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As you've probably noticed,

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in recent years, a lot
of western forests have burned

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in large and destructive wildfires.

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If you're like me --

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this western landscape
is actually why my family and I live here.

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And as a scientist and a father,

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I've become deeply concerned
about what we're leaving behind

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for our kids, and now my five grandkids.

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In the US, an area that's larger
than the state of Oregon has burned

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in just the last 10 years,

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and tens of thousands of homes
have been destroyed.

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Acres burned and homes destroyed
have steadily increased

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over the last three decades,

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and individual fires that are bigger
than 100,000 acres --

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they're actually on the rise.

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These are what we call "megafires."

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Megafires are the result of the way
we've managed this western landscape

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over the last 150 years

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in a steadily warming climate.

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Much of the destruction
that we are currently seeing

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could actually have been avoided.

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I've spent my entire career
studying these western landscapes,

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and the science is pretty clear:

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if we don't change a few
of our fire-management habits,

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we're going to lose many more
of our beloved forests.

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Some won't recover in our lifetime

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or my kids' lifetime.

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It's time we confront
some tough truths about wildfires,

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and come to understand that we need
to learn to better live with them

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and change how they come to our forests,

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our homes

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and our communities.

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So why is this happening?

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Well, that's what I want
to talk to you about today.

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You see this forest?

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Isn't it beautiful?

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Well, the forests that we see today

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look nothing like the forests
of 100 or 150 years ago.

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Thankfully, panoramic photos
were taken in the 1930s

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from thousands of western
mountaintop lookouts,

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and they show a fair approximation

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of the forest that we inherited.

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The best word to describe
these forests of old is "patchy."

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The historical forest landscape
was this constantly evolving patchwork

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of open and closed
canopy forests of all ages,

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and there was so much evidence of fire.

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And most fires were pretty small
by today's standards.

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And it's important to understand
that this landscape was open,

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with meadows and open canopy forests,

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and it was the grasses of the meadows

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and in the grassy understories
of the open forest

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that many of the wildfires were carried.

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There were other forces at work, too,
shaping this historical patchwork:

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for example, topography,
whether a place faces north or south

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or it's on a ridge top
or in a valley bottom;

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elevation, how far up the mountain it is;

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and weather, whether a place
gets a lot of snow and rain,

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sunlight and warmth.

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These things all worked together

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to shape the way the forest grew.

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And the way the forest grew
shaped the way fire behaved

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on the landscape.

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There was crosstalk
between the patterns and the processes.

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You can see the new dry forest.

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Trees were open grown
and fairly far apart.

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Fires were frequent here,
and when they occurred,

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they weren't that severe,

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while further up the mountain,

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in the moist and the cold forests,

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trees were more densely grown
and fires were less frequent,

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but when they occurred,
they were quite a bit more severe.

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These different forest types,
the environments that they grew in

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and fire severity --
they all worked together

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to shape this historical patchwork.

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And there was so much power

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in this patchwork.

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It provided a natural mechanism

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to resist the spread of future fires
across the landscape.

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Once a patch of forest burned,

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it helped to prevent the flow
of fire across the landscape.

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A way to think about it is,

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the burned patches
helped the rest of the forest

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to be forest.

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Let's add humans to the mix.

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For 10,000 years, Native Americans
lived on this landscape,

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and they intentionally burned it -- a lot.

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They used fire to burn meadows
and to thin certain forests

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so they could grow more food.

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They used fire to increase graze

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for the deer and the elk
and the bison that they hunted.

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And most importantly, they figured out

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if they burned in the spring and the fall,

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they could avoid the out-of-control
fires of summer.

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European settlement -- it occurred
much later, in the mid-1800s,

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and by the 1880s, livestock
grazing was in high gear.

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I mean, if you think about it,
the cattle and the sheep ate the grasses

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which had been the conveyer belt
for the historical fires,

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and this prevented once-frequent fires
from thinning out trees

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and burning up dead wood.

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Later came roads and railroads,
and they acted as potent firebreaks,

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interrupting further the flow of fire
across this landscape.

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And then something happened
which caused a sudden pivot

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in our society.

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In 1910, we had a huge wildfire.

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It was the size
of the state of Connecticut.

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We called it "the Big Burn."

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It stretched from eastern Washington
to western Montana,

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and it burned, in a few days,
three million acres,

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devoured several towns,
and it killed 87 people.

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Most of them were firefighters.

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Because of the Big Burn, wildfire
became public enemy number one,

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and this would shape the way
that we would think about wildfire

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in our society

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for the next hundred years.

