Passionate Potpourri

More than 45 percent of the continental United States is experiencing drought. This summer’s sparse monsoon season has caused widespread drought across the west, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts will get worse during the months ahead because of the La Nina weather pattern.

More than five million acres have already burned this year in the West, explained Philip Higuera, a wildfire scientist and paleoecologist at the University of Montana, nationalgeographic.com/ science, Sept. 17. One month later more than 60 major fires were burning in 11 Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Wildfires are an ongoing threat across New Mexico as the extended drought shows no sign of abating.

Humans have always played a pivotal role in managing forests and grasslands.

For centuries, Native American peoples would burn parts of the forest, which reduced flammable vegetation and made forests less dense. That practice was discouraged by European immigrants and was no longer a management tool as more immigrants moved west of the Mississippi River. This change in land-use practices contributed to a series of fires, known as “The Big Burn,” which exploded across parts of British Columbia, Canada, eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana in August 1910. That massive conflagration scorched 3.25 million acres in fewer than three days. Eighty-five people died, 78 of them firefighters. The catastrophe transformed wildland firefighting into a force that responds to blazes with mass mobilizations of air tankers, bulldozers and "troops," as the firefighters are often called.

The modern practice of total fire suppression, at the expense of allowing some limited fires to burn and create firebreaks, has resulted in a large number of dead trees left standing due to drought and disease; dead timber poses a serious fire threat. This emphasis on putting out any fires along with climate change has created a tinderbox of vegetation commented one wildlife expert.

More people living in the western part of this country has resulted in an approximate 100-fold increase in the number of houses built in fire-vulnerable terrains. The resultant human activity has contributed to the frequency and severity of fire weather - defined as periods with an increased risk due to a combination of elevated temperatures, low humidity, reduced rainfall, and high winds, according to a scientific review recently published in sciencebrief.org.

Most of us are familiar with the rampant wildfires that have plagued Colorado and California in the past few months.

The East Troublesome fire near Colorado’s northern border grew by more than 6,000 acres and was burning 11,329 acres, or 18 square miles, on Saturday, Oct. 17. The Cameron Peak fire near Fort Collins, Colo., had burned an additional 20,000 acres for a total of 187,537 acres, or 293 square miles, as of Saturday morning, Oct. 17, upi.com

California has recorded its first millionacre wildfire in modern history, the August Complex, which has been burning across seven counties in since mid-August.

The cycle of catastrophic wildfires, longer fire seasons, severe drought, intense wind, tree mortality, invasive species, and human population pressure threaten to convert conifer forests to shrublands and shrublands to invasive grasses, according to California officials who emphasized that compounding risks have made it nearly impossible for nature to self-correct.

The federal government owns nearly 58 percent of the 33 million acres of forest in California.

Federal agencies like the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Parks Service are responsible for the upkeep of federally-owned land, and as far as private forest land is concerned, it's up to the owners to manage these areas.

State and federal agencies have developed initiatives and implemented regulations encouraging cooperation and utilizing best practices focused on managing private forested areas, including reducing wildfire threats, according to bbc.com/news.

Federally owned land in New Mexico was 26,981,490 acres or 34.7 percent of the state’s 77,766,400 acres and 31.99 percent of New Mexico was identified as forest in 2016.

“This is one of the worst years that we’ve had in a long time, because of how hot and dry the spring was and then how weak the monsoon was,” said Director John Fleck, University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program. Seven percent of the state is in exceptional drought; Albuquerque is in “severe drought” – two levels lower than the exceptional drought category.

“We’re seeing impacts of that on the forests in northern New Mexico. There are definite impacts on native vegetation at this point from the dryness and temperatures,” said State Climatologist Dave DuBois. He confirmed that Santa Fe typically receives around 13 inches of rain between January through October each year. The city has recorded only five inches of precipitation in the past year, Oct. 10, abqjournal.com

Farmers and ranchers have been severely affected. DuBois said ranchers have sent photos of dying rangeland that has left no vegetation for their herds to graze. Several cattle owners have sold their livestock in the past few months.

The forecast is for drier than normal conditions across the Southwest - potentially exacerbating the current drought.

Shouting fire in a crowded theater is a popular analogy for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating panic.

New Mexico is not Colorado or California, but it is time to shout fire after 20 years of prolonged drought across the state.

And now is the time to review water conservation efforts and land-use planning.

(The phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” is a paraphrasing of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.)