Decades of fighting the spread of all wildfires has prevented a natural cycle of thinning that had kept forest fires under control. Before European settlement of the West, 1.5m acres would burn each year; since then, it’s been about 57k acres/year. Less than 2% of California forestland saw proactive treatment in some recent years, and one of the most effective means at controlling future fires – prescribed burns – is limited by cultural and legal hurdles, EPA standards and the Endangered Species Act. However, this takes a short-term view on the dangers of uncontrolled wildfires to both environmental quality and animals in these habitats.

We have a problem in this country, and it’s costing us billions of dollars a year. It’s only going to get worse as climate change exacerbates the problem. We need to start listening to what the experts recommend on how to control these fires.

More money needs to be spent on prevention to match the scope of the problem, and we need to properly fund the US Forest Service in order to proactively address threats before they become fires. We need to provide western states with the same amount of funding for local fire prevention and emergency preparedness planning initiatives. We also need to shift our cultural view that all wildfires must be stopped in order to allow the natural cycle to regain control.

These natural fires need to be supplemented with prescribed burns, which stay limited to their defined areas 99% of the time. The EPA must take a long-term view towards the dangers of megafires versus prescribed fires when analyzing the environmental impact of controlled burns.

Finally, we need the federal government to partner with state and local governments to aggressively collaborate in finding solutions to these life-threatening risks. The federal government can properly fund the cost of preventing and fighting fires on federal land, while also learning from state best practices in administering these prevention efforts. The federal government can assist state efforts by providing a federal fire insurance program that depends on the homeowner’s compliance with state fire prevention policies. Incentives for developing land in safe areas also need to be implemented, either through changes to federal standards, changes to mortgage-interest deductions for housing built in high-risk areas, or the implementation of a federal fire insurance program, to price in the costs of living in high risk areas.