AN EXCELLENT NATIONAL SERVICE PROJECT:

As much as 20 million acres of federal, state, or private land across California needs "fuel reduction treatment to reduce the risk of wildfire," according to earlier assessments by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and other state agencies. That's nearly two-thirds of the state's 33 million acres of forests and trees, and six times the area that has burned so far this year.

This "treatment" can include prescribed burns set under controlled conditions--ideally, spaced out geographically and across the year to prevent overwhelming communities with smoke. It can also mean using saws and machines to cut and thin the forests. Another option is "managed wildfire," which means monitoring fires but allowing them to burn when they don't directly endanger people or property.

More than a century of deferred work, however, means it's hard to get into places that need thinning. It's also risky to do prescribed burns or allow natural fires to rage, since the fuels are so built up in many places, Westerling says.

A 2018 report by the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency, recommended cleaning out 1.1 million acres a year. That would still take two decades, and require a lot of workers and money. Prescribed burns on forest and park lands can cost more than $200 per acre, while thinning can easily top $1,000, depending on the terrain. So the total costs could range from hundreds of millions of dollars to well above a billion per year.

Still, that's a fraction of the costs incurred by out-of-control wildfires. To take just one example, the devastating Wine Country Fires in October 2017 did more than $9 billion worth of damage in a single month. Battling wildfires on US Forest Service land runs more $800 an acre.

And without thinning and burning, the wildfires are only going to get worse.

If the goal is to burn up excess fuel, why not just let the wildfires rage? The problem is that runaway fires in overgrown forests don't achieve the same results as controlled burns. These intense blazes can level vast stretches of the forest rather than simply clearing out the undergrowth and leaving the big trees standing, says Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley. Instead of restoring the health of the forests, large, uncontrolled fires often transform them into shrub land, where vegetation grows quickly and severe fires can rapidly return.

Tweet   @brothersjudd