The air is smoky again, and the media smoke is all about how climate change (warming) is causing more and more wildfires. As a retired U.S. Forest Service employee and one who has been recognized by federal courts as an expert in public lands policy and history, I can say this increase is not true.
These numbers are facts: From the 1920s through the 1930s, no fewer than 20 million acres burned every year. Some years during that time, as much as 50 million acres burned. From those highs, there was a significant downward trend to a low in the 1980s and 1990s. From 1998 to present, a slight upward trend from 1.3 million acres. Nowhere near the past acreages. When the media breathlessly state that “x” million acres have burned during a current year, just remember those facts.
Gifford Pinchot was the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service. In his writings about an 1897 examination of western forests, he noted that the fire damage to forests on the Idaho-Washington state line north of Spokane was “sickening.” Further, he described the Olympic peninsula in Washington State, “which rejoices in the heaviest rainfall in the United States,” and “every part of the Reserve I saw appeared to be cleared by fire within the last few centuries.”
The media and “climate experts” will show graphs that are skewed to show a dramatic increase in area burned annually, by not showing the early and mid years of the 20th century. They want you to ignore the real historical data.
David Fredley
West Deer