Fire risk linked to global warming

Summer rains throughout the West are doing little to hydrate forest ecosystems, while areas that have burned don't get enough water and come back as grasslands or landscapes defined by shrubs, he said.

Tom France, a regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation who is based in Missoula, Mont., said more efforts are needed to keep people from increasing the amount of urban land that borders wild areas.

"Unfortunately, many of our policymakers don't seem to have taken that message to heart," France said. "We need to be looking at new policies that look to reduce the human footprint in forest landscapes."

More structures are being claimed by wildfires, according to Don Feser, disaster-preparedness coordinator for the San Bernardino (Calif.) City Fire Department. "It's not just California that's experiencing these problems; it's throughout the western United States," he said.

Among recent fires listed in the report, Utah's 2007 Milford Flat fire burned 363,000 acres and cost $4 million to extinguish. Last year's Neola fire, which was not mentioned in the report, burned more than 43,000 acres in Utah.

This year's wildfire season in Utah has been comparatively mild so far. But in California, more than 1 million acres have burned this year, bringing $300 million in state-lands costs.

Although naturally occurring fires can be beneficial to forests and grasslands, the report said drought-fueled wildfires can "dramatically" alter habitat for fish and wildlife.

Forests absorb carbon dioxide, and in the 1990s, they removed one-third of the global-warming pollution released into the air during those 10 years, the report states. Catastrophic wildfires, however, release "tremendous" amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, requiring decades before enough forest can grow back and capture emissions again.

The National Wildlife Federation recommends jump-starting forest regrowth after catastrophic fires that leave areas susceptible to wind- and rain-driven erosion. The report also urges policymakers, industry leaders and individuals to take steps to reduce global-warming pollution from today's levels by at least 2 percent each year and by 20 percent by 2020.

"Science tells us that this is the only way to hold warming to no more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century," the report said.

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