Safford and I initially connected through the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s SciLine service, linking journalists with scientific experts.
When fire hits, f—, it’s all gone,” Safford said, drawing out the letter “k” in his expletive and gesticulating wildly.
In its annual aerial survey of the state’s forests, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that roughly 28.8 million trees died in 2023, just in California.
The state’s office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment estimates that 237 million trees died in the state between 2010 and 2023.
“The fire threat is much lower in most of the East due principally to summer rainfall and dominance by less flammable broadleaf trees,” Safford said.
You know about the wildfire crisis strategy of the Forest Service?” After a few tentative yeses, I quickly learned that in fact I didn’t know anything about anything.
The second is the behavior triangle, the three determinants of how a fire behaves once it’s lit—fuel, topography and weather.
“I guess they’re just sitting around waiting for a fire, just twiddling their thumbs,” Can Do said, adding that he respects Forest Service firefighters and admires their efforts to protect woodlands.
Miles to Go: Reporting from the Pacific Crest Trail in Northern California, Inside Climate News fellow Bing Lin is doing the second installment of this ongoing series. In addition to examining how climate change affects the trail, the series aims to teach viewers about sustainability, adaptation, and coexistence in a warming world through the course of a 500-mile hike.
Hugh Safford is not your typical academic. His bathroom reading list includes, among other things, the 2018 and 2021 American Alpine Journal issues, “Ice and Mixed Climbing: Modern Technique,” and “The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes, and Trails.”. Additionally, he offered to accompany me on a 50-mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail as a counteroffer to my request for a Zoom interview.
Through the SciLine service provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which connects journalists with scientific experts, Safford and I first got in touch. A few days after arriving at Carson Pass, I found myself at his driveway in Meyers, just south of Lake Tahoe, still looking gaunt from the trail. In his message, Safford said, “I’ll leave the front door open.”. I gladly settled into his home and vowed to show others this kind of hospitality in the future. “Go ahead and get your clothes washed and take a shower and feel [free] to grab a beer from the fridge!”.
Safford and I drove three hours north to Quincy after spending a blissful night on a bed that was so much better than my sleeping mat. We were eager to hike the scorching section of trail that I had skipped the previous week. Our two-week journey covered twice as much ground as I had planned on hiking, and I quickly became accustomed to Safford’s voracious energy, insatiable thirst for knowledge, and bottomless well of ecological information.
He later admitted to me, after citing his decades of school and college education, that “I’m pedantic as hell.”. I was fortunate that Safford was not pretentious but rather pedantic, and his 38-page resume did not suggest any pompousness. I had already learned more about California’s forest ecosystems and fire regimes by the time we had driven the entire length of Lake Tahoe than I had from all of my undergraduate ecology and evolutionary biology classes put together.
“These forests here are acclimated to extremely frequent wildfires, but we haven’t had one in a century,” Safford remarked, gesturing through the windshield to the left. And that is the main management problem we have here. There is an absurd amount of mortality because they are far too dense and competitive. With a wildly gesticulating expletive, Safford drew out the letter “k” and said, “When fire hits, f—, it’s all gone.”. During its yearly aerial reconnaissance of the state’s forests, the U.S. s. According to Forest Service estimates, just in California, about 28.8 million trees perished in 2023. According to estimates from the state’s office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 237 million trees in the state will die between 2010 and 2023.
“Thinning a stand reduces biomass and lessens the likelihood that fire will spread throughout the stand,” Safford added. “Most of what we do is selective thinning and prescribed burning, but you shouldn’t use a bulldozer, go clear-cutting, or tear everything up. In essence, you’re reestablishing the patterns and processes found in a natural forest. “.
Our lessons started quickly after we arrived in Quincy and hitched a ride up to the PCT at Bucks Lake with Kyle Merriam, the ecologist from the Plumas National Forest and one of the first workers Safford had hired back in his Forest Service days. Safford took me through the risks associated with overuse of fire suppression techniques in the American West as well as their long-term effects. Overly dense, fuel-rich stands were created throughout the state and the nation as a result of fighting too many fires. Any spark, be it a lightning strike or a stray ember from a campfire, can ignite them in a drought made worse by climate change. Yet, people are the primary cause of the great majority of wildfires.
Because of summer rainfall and the predominance of less flammable broadleaf trees, Safford said, “the fire threat is much lower in most of the East.”. “There’s no culture of [non-Indigenous] people using fire as a tool, crazy conditions, and complicated topography in the West.”. That is a concern, then. “.
