate change. Jennifer, tell me a little bit about how climate change is playing a role here. It's heat, it's drought, it's rain, it's extreme snow variability. those climate change pieces, they are going to make unhealthy forests more unhealthy. They're going to make them more susceptible to things like die off from drought. And frankly, under many climate change models here in California, we are seeing an increase of potential for burned acreage in California. And then a magnifier for all those climate changes is the role of insects.

And, you know, how does like a bark be? infestation play into that. The reason that climate change is going to magnify issues around bark beetle and bark beetle infestation and tree die off is that when trees are healthy and they have a good amount of water and they've got the resources they need, when a bark beetle kind of drills into the tree, the tree can put out a lot of pitch. A pitch is similar to sap, but thicker. And it actually forces the bark beetle out of the tree. So it can't become infestate. But when a tree is weakened by drought, by overcompetition because the forests are too thick, it makes it much easier for insects like the bark beetle to get into those trees.

Jennifer, what kind of die-offs are we talking about? Like, what can we attribute to the bark beetle, for example? You know, we saw places in California in counties like, you know, Mariposa and Twalny that had 90% mortality in certain areas. of their coniferous trees. So climate change is a huge magnifier and a huge problem for forests that have existing health issues. All right. So factor number three, people are moving into wild places. Talk to me a little bit about that. We have one in four Californians who are living in what is called the wildland urban interface or the wooey. It's a great word. Yeah, it's the wooey. We like to say it.

But, you know, that means there are 11 million people, roughly, living in an environment where they are at higher risk for wildland fire. And conversely, the wildlands are at higher risk of getting lit on fire because people in wildlands, you know, create problems like wildfire. And this is one of the things that California really needs to start to internalize in all of our brains. everywhere you go in California, pretty much, there are some exceptions. You are fairly adjacent to a wildland. I think the future of firing California is this model where it may begin at a wildland or it may begin in an urban area and it spreads throughout the community, again, because of climate change and because of the way that we have constructed homes in the past.

What can we humans do to lower the risk? of fire? Like what can we actually do here, Jennifer? You know, there are people who will tell you, oh, we have to do X or we have to do Y. I characterize it as this is like those old Scantron tests, you know, where you had three choices and then you had D all of the above. This is a D all of the above conversation. If you envision fire protection as three rings, the internal ring is the human development. And then the next ring is the wooey. the wildland urban interface. And then the third and largest area is the wildland. We need to do work in all three of those rings to make more fire survivable communities and to make more fire

survival ecosystems. Because communities without robust ecosystems don't get water. They don't have clean air. You know, we are all integrated. We can't tease apart those three rings. And I am actually hopeful. It's a huge task, but I am hopeful that we can get a handle on this, and we can make California fire safer for all. That's Jennifer Montgomery, Director of the California Forest Management Task Force. This has been shortwave from NPR. We'll see you tomorrow.