Meanwhile, the total area burned by wildfires is dropping every year. NASA satellites make it easy to identify burned out areas.
Of course, the recent spate of deliberately set fires is beginning to alter that statistic. Smokey the Bear is not happy.
Living in the Soviet of Washington for the past 45 years, I have seen a few wildfires. What’s not said enough the WORST landowner that causes the majority of the non-arson wildfires is the Federal Government. In the west, the Fed’s own eastern state size forests they mismanage and there’s where the problem lies.
Weyerhaeuser, Sierra Pacific, Green Diamond and Port Blakely tree growers to name a few big ones, NEVER have non-arson wildfires in their privately owned and managed farms. They only lose timber whenever a Federal or State, Department of Natural Resources plot catches fire and spreads into one of their parcels.
If the state and Fed’s didn’t own so damn much land, there wouldn’t be a natural forest left in the west due to mismanagement. Now, they only pay lip service trying to put them out.