An insufficient amount of fire fuels more inferno.
After more than a century of human suppression of wildfires, I discovered that the widespread acknowledgement of natural forest fires in California as an essential ecological process began to take hold in the late 1960s. As far back as 1943, Harold Weaver, a forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, wrote about the ponderosa pine ecosystems of the Pacific Slope, which depend on regular, slow-burning fires to eliminate competition and thin stands. This gave rise to concerns about widespread fire prevention. According to Safford, the paper was extremely prophetic.
Subsequently, Starker Leopold, the eldest child of renowned American author, scientist, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold, emerged and contributed to the official reintroduction of fires into the management toolbox. According to Safford, “they developed an amazing roadmap for the future of the park systems… as being microcosms, or macrocosms, of natural ecological process and not just cultivated city parks.”. Furthermore, this fire thing is actually quite significant. Citing the seminal Leopold Report that Starker authored for the National Park Service, he stated, “There are species that need it, not just plants but wildlife, it’s an important recycler of nutrients… It engendered this philosophical revolution.”.
Because they require frequent, low-intensity ground fires for regeneration, giant sequoias, for example, have developed an arsenal of adaptations to not only withstand but also benefit from an occasional fire cycle. These adaptations include thick bark, high-rising branches, and seeds held in cones that are glued together unless there is enough heat. This made it clearer to scientists how significant fires can be when they happen at the proper frequency and duration. Sequoias are being destroyed by wildfires more frequently and with greater intensity these days, outpacing their rate of reproduction.
Safford also had some inquiries for me. “You are aware of chaparral, correct?” he inquired. “You have experience working with optimization? Do you have any knowledge of trees or the Forest Service’s wildfire crisis plan?” I was asked. After a few hesitant “yeses,” I soon realized that I actually knew nothing at all.
“Nudum Eriogonum.”. Safford interrupted his stride to demonstrate to me, “That’s naked buckwheat.”. The delicious thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus. When sufficiently dried, lupine beans have a flavor similar to wild edamame. The average amount of snowfall a tree receives is indicated by the height at which wolf lichen first appears on it (we passed stands where the average amount of snowfall reached up to 20 feet high). From below, red fir needles resemble lush snowflakes.
My head felt like a thimble filled to overflowing with knowledge that was dripping from a fire hydrant after the first day. After we had just come from a trail with a steep sideways slope, Safford became sidetracked for a short while in the camp beside Bear Creek due to a bulbous blood blister that had developed on his heel. I quickly fell asleep in my tent after using the opportunity to withdraw. I had nearly reached eight o’clock. m.
During the majority of our third day and second day together, the trail meandered through numerous stands of snag forest, which are burned forests with every tree completely blackened. Finding out about fires and experiencing their effects now feels different. For species like the black-backed woodpecker, these rough stumps of dead wood are vital habitat. When the sun shone, the fire-thinned understory’s regenerating greenery glowed brightly, creating a striking contrast with the blackened trunks. The forest canopy had been destroyed. It appears exactly as I had imagined Mordor to.
Pointing to the devastation all around us that extended up and down the hills and scattered into the distance, Safford remarked, “This is all the North Complex fire in 2020.”. The deadliest incident of California’s 2020 fire season occurred at the North Complex, which burned over 300,000 acres, nearly 2,500 structures, and 16 people.
There was nothing to protect us from the intense heat in the absence of trees. Even so, noontime highs were still in the low nineties, much lower than they had been the previous week. Feeling like we were on the interactive portion of a school field trip, I trotted behind Safford as we clambered over and around the burnt-tree blowdowns blocking our path.
Safford introduced me to the concept of fire triangles. The first are the three components—fuel, oxygen, and heat—necessary to start a fire. The second is the behavior triangle, which consists of three factors: weather, topography, and fuel, which determine how a fire behaves after it is lit. Referencing techniques like prescribed burning and selective thinning, Safford stated, “In both cases, pretty much the only thing we can manage is fuel.”. Safford continued, “Well, and weather.”. Although we have no control over daily weather patterns, we can lessen the amount of carbon emissions that are raising global temperatures and thereby slowing down human-caused fire weather.
