As the Washburn fire moved closer to Mariposa Grove, home to hundreds of giant sequoias, including the 3,000-year-old Grizzly giant that stretches more than 200 feet into the sky, firefighters set up tree protection, installing sprinkler systems to tame flames that could they meet their bases with a hit of moisture and humidity. But while these mitigations are effective tools against the onslaught of extreme fire intensity that has been the main culprit in killing redwood stands in recent years, experts and officials hope the work done long before the fire will go even further toward protect them. Prescribed burning and thinning treatments that removed dense and dried fuels from forests may end up helping to reduce the worst impacts. The fire is large and the rough terrain has made firefighting dangerous, but it has not yet caused a disaster due to favorable weather conditions and mild winds. Officials are optimistic that firefighters can knock down the blaze before a triple whammy — disastrously low humidity, rising temperatures and strong gusts — fan the flames. Even with the added risks of a severe and record-breaking drought leaving landscapes parched, there’s still a good chance this fire will do more good than harm. “Recently there’s been this correlation between fire and bad outcomes because the fires have been absurdly, apocalyptically intense,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, noting that more wildfires in the West may to break out in the coming months. “This fire – so far – has not been a disaster.”
Prescribed burns earlier may help protect the redwoods
California’s Mediterranean climate evolved with fire, and forest ecosystems rely on the renewal provided by a burn. Indigenous nations lit cultural fires to remove overgrowth from the land and help clear space for new trees to thrive. But in the last century, white settlers established fire suppression as a practice. As forests became more and more crowded, the climate crisis turned up the dial, creating a new kind of fire – one that threatened even the hardiest fire-adapted trees. Fueled by a combination of poor land management and intensified conditions, extreme fire intensity has devastated redwood groves. Almost a fifth of the world’s redwoods have been killed in wildfires in the past two years alone. “We’ve seen incredibly severe fires in these giant redwood groves that have essentially incinerated the entire forest and turned the giant, ancient trees into matchsticks,” Swain said. But this fire behaved differently because of the early season weather and prescribed fire treatments and thinning – tree removal is often required to ensure that prescribed burns don’t get out of control and become infernos. Flames can move into untreated areas where there is a dense accumulation of dead and fallen trees that become kindled across the forest. But with the help of burn scars from recent blazes that have reduced the load and conditions that are, so far, more favorable, the Washburn could be a healthier fire, more like those that have historically burned this region. “Right now we’re fortunate to have relatively mild winds,” said Stanley Berkowitz, a public information officer with the interagency team managing the fire response. Temperatures are high, but have stayed below 100 F and the relative humidity hasn’t dropped into the single digits. Berkowitz added that while the timing was helpful, the risks were still high and conditions were constantly changing. “At the moment there are a lot of resources available, but that could all be overturned in three days – there could be two new massive fires and there would be no resources available.” There is always the possibility that conditions will change. If flames creep into areas densely covered with dried vegetation, it could make for a more devastating burn. “We’ve stopped fires for the last 100 years — and we’re paying the price,” Berkowitz said of the lush landscapes still ripe for ignition. “We have created a nightmare situation.” The fire has crews working to contain the blaze, officials said Monday, but stressed confidence remains high. Smoke has blanketed the surrounding areas, causing unhealthy air quality in places where crowds of tourists stay outside. There are also structures at risk, along with beloved spaces within the park. “There are tremendous values at stake in this fire,” Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon said during a community meeting Monday night, noting the town of Wawona and Mariposa Grove, which she cited as “the root of the whole national park. System.” “I know these closures are extremely difficult,” he added, but “the team has made tremendous progress.” Although the risks are extremely high, the behavior of the fire has left many optimistic. There has been a shift in perspective on how fire risks will be mitigated that could help threatened areas cope with the increasing intensity expected in the coming years. Advocated by climate scientists, environmentalists, and firefighters, prescription burn and other treatments are more commonly used. “We’ve learned a lot in the five decades since we started fire suppression — the unintended consequences of fire suppression,” said Kelly Martin, former chief of fire and aviation management in Yosemite, who oversaw some of the treatments that now protect the Mariposa Grove from escalating to fire conditions. The work not only helped reduce the risk, but also spurred sequoia regeneration, ensuring the seeds could better reach the ground. “The problem is that we didn’t recognize the dangers that lay outside the grove and the potential for large wildfires to strike those groves from the outside,” she said, noting that her team modified its suppression plans before her retirement in 2019. Those plans are already having an impact on crews working to contain the Washburn fire. “Over the decades the park has done prescribed burns in Mariposa Grove that now protect the grove and allowed firefighters a safer, more effective place to control this fire,” Martin said. “That’s what we’re seeing playing out now.” More of these operations are being done in the west, but as conditions have become more intense, the window for safely doing them is shrinking. There is also a significant amount of covering to be done, and most services are incredibly lagging behind when it comes to treating landscapes. The plans in place have also been challenged by a small minority of environmentalists, who have raised concerns that thinning is just a disguise. Earlier this month, a federal judge halted thinning and tree-removal projects in Yosemite after the Earth Institute, an environmental nonprofit, filed a lawsuit against the park. The plan would have killed trees less than 20 inches in diameter that were dead and felled. That’s one reason, Martin said, that if this fire manages to achieve that desired mosaic in this landscape, leaving some patches unburned while opening up parts of the dense forest canopy to biodiversity, it will have a positive impact. “Nature has a way of understanding and doing this work that has been going on for centuries,” he said. “When you see it in the landscape, it’s a sight to behold when it comes back next year.”
