Why climate change only explains half of the Northwest wildfire crisis

Retired cattle rancher Rod Haeberle recently counted nine fires within 20 miles of his home in north-central Washington. All summer, he looks outside and sees smoke instead of his neighbor.

Haeberle, 77, said that over the past four decades he has watched the wildlands around him grow more wild and flammable. He blames hands-off land management.

“I’m very critical, I realize that. But everything we have today was predictable,” he said. “The forests — they became jungles.”

Forests, or jungles, are burning. The Northwest Interagency Coordination Council, a clearinghouse for regional fire information, recently reported 27 large fires were burning in Oregon and Washington.

Some fires will be remembered after they’re out. The lightning-caused Big Grass Fire grew into Oregon’s biggest wildfire ever, and the intentionally set Old Trails Fire burned more than 600 buildings in Spokane.

Conditions are right for more fires. Oregon and Idaho are on pace to have their third-hottest years in 132 years of record-keeping. Washington is on pace to have its sixth-hottest year.

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Drought covers most of all three states. “All fuels at all elevations are available for burning,” the Washington Department of Natural Resources reports laconically.

“It’s so damn dry. We haven’t had any moisture since March,” Spokane County Cattlemen’s Association President Jim Wentland said. “It doesn’t take anything but a spark.”

South-central Washington rancher Keith Kreps hasn’t been affected by fire, yet. But he looks toward nearby public forests and sees what he calls “piss-poor management.” “Someday they’re going to burn me clean out,” he said.

As fires spead, Save Family Farming, an advocacy group, issued a statement pinning the blame on state and federal agencies for favoring a “no-touch” approach to land management.

“Farmers and ranchers across the state will tell you, before agencies adopted this wrongheaded approach, wildfires weren’t like this,” Executive Director Ben Tindall said.

Climate change, partly to blame

Severe wildfires in the West have increased eight-fold since 1895, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a 1,800-page government report on the effects of climate change in the U.S.

Global warming will continue to make fires worse, according to the assessment, but blaming climate change for the eight-fold leap is only half right. “Roughly half of the increase in burned area in the U.S. can be attributed to a warming climate,” the report states.

That leaves room other reasons. Land management also contributed, according to the assessment. Thinning forests and controlled burns can reduce fire danger, the reports states.

The report did not address whether commercial logging and livestock grazing could help, too.

“Climate change is certainly a factor. But to us, there is a fuel problem on these lands, too,” American Forest Resources Council spokesman Nick Smith said. “The one thing we can control is the fuel.”

Thinning forests can reduce fire danger, but concern about wildfires can front for a drive to do more commercial logging, said Tim Coleman, director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group, an environmental organization based northeast Washington.

“There’s nothing quite like scaring people with fire,” he said.

“It’s not like you can just log your way out of wildfires,” Coleman said. “The wind, drought, heat — those are the biggest factors, always.”

Unhealthy forests; unhealthy smoke

Over the past 45 years, Okanogan County Farm Bureau policy chairman Dick Ewing has witnessed logging and grazing decline in the Methow Valley near the Canadian border. Sawmills and cows became fewer. The idea that “pristine nature is preferable” took hold, he said.

Fires, however, are altering life and the economy, he said. He said he sees few mountain bikers in the smoke.

“The tourist economy was sold as an alternative to the resource-based economy, but the smoke is disturbing the economy,” he said.

Policy makers recognize there is a problem. The Trump administration cites fires as one reason to repeal the U.S. Forest Service’s roadless rule, which generally prohibits new roads and logging on nearly 45 million acres, almost all in the West.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources in 2017 identified at least 2.5 million acres of “unhealthy forests” east of the Cascade Range. The department reports reducing fire danger on more than one million acres since 2017.

The Washington Legislature in 2021 committed to putting $125 million in each of the next four two-year budgets to prevent and fight wildfires.

Unless something was done, the state’s greenhouse gas-reduction goals would go up in smoke, according to the legislation. It was a popular bill. No one voted against it.

The commitment, however, waned on the third of the four budgets. Lawmakers appropriated $60 million, not $125 million. DNR lobbied legislators and eventually got the money.

“It would have been a very, very big deal if they hadn’t come through with that,” DNR spokesman Will Rubin said.

If the Legislature keeps its commitment, DNR will get one last $125 million. “We have to start having conversations about what comes next,” Rubin said.

The conservation should include how timber harvests can enhance forest health, according to the Washington Forest Protection Association, which represents large timberland owners.

“We’re beside ourselves about the whole state and region burning,” the forest association’s public affairs director, Cindy Mitchell, said.

“People need to understand. We can do something, and that’s reduce the fuel,” she said. “We can’t control the heat or drought, but we can control the fuel.”

The Stevens County Cattlemen’s Association a few years ago put up a billboard with a cry heard throughout the West, “Log it, graze it or watch it burn.”

“It made people mad,” rancher Scott Nielsen said. “We got a lot of feedback. The environmental community especially got really upset. I think most of the folks around here understood it.”