Western forests are designed to burn. For the one-third of the U.S. population that lives in high wildfire risk areas, this means if we continue to deprive forests of fire it only makes the next fire bigger and more difficult to control. But with the right preparation and conditions, wildfires sparked by lightning can be managed the way nature intended making communities safer. (USDA Forest Service video by Preston Keres)

The western U.S. has a debt to pay, one that has been piling up interest for over a hundred years.

“If there’s an accumulation of fuel, it’s due for a fire. It’s a fire debt,” said Danny Whatley, a U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service fire manager who grew up in Gila County, Arizona. “If you don’t pay it this year, it’s due next year. And if you forego, it’s just a bigger debt every year you put it off.”

Western forests want to burn. Decades of federal fire suppression policies aimed at extinguishing all blazes have allowed forests to grow dangerously dense creating conditions for wildfires to get out of control. Many of the estimated 99 million people living near overgrown forests are now coming to accept this wildfire paradox – that more fire is how they make payment and save the place they love.

In Gila County, the mix of desert and forested mountain views means the wildfire risk has risen to some of the highest levels in the country. Residents who seek solitude away from the busyness of the Phoenix Valley witnessed the consequences of massive wildfires, and they understand the stakes.

“What we’re trying to do is get ahead of it,” said Joel Brandt, chief of the Pine-Strawberry Fire District and a former Forest Service Hotshot who has been working for 20 years to safeguard his community from wildfires. “It is far cheaper, far easier for us to prevent these kinds of things [wildfires] from happening than being reactive to them. If we can get out in front of it, it makes it a whole lot safer for the community, for firefighters and for the wildlife.”

Through a partnership with local fire departments, state agencies, non-profits and the Forest Service, the community in Gila County has created a perimeter of thinned trees and cleared brush. The Forest Service maintains the defensive swath three football fields wide around the local communities every few years when the vegetation grows back, a never-ending cycle of the forest encroaching on the town.

But fire managers like Whatley know this isn’t enough. Vast areas of the forest are too steep or remote to be mechanically treated – areas where logging isn’t economical.

“Most of our problem fires occur in areas that aren’t timbered,” said Whatley. “It’s more shrubs and really rugged and remote terrain. And there is no product in there for a logging operation. So, it’s something that we have to address with fire.”

A growing realization is spreading throughout the local communities that cutting dense vegetation and lighting prescribed fires isn’t enough. Naturally caused wildfire must play a role in managing overgrown forests across the West.

Making Nature Work for Us

Late this summer, the opening Gila County fire managers had been preparing for arrived. Dry lightning storms passed across the region, sparking two fires in the forest. After years of groundwork, they saw an opportunity to turn nature’s ignition into a forest management tool.

“When we get lightning fires after years of preparation, we can take a different approach. We can manage them the way nature intended,” Whatley explained.

One fire ignited in an area already prepared for a prescribed burn. The other fire burned in steep, rugged terrain that Whatley described as hard to access with equipment. But because of years of creating pre-planned control lines, Whatley and his fire staff knew their chances of containing the fires were good.

The decision was not without risk.

Fire management has always been a delicate balance of risk vs. benefit, so the decision to allow nature to take its course was not easy. The public’s tolerance for risk can be fragile, and firefighters know the unpredictability of nature. If something unplanned happens, property could be damaged or worse, a firefighter could be injured.

Adding pressure to the decision, criticism of the Forest Service for not extinguishing fires fast enough has been part of western discourse for decades.

Nevertheless, after poring over maps, studying weather forecasts and conducting a comprehensive risk analysis, Whatley and Brandt recommended their strategy to their superiors who approved it. Both wildfires would be managed carefully by implementing a strategic plan that included adding more fire to achieve management objectives and confining the flames within the previously prepared firebreaks.

Hundreds of firefighters were deployed to manage the flames closely, ensure they burned at the right intensity and prevent them from reaching homes. Helicopters and drones helped firefighters carefully apply fire from the air allowing it to slowly burn up the brush. At night, smoke settled into the surrounding communities, and the Tonto National Forest had to close some recreation activities.

“It’s an inconvenience right in this moment,” said Elsa Steffanson, executive director of the local non-profit Pine Strawberry Fuels Reduction Inc., which has been instrumental in community fire mitigation efforts. “But the long-term benefits to our community are well outweighed by the small inconvenience.”

A Confident Community on Edge

As the fires burned, some residents felt the fear of a looming threat, but also a strange calm. Evelyn Beck, a local realtor who has owned property in Gila County for over four decades, had been displaced by wildfire in 2021. Watching the fires burn near her neighborhood again, Beck understood the necessity, even if she found it unsettling.

“This fire was started by lightning, which could have easily been put out, but it was decided to use it as an advantage, an opportunity to clear out all this underbrush on the other side of the mountain that could potentially be a horrendous fire in the future,” she said.

Beck, like many of her neighbors, has invested in making her property fire safe—trimming trees, cleaning gutters and installing fire-resistant landscaping. She knows that the best way to reduce wildfire risk is to have more fire, a paradox that can be hard for some homeowners to accept.

“I won’t say I’m stressed about it at all, because I do trust – I have faith that they’re going to be taking care of it,” Beck said. “But yes, you have to be on guard. You have to know there’s always the possibility that Mother Nature changes the winds.”

As firefighters methodically managed the flames, Beck watched from her home as crews drove trucks up into the forest each day. Her trust in the system, built over years of preparation, mirrored the community’s mindset.

“As a resident, it’s my responsibility to take care of my property and to inform my neighbors to make sure that they’re taking care of their property,” she said. “The community just works together, and I think that in a small community, that’s what you have to do.”

Living with Fire

The decision to manage the fires for the overall benefits was the right one. No homes were lost, no residents had to evacuate, and the fires cleared out over 18,000 acres of overgrown vegetation that could have fueled a much larger, potentially disastrous wildfire in the future.

This scenario is what the Forest Service envisions for more communities as part of its “Wildfire Crisis Strategy.” The agency is investing billions in its strategy, and so far, has completed nearly 1.7 million acres of treatments on targeted landscapes in the West. This work is beginning to reduce wildfire risk for some 550 communities, 2,500 miles of high-voltage power lines and 1,800 municipal-supply watersheds. However, with over one third of the U.S. population living in high-risk areas, the agency is just getting started.

“We do want to live in these beautiful, wild places,” said Staffanson. “But you need to be ready. You need to be informed. You need to be aware, and you need to be prepared.”

For Gila County, this powerful example demonstrates that preparation and community involvement can turn a potential disaster into a strategic advantage.

“We’ve got to put fire back on the landscape,” said Steffanson. “Mankind took fire out of the landscape because we didn’t want our communities to burn, but we didn’t put anything in its place.”

And Forest Service fire managers understand that using fire as a management tool must be part of the equation to help communities thrive and solve the wildfire crisis.

When thinking about next steps, Whatley said, “There is no solution without fire. It’s either unplanned wildfires that run away, or we apply fire in a strategic manner and start living with it.

“Fire isn’t the enemy. Fire is what is going to help us live through it,” he said.

The success in Gila County stands as a model for other fire-prone regions. Fire managers there made a substantial payment on their fire debt through preparation, expertise and ultimately, trust between the community and the Forest Service.

What they learned is that wildfire, long seen as an enemy, can be a force for good—if the conditions are right and people are ready to accept it.