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Trump’s EPA may change obscure rule in attempt to increase prescribed burns

Hunter BasslerMarch 14, 2025Uncategorized4 Comments

The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s top official announced Wednesday the agency will start the process of changing a decade-old rule with the hopes of increasing prescribed burns.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, appointed earlier this year by President Donald Trump, said he has asked staff to specifically revisit the agency’s Exceptional Events Rule, which Zeldin claims has partially stood in the way of communities increasing their prescribed burning efforts.

The rule has long held prescribed burning in a gray area. The policy allows states to be exempt from meeting national air quality standards during “exceptional events,” or times of high pollution readings that states can’t control, like wildfires. However, a study published in February said prescribed fires may not always meet the exemption.

Since the practice is human-caused, is likely to recur, and is preventable, the current EPA policy would disqualify them as “exceptional events” and may lead to federal violations and financial penalties for states, according to the researchers. For this reason, EPA staff said that prescribed burns are virtually never nominated for exclusion under the rule.

“The relevant parts of the rule are very complex, but, to simplify, they indicate that if a prescribed burn complies with certain regulations and standard practices, it will be deemed by the agency to be “not reasonably controllable or preventable” and classified as a “natural” rather than “human-caused” event, such that the “unlikely to recur” requirement no longer applies,” the study said. To qualify, prescribed burns must comply with smoke management plans that reduce pollution effects and multiyear land resource management plans that set the frequency and location of burns. These requirements are quite complex and potentially burdensome.”

Zeldin affirmed that prescribed fires are necessary to protect communities from future catastrophic wildfires, but it’s unclear what changes he could make to the rule in order to increase prescribed burn activity. The EPA could have outright excluded as prescribed fires from the Exceptional Event Rule, but doing so may have incentivized states to avoid such burns and, instead, risk wildfires that are already exempt, the researchers said.

“As air quality standards are tightened, and as efforts are made to increase the pace and scale of prescribed fire on the landscape, it is possible that emissions from prescribed fires could have increased implications for nonattainment status,” the study said. “Indeed, the recent rulemaking process that lowered the annual PM2.5 standard raised significant concern within the forest management community over potential constraints the revised standard might impose on use of prescribed fire.”

UK unprepared for increasingly frequent wildfires, framework warns

Hunter BasslerJanuary 16, 2025January 17, 2025UncategorizedLeave a comment

On a hot July day in 2022, London firefighters had their busiest day since World War Two.

Multiple wildfires burned throughout the United Kingdom on July 19, the most destructive of which destroyed 40 properties in the village of Wennington near England’s capital. The firefighting conditions were “absolute hell,” in part due to the historic heatwave suffocating the region.

Before the 2022 fire outbreak, UK officials didn’t see wildfires as something that happened at home, despite a growing body of research signaling an increase in fire-weather days throughout the country in the near future. The nation currently has no entity responsible for governing wildfire risk reduction and the majority of residents have a fire-averse attitude akin to the United States’ pre-1971 no-burn policy.

The increasing frequency of wildfires gives local advocates both hope and anxiety about the future of disaster preparation within the UK. While the problem is becoming more obvious, continuing inaction has left some believing nothing tangible will happen until the nation experiences massive loss of life or property.

Wennington wildfire. Credit: Harrison Healy via Wikimedia Commons.

Victoria Amato was, in many ways, the perfect person to bridge the UK and US wildfire movement. The Britain native has been developing community wildfire protection plans in the US for the past 18 years with SWCA Environmental Consultants. A presentation to UK officials in the wake of the 2022 wildfires showed her how the nation needed to develop a resilience program soon.

“It quickly became evident that there’s so much of what we do here in the US that would translate to some of the needs that the UK is facing,” Amato told Wildfire Today. “We wanted to create a conduit for some of that information sharing.”

The UK Community Wildfire Resilience Framework for Property Protection became that conduit. The paper acts as an entry point for both officials and community residents on how, and why, to safeguard the nation’s infrastructure against wildfire using case studies from the US and Canada.

The researchers believed that focusing specifically on property protection would incentivize government officials to take the growing threat seriously. Local communities have largely been the only entities safeguarding against wildfire danger, with multiple rural areas establishing Fire Operation Groups (FOGs). However, the groups are largely comprised of multiple agencies and are guided by different priorities and objectives.

“We had to show the UK government that we were focused on something that will protect life and property, since that’s what’s going to get attention politically,” Amato said. “They could also point to data and show most that most wildfires in the UK are associated within those rural-urban interface areas, and that’s where they could actually get some traction.”

The in-depth nature of the framework provides numerous achievable actions officials can take now to protect communities. However, Amato said she and the other researchers she worked with believe they’ll face many hurdles before substantive changes are made, including too few economic and personnel resources, residential lack of engagement, code-adoption resistance, a lack of unified governance and messaging, and little relevant science and baseline data.

Despite the potential hurdles, Amato believes the framework’s best practices will act as a spark to further change.

“We presented it with the intent of introducing the paper (to wildfire stakeholders in the UK),” Amato said. “Now we need to get it out with a wider distribution.”