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Thereafter, the Forest Service,
just five years young at the time,

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was tasked with the responsibility
of putting out all wildfires

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on 193 million acres of public lands,

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and they took this responsibility

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very seriously.

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They developed this unequaled
ability to put fires out,

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and they put out 95 to 98 percent

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of all fires every single year in the US.

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And from this point on,
it was now fire suppression

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and not wildfires

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that would become a prime
shaper of our forests.

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After World War II, timber harvesting
got going in the west,

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and the logging removed
the large and the old trees.

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These were survivors
of centuries of wildfires.

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And the forest filled in.

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Thin-barked, fire-sensitive
small trees filled in the gaps,

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and our forests became dense,
with trees so layered and close together

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that they were touching each other.

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So fires were unintentionally blocked
by roads and railroads,

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the cattle and sheep ate the grass,

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then along comes fire suppression
and logging, removing the big trees,

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and you know what happened?

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All these factors worked together

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to allow the forest to fill in,

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creating what I call
the current epidemic of trees.

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(Laughter)

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Go figure.

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(Laughter)

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More trees than the landscape can support.

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So when you compare what forests
looked like 100 years ago and today,

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the change is actually remarkable.

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Notice how the patchwork has filled in.

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Dry south slopes --

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they're now covered with trees.

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A patchwork that was once
sculptured by mostly small

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and sort of medium-sized fires

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has filled in.

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Do you see the blanket of trees?

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After just 150 years,

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we have a dense carpet of forest.

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But there's more.

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Because trees are growing
so close together,

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and because tree species,
tree sizes and ages

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are so similar across large areas,

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fires not only move easily
from acre to acre,

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but now, so do diseases
and insect outbreaks,

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which are killing or reducing the vitality

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of really large sections of forest now.

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And after a century without fire,

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dead branches and downed trees
on the forest floor,

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they're at powder-keg levels.

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What's more, our summers
are getting hotter

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and they're getting drier

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and they're getting windier.

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And the fire season is now
40 to 80 days longer each year.

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Because of this,
climatologists are predicting

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that the area burned since 2000

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will double or triple

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in the next three decades.

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And we're building houses
in the middle of this.

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Two recently published studies tell us

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that more than 60 percent
of all new housing starts are being built

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in this flammable and dangerous mess.

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So when we do get a fire,

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large areas can literally go up in smoke.

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How do you feel now

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about the forest image

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that I first showed you?

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It scares the heck out of me.

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So what do we do?

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We need to restore
the power of the patchwork.

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We need to put the right kind of fire

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back into the system again.

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It's how we can resize
the severity of many of our future fires.

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And the silver lining is
that we have tools

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and we have know-how to do this.

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Let's look at some of the tools.

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We can use prescribed burning
to intentionally thin out trees

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and burn up dead fuels.

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We do this to systematically
reduce them and keep them reduced.

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And what is that going to do?

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It's going to create already-burned
patches on the landscape

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that will resist the flow of future fires.

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We can combine mechanical thinning
with some of these treatments

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where it's appropriate to do so,

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and capture some commercial value

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and perhaps underwrite
some of these treatments,

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especially around urban areas.

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And the best news of all
is that prescribed burning produces

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so much less smoke than wildfires do.

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It's not even close.

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But there's a hitch:

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prescribed burning smoke is currently
regulated under air quality rules

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as an avoidable nuisance.

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But wildfire smoke?

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It simply gets a pass.

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Makes sense, doesn't it? (Laughs)

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So you know what happens?

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We do far too little prescribed burning,

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and we continually eat smoke
in the summers

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from megafires.

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We all need to work together
to get this changed.

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And finally, there's managed wildfires.

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Instead of putting all the fires out,

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we need to put some of them back to work

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thinning forests and reducing dead fuels.

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We can herd them around the landscape

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when it's appropriate to do so

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to help restore the power
of the patchwork.

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And as you've probably figured out by now,

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this is actually a social problem.

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It's got ecological
and climate explanations,

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but it's a social problem,
and it will take us humans to solve it.

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Public support for these tools is poor.

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Prescribed burning and managed wildfires
are not well-supported.

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We actually all simply want fires
to magically go away

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and take that pesky smoke
with them, don't we?

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But there is no future
without lots of fire and lots of smoke.

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That option is actually not on the table.

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Until we, the owners of public lands,
make it our high priority

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to do something about
the current situation,

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we're going to experience
continued losses to megafires.

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So it's up to us.

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We can spread this message
to our lawmakers,

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folks who can help us manage our fires

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and our forests.

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If we're unsuccessful,

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where will you go to play

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when your favorite places
are burned black?

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Where will you go

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to breathe deep

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and slow?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)