Stolen Summers: Heat, Smoke, and the Summer We Knew
Summer used to be my favorite season. But as columnist and author Rebecca Solnit writes in her recent essay We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate war zone, climate change has hijacked our summers and replaced the joy of my family’s favorite outdoor summer activities with the claustrophobia of being trapped inside to escape the lung-searing smoke.
“Once, across much of the world’s temperate zones, we looked forward to summer as a time of delights, from summer’s bounty of fruits, long days, warmth, school holidays, activities like camping and swimming, travel and adventure. Now many of us dread it. ”
Like many Idahoans, I now have the Watch Duty wildfire reporting app on the home screen of my phone. Each day, I open it with some degree of dread to see how the boundaries of this year’s wildfires have expanded overnight and burned into some of my favorite country.
Climate change is no longer some abstract concept. This summer, the predicted effects of climate change darkened our skies and burned our eyes and lungs. Because of last winter’s lack of snow, Bogus Basin Ski Resort had its latest opening ever and the Magic Valley Ski Resort never opened. This snow drought led directly to extreme fire danger for many of our forests and rangelands. Decades of fire suppression and on-and-off again federal support for staff and for hazardous fuel treatments around our communities have made the situation worse.
Unnatural fuel loads and human development in the Wildland Urban Interface (or WUI, the transition zone where human development adjoins or intermingles with wildland vegetation) have transformed once-beneficial fires into uncharacteristic and damaging events. In the months and years following a severe wildfire, wind events can lead to extensive deadfall across campgrounds and trails, and heavy rainfall can lead to debris flows washing through our communities and dumping hillsides of sediment into our streams.
Drought, fire, smoke, floods and landslides and other disturbance events are natural parts of our landscape, but climate change has supercharged these events so they are unusually destructive and more difficult to rebound from.
Local planning and zoning regulations that address development in the Wildland Urban Interface are inconsistent at best, often leaving it up to developers to implement best management practices. Idaho has no statewide building codes regarding wildfires, allowing developers to build high-risk homes in high-risk locations. Wildfire prevention work has been compromised by defunded and understaffed federal agencies despite the presence of the newly formed U.S. Wildland Fire Service under the Department of Interior. The Forest Service and BLM have changed regulations to limit or eliminate public comment on proposed fuel reduction projects, making coordination with communities even more difficult. In addition, administration officials have allegedly redirected fire-fighting efforts from public lands and community resources to protect their personal properties.
So where does that leave us? What do we do now? This is not a call to go into hiding but a call to action. Idahoans have a long history of fierce independence as well as a storied tradition of neighbors helping neighbors and partnerships like Rangeland Fire Protection Associations where Idahoans take collective action to protect our quality of life. This means taking action to prevent wildfires from everything from putting out campfires and to securing trailer chains and reducing hazardous fuels around our homes and communities. Neighbors need to revisit local planning efforts and stop building homes in high-risk fire areas in the Wildland Urban Interface.
Collectively, this also means telling our Congressional delegation to properly fund the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), supporting federal agency staff and reinvesting in programs to keep our lands well-managed. We know what to do: hardening our homes, thinning vegetation around our communities, smart use of prescribed fire and better community planning.
On the bright side, the Forest Service has restarted funding for Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Programs on the Boise, Payette, and Panhandle National Forests—but more will be needed. Businesses like Bogus Basin are adapting their snow making equipment to serve as fire suppression infrastructure in the summer. There will be no shortage of community volunteer opportunities to help with the post-fire restoration efforts.
This also means taking action to stop heating our planet by reducing the carbon pollution from transportation, energy, and agricultural industries, developing renewable sources of energy like solar and geothermal, and accelerating the build out of our transmission grid to bring clean energy to our communities.
Summer is not entirely lost yet, and a healthy climate is not lost to us either. But we have to work together quickly as a community to fight the underlying source of the wildfires in addition to the wildfires themselves. Just as native vegetation can resprout after a fire, effective public lands and climate policies can emerge from this year’s fire season, but we are the ones who will have to put them into action.