“ONLY YOU!” For nearly eight decades, Smokey Bear's face and words have served as an emblematic warning about preventing forest fires, but his age-old motto only describes a tiny piece of the current challenge California faces today. California's devastating wildfires have made global headlines for their ever-increasing size and destructiveness. Much of the political and scientific discussion around these fires, both historic and current, has focused on the state's management of conifer forests. Recent media attention includes former President Trump blaming California's wildfires on poor forest management, specifically on not “raking” forest floors, and the back-and-forth on fires and forest management in California in the 2020 presidential debates. These discussions and the long history of fire science have created the general belief that wildfires are predominantly a challenge affecting conifer forests in California and the people who live in and around them. 

A new study appearing in the journal Diversity and Distributions challenges these perceptions. In the study, scientists from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) at UC Berkeley found that the majority of recent wildfires in California have occurred outside of conifer forests. Moreover, the authors showed that fires burning outside of these forests potentially pose a greater threat to biodiversity and are more likely to occur in areas of dense human infrastructure (e.g., near houses). In short, the prevailing focus on forests is misleading and carries potentially dangerous consequences, the authors conclude. They call for a more nuanced approach to wildfire to protect California's unique biodiversity and people.

“Forests are just one piece of the incredible mosaic of ecosystems that make up California,” said the study's lead author and current ESPM graduate student Kendall Calhoun. “Ecosystems outside of conifer forests, like California's oak woodland savannahs, also provide key ecosystem services to the people who live around them and support an incredible amount of biodiversity. Understanding how ecosystems outside of conifer forests respond to fire is critical to their future conservation.” 

Previous research has found that the most effective wildfire management strategies are those that are ecosystem or region specific. The authors argue that to properly face the growing issue of megafire in California, researchers and land managers across the state must expand and diversify strategies to create ecosystem-specific wildfire management strategies and policies. To be successful, the authors add, these strategies must also draw on indigenous knowledge and leadership, which could help identify tools that can protect landscapes, wildlife, and people from future extreme wildfires.

 Additional authors of this study include current ESPM PhD candidates Amy Van Scoyoc, Phoebe Parker-Shames, and Millie Chapman; recent ESPM PhD graduates Carmen Tubbesing, Alex McInturff, Christine Wilkinson, and Dave Kurz; and Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ESPM alum and current postdoctoral fellow at the National Center of Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.