The UK Community Wildfire Resilience Framework was presented to the UK Wildfire Conference in Aberdeen, Scotland in November last year. Amato spoke to the framework with fellow authors Linda Kettley from Firewise UK and Fiona Newman Thacker from Wageningen University and Research.

Click here to read the full framework.

High-severity wildfires the ‘main risk’ to threatened Canada Lynx, researchers say

Hunter BasslerJanuary 13, 2025January 24, 2025Research, Uncategorized, United States, WildfireLeave a comment

A now-rare forest carnivore faces numerous hurdles to continue living in its usual habitat, wildfire chiefly among them.

Canadian Lynx numbers have declined throughout most of their range in the United States, according to the Endangered Species Coalition. Causes for their decline include habitat loss, urbanization, and genetic isolation from populations in Canada due to the fragmentation of their environment.

Now, the remaining morsels of the species’ habitat is facing additional threats, straining the animals even further. A recent study used GPS data and scientific modeling to identify the remaining lynx habitat in the forests of western Colorado, southern Wyoming, and northern New Mexico, and considered over 40 habitat or environmental characteristics to identify the area’s biggest risks.

The maps found that lynx habitat in these areas is now sparse, patchy, and poorly connected, existing only in narrow bands due to Colorado’s complex mountainous terrain. Researchers also said that around one-third of the likely habitat overlapped with multiple disturbances between the study’s timeframe of 1990 and 2022, including forest insect outbreaks (31%), wildfires (5%), and forest management activities like tree harvest and prescribed burning (3%).

“Although fire disturbance from 1990-2022 overlapped only 5% of likely lynx habitat in this area, we believe that frequent, high-severity fire is the main risk to lynx in high-elevation forests moving forward,” Dr. John Squires, the study’s principal investigator and a Rocky Mountain Research Station research wildlife biologist, told Phys.org.

Credit: Keith Williams via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Researchers predicted wildfire would be a primary disturbance factor for the animal’s critical habitat. The 94,545-hectare Cameron Peak Fire, the 78,433-hectare East Troublesome Fire, and the 56,254-hectare Pine Gulch Fire, all burned lynx habitat during the 2020 fire season.

Despite the low overlap percentage the study eventually found, the scientists still considered wildfire to be the highest threat to lynx habitat, in part due to projected increasing trends in wildfire frequency and severity. Some fire threats have already demonstrated the fire vulnerability of lynx habitat.

“The West Fork Fire Complex…burned at high severity across 442 km² of the San Juan Mountains in 2013, impacting one of the most important patches of lynx habitat in the Southern Rockies,” the study said. “In general, lynx avoid fire-impacted landscapes for at least ~ 25 yrs, likely because stand-replacing fires of high severity that are common in subalpine systems reset much of the impacted area to a stand initiation stage.”

For example, fires in Washington’s North Cascades Ecosystem in 2o13 and 2020 burned an estimated 32% of lynx habitat and reduced the species’ carrying capacity between 66% and 73%, the researchers said. Ultimately, how much fires affect lynx landscape depends on the extent, frequency, and severity of the fires.

“Therefore, despite low current overlap, a central conservation issue for lynx and forest management in the Southern Rockies is how to “defend” Likely, in situ habitat from frequent fire disturbance with climate change,” the researchers said.

Click here to read the full study.

Line Fire’s evacuations for thousands hold as it burns away from San Bernardino

Hunter BasslerSeptember 10, 2024September 11, 2024California, Evacuations, Uncategorized, Wildfire

Crews continue to fight the arson-started Line Fire, which has burned 26,516 acres of the San Bernardino National Forest and sits at 5% contained as of Tuesday morning.

The wildfire has threatened over 65,000 structures since it first began on Sept. 5, with 9,200 of those structures under evacuation orders, Cal Fire officials said. A 34-year-old man was arrested and is suspected of starting the fire in the area of Baseline Road and Alpin Street in Highland, KTLA reported.

Crews report the fire’s greatest intensity is on its north and east sides, heading away from the highly populated area of San Bernardino, Highland, and Redlands. Strong winds and overall very dry conditions will likely increase fire spread into Tuesday night, with cooler weather into the end of the week moderating fire activity.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Map of the Line Fire from Sept. 9, 2024.

Evacuation orders were in place for numerous areas around the fire on Tuesday, including:

Communities of Running Springs and Arrowbear Lake
The community of Forrest Falls
The community of Mountain Home Village
The communities of Angelus Oaks, Seven Oaks and all campgrounds and cabins in the area
From Calle Del Rio east to Hwy 38 and from Greenspot Road north to the foothills
The area east of Orchard Road to Cloverhill Drive from Highland Ave north to the foothills
All undeveloped land east of Hwy 330 to Summertrail Place and north of Highland Avenue
The areas north and east of Highland Avenue and Palm Avenue

Numerous other areas were put under evacuation warnings. Click here for the most up-to-date evacuations.

The California National Guard, under order of Governor Gavin Newsom, has deployed the following resources to the fire, according to Cal Fire:

Four UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters for water bucket dropping operations
Two C-130 aircraft with Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS)
Four 20-person hand crews (80 soldiers). They report to Camp Roberts today for equipment distribution and will be assigned to the Line Fire on Thursday in support of CAL FIRE.
One military police company to support the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department with traffic control points in evacuated areas.