Many of the insights gained in forest management seem to be going too little, too late as a result of climate change. As of August 16, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) had recorded 5,210 wildfires that had burned over 821,000 acres of land. Even though the preceding five years saw some of the most destructive wildfire seasons in the state’s history and six of the largest eight wildfires ever recorded, those numbers are still much higher than the state’s five-year average as of that date.
Worse yet, managing wildfires is becoming more difficult as a result of temperature increases. Safford remarked, “Fires used to sit down at night.”. The rising nighttime temperatures of late allow fires to rage and spread around the clock.
Safford stated, “Hardwood forests are where it’s at when it comes to climate change.”. Broadleaf (hardwood) trees outcompete conifers (softwoods) in their ability to withstand climate change due to their greater resistance to natural disturbances such as wildfires, droughts, beetle outbreaks, and rising temperatures. “The conifers are done. They will be destroyed by fires and eaten by beetles. According to Safford, the Sierra Nevada’s conifer forests are plagued by numerous species of bark beetles at the same time. According to Safford, a beetle known as Scolytus is eradicating white and red fir. The mountain pine beetle is destroying sugar pine forests. The lodgepole pine is also dying in large quantities. “.
He said, “They’re as short as your small fingernail,” in response to my request for him to show me one of the beetles. They are very tiny objects. However, millions of them exist. bilions. Trillions, most likely. “.
These issues combine to form a single issue. “Observe all the lifeless trees here,” Safford gestured. “Compared to live fuels, dead fuels are far more flammable.”. In as little as 50 years, conifers may become less dominant in lower elevation Sierra Nevada forests as a result of interactions between warming, drying, fire, insects, and disease, according to Safford.
Using My GPS SOS, I Learn How to Use It.
By serendipitous events or fate, I encountered my own wildfire crisis the day following Safford’s departure from the trail near Gold Lake.
It had begun like any other day: before lunch, I had completed 20 miles and taken a swim in a creek near Jackson Meadows Reservoir. I had heard multiple thunderclaps in the morning and had noticed some suspicious-looking thunderheads from a distance, but I didn’t give it much attention. I was so taken aback by the blue skies overhead that I even thought the thunder was the sound of falling trees as I was strolling through a timber concession.
It was early afternoon when I resumed my walk and came upon a hiker pacing off the trail. The hiker was wearing a watermelon shirt. He gestured towards the horizon and called me over. I noticed a massive cloud of smoke rising in the distance to the north of us, in the general direction I had hiked from, which was definitely not there the last time I had looked in that direction.
Hikers usually refer to themselves by their trail names, so Clayton Duffin, one of the hikers, introduced himself as “Can Do.”. As the fire spread, we made a report to the Yuba River Ranger District over the phone. They called us right away, and a short while later informed us that we were the first to report the fire because they had seen it on their cameras. Their lack of additional direction alarmed us, even though their efficiency impressed us. Can Do remarked, “I suppose they’re just sitting around waiting for a fire, just twiddling their thumbs,” even though he appreciated the efforts made by Forest Service firefighters to save forests.
I made the fortunate decision to continue southward, away from the flames, not knowing what to do next. By dinner, I had discovered the name of the fire—the Mill Fire—in the scuttlebut passed down the trail. It would soon find itself deeply entrenched in the Gold Complex fire.
About ten miles south of where Can Do and I had first spotted the fire, I set up camp by myself on a ridge at dusk. The horizon was now totally obscured by smoke, and I hadn’t seen a soul in hours. My cell service was still nonexistent. I remembered how wildfires could spread tens of miles per hour on a strong draft and thought of all the burned debris we had passed only a few days earlier, full of knowledge from my days spent with Safford.
I observed the smoke swirling in the last of the light before deciding that I didn’t want to be another person’s wildfire story. I realized that carrying a Garmin satellite communicator for hundreds of miles makes sense because I was unable to escape a fire. I punched in the SOS sequence.
I desperately tried to get advice on whether I should evacuate, and after more than an hour of back and forth delayed messaging with a Garmin representative who barely passed the Turing test, I gave up. At last, the Plumas County Sheriff’s text message made it through: “There are no warnings or orders for a fire evacuation in Nevada County.”. The closest fire in Plumas County is about twenty miles away from you. Your choice. I looked at my sleeping bag and at the smoke, and then I just went to sleep.
The following day I cheerfully got out of bed and left the camp. At dawn, the smoke cloud appeared considerably less menacing; however, I was relieved that my increasingly involved education about wildfires came to an end at this point.
