Why Are There So Many Wildfires in California?

Wildfires are nothing new or anomalous in California—this is the state that experiences them the most. They occur naturally, every year starting around August and lasting through November, and they are “nature’s way of clearing out the dead litter on forest floors,” as Science magazine once put it. Once burned, that dead litter’s nutrients are absorbed back into the soil, helping to support and make way for new life. Make no mistake, though; what’s transpiring in California this year is extreme—Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on August 18—and possibly too extreme to benefit the ecosystem, burning too far, wide, and long for it to bounce back. And we humans are mostly to blame. Below, we take a look at how and why.