Oregon wildfire continues to grow toward nearby town as officials predict ‘increased fire behavior’

Hunter BasslerSeptember 5, 2024Evacuations, Oregon, Safety, Uncategorized, Wildfire

The Rail Ridge Fire triggered evacuations for nearby Oregon communities and burned more than 82,000 acres as of Thursday morning. Several lightning strikes caused numerous fires to combine and become a single wildfire burning throughout the Ochoco National Forest & Crooked River National Grassland.

NIFC‘s infrared fire map estimates approximately 82,946 acres have burned so far, but numerous new fires were detected around the fire’s perimeter in every direction, including to the fire’s north around 10 miles away from the town of Dayville.

“Two Oregon State Fire Marshal Task Forces are being positioned for structure protection in the Dayville area,” the Grant County Emergency Management’s Facebook page posted Wednesday night. “Dayville is currently at a Level 2 “Be Set” evacuation notice.”

Current evacuations for the fire include all buildings in the Aldrich Mountain and eastern Crook County areas.

The Rail Ridge is made of multiple lightning fires that merged into one fire. When the lightning fires first started, they were growing quickly due to winds and warm weather. Credit: Inciweb

Officials first reported the fire on Sept. 2, but it quickly jumped the nearby John Day River near Martin Creek and burned into the Murderers Creek drainage, where it ballooned in size.

The Southern Area Gray IMT, led by Incident Commander Mitch Ketron, assumed command of the fire on Sept. 3 and are reportedly utilizing a full suppression strategy when possible with firefighter and public safety in mind, according to Inciweb. Continued dry and hot weather may continue increased fire behavior.

“Strategic burning operations will be utilized from control lines to remove unburned fuels between defensible barriers and the active fire front,” Ketron told Inciweb. “On the north end, the focus will be stopping the fire from spreading into the Deep Creek drainage to keep the fire away from structures in this area.”

The Bureau of Land Management also ordered an emergency public lands closure of multiple areas throughout Crook and Grant counties. Click here for the full details.

Credit: Grant County Emergency Management

Rx burns aren’t enough to save wildfire-prone communities. Research reveals gardening as an unlikely hero

Hunter BasslerAugust 29, 2024Uncategorized

Prescribed burns have risen to the top of the most prominent wildland fuel treatments in the world. But while the practice is excellent at reducing fuel loads, it’s been less successful at saving peoples’ homes from the flames.

Research previously published in the Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire shows that prescribed burns only lessen structure destruction when they’re set close to structures, which adds another layer of careful, costly, and legally challenging coordination of multiple landowners. Depending on the area, relying solely on Rx burns can ultimately be unsustainable and unfeasible as extreme fire weather conditions become more frequent due to human-induced climate change.

Scientists from the University of Tasmania recognized this shortfall and turned to another fire management practice that has received little praise or scientific inquiry: defensible space in the form of gardens.

Home threatened by the Colby fire east of Los Angeles, January 17, 2014. Photo by John Stimson.

“Models based on post-fire assessments revealed that garden characteristics, particularly vegetation type and cover near the house, as well as presence of non-vegetative fuels, affect the likelihood of house loss,” the scientific article said. “In one case, they were found to be more important than building characteristics in determining house survival.”

The researchers reviewed defensible space creation guidelines from Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania to develop key recommended approaches to mitigating multiple fire attack mechanisms, including fuel types, amount, and spatial distribution.

Proper defensible space hinges on its ability to stop radiative and convective energy from crossing a heat threshold and causing a house fire. Energy transfer can occur in numerous ways, including:

Direct flame contact – Potentially the most hazardous wildfire house-loss mechanism since it has the highest heat fluxes with temperature reaching nearly 2,000°F.
Radiant heat – Electromagnetic radiation emitted from thermally hot bodies that cause structure fires when intense.
Firebrand attack – Airborne flaming or smoldering fuel particles lifted by the plume of fire gases and carried horizontally by winds which can set structures on fire or start additional fires in the area.

Direct flame contact represents a high risk, but only in proximity to the house. Radiant heat constitutes a high risk near the house, but quickly declines as the heat source is located away from the house. Conversely, the risk caused by firebrand attacks only slightly decline with distance.

Using the fuel attack mechanisms and an understanding of each region’s common fuel types and loads, the researchers developed key guidelines provided for the whole defensible space as well as a general conceptual model for defensible space including tree zones, open zones, and fuel-free zones.

Ultimately, defensible space is just one of the many practices communities will have to use as fire conditions become more frequent.

“It is important to acknowledge that defensible space is but one component in mitigating the risk of house loss,” the researchers said. “In addition to wildland fuel management, particularly in close proximity of property boundaries, and creation of defensible space, the other major factor is house design¹²⁴. These last two components are fundamentally interconnected because a well-designed home may be lost to wildfire if fuel management in the defensible space is insufficient, and a poorly designed house may be still vulnerable to destruction from ember attack even if provided appropriate defensible space.”

Click here to read the full research study.

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