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Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding—this could be a rough year

Red skies in August, longer fire seasons and checking air quality before taking my toddler to the park. This has become the new norm in the western United States as wildfires , .

As an ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, I know that fires are that forests need to stay healthy. But the combined effects of a warmer and drier climate, more people living in fire-prone areas and vegetation and debris built up over are leading to . And that’s putting at risk.

To help prevent catastrophic fires, the U.S. Forest Service issued that includes scaling up the use of controlled burns and other techniques to remove excess plant growth and dry, dead materials that fuel wildfires.

���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ researcher Laura Dee is an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

However, the Forest Service’s wildfire management activities have been thrown into turmoil in 2025 with and uncertainty from the federal government.

The planet just saw its . If spring and summer 2025 are also dry and hot, conditions could be prime for severe fires again.

More severe fires harm forest recovery and people

Today’s severe wildfires have been pushing societies, emergency response systems and forests beyond what they have evolved to handle.

Extreme fires have burned into cities, including destroying in 2025 and , in 2021. They threaten downstream public drinking water by increasing sediments and , as well as , and rural economies. They also and mudslides from soil erosion. And they undermine efforts to mitigate climate change by stored in these ecosystems.

In some cases, fires burned so hot and deep into the soil that the forests are .

While many species are , severe blazes can damage the seeds and cones needed for forests to regrow. My team has seen this trend outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, where four years after the Cameron Peak fire, forests have still not come back the way ecologists would expect them to under past, less severe fires. Returning to a strategy of fire suppression − or trying to “” − will make these cases more common.

Proactive wildfire management can help reduce the risk to forests and property.

Measures such as prescribed burns have for and of subsequent wildfires. A recent review found that selective thinning followed by prescribed fire reduced subsequent fire severity , and prescribed fire on its own reduced severity by 62%.

But managing forests well requires knowing how forests are changing, where trees are dying and where undergrowth has built up and increased . And, for federal lands, these are some of the jobs that are being targeted by the Trump administration.

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Parts of Cameron Peak in north-central Colorado that burned in a severe fire in 2020 showed scant evidence of recovery four years later, when this photo was taken. (Photo: Bella Olesky/���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������)

Some of the Forest Service staff who were by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and . Other so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.

Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.

Logging is not a long-term fire solution

The Trump administration cited “wildfire risk reduction” when it issued an in national forests by 25%.

But private − unregulated − forest management than managing forests to prevent destructive fires.

Logging, depending on the practice, can involve clear-cutting trees and other techniques that . Exposing a forest’s soils and dead vegetation to more sunlight also dries them out, which can .

In general, logging that focuses on extracting the highest-value trees leaves thinner trees that are more vulnerable to fires. A study in the Pacific Northwest found that replanting logged land with the same age and size of trees can in the future.

Research and data are essential

For many people in the western U.S., these risks hit close to home.

I’ve seen neighborhoods burn and friends and family displaced, and I have contended with regular air quality warnings and red flag days signaling a high fire risk. I’ve also seen beloved landscapes, such as those on Cameron Peak, transform when conifers that once made up the forest have not regrown.

My scientific research group have been helping to identify cost-effective solutions. That includes which fuel-treatment methods are most effective, which types of forests and conditions they work best in and how often they are needed. We’re also planning research projects to better understand which forests are at greatest risk of not recovering after fires.

This sort of research is what robust, cost-effective land management is based on.

When careful, evidence-based forest management is replaced with a heavy emphasis on suppressing every fire or clear-cutting forests, I worry that human lives, property and economies, as well as the natural legacy of public lands left to every American, are at risk.

Laura Dee is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

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