In the 1980s and 1990s, I worked eight long seasons for the U.S. Forest Service. I crisscrossed the country fighting wildfires with axes, shovels and chain saws. I labored on hundreds of fires, but rarely was I outside the spine of the Rocky Mountain West.
It was a truism that the region’s biggest blazes were nearly exhausted by Labor Day. No longer. Today, wildland firefighting is a year-round occupation — now, even in the Midwest.
The Kansas Forest Service earlier this year announced that the state is facing dramatically elevated risks of wildfire. And fires, even in Kansas, no longer burn only during the summer.
In 2021, just 10 days before Christmas, fire raced through central Kansas. The Four County Fire burned more than 120,000 acres and caused dozens of car crashes, three of them fatal. The 2017 Starbuck Fire was bigger still. It started in Oklahoma during an unusually dry spring, spread quickly into Kansas, killed 8,000 farm animals and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. By the end of the year, 2 million acres across the Plains — more than twice the size of Rhode Island — were reduced to ash.
In response, Gov. Laura Kelly in 2022 created the Wildfire Task Force, the first serious attempt to understand the state’s changing fire landscape. Such committees are not unusual; most Western states have had similar initiatives in place for decades. The California version, massive in reach and budget, sets the standard for resources dedicated to preventing and mitigating fire damage. The same year Kansas established its task force, Gov. Gavin Newsom committed more than $1 billion to improve forest health and $2.8 billion to reduce the threat of fires across the Golden State.
The Kansas task force is modest by comparison, but its creation is still significant. The growing fire danger in Kansas is tied to climate change, a reality not easily accepted by many of the state’s residents. In a December political survey, a majority of Midwesterners stated that climate change poses “little to no risk” to the region. Kansas’s Republican senators, Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, also remain skeptical of climate change.
Still, the fires burn.
If anything, the wildfires in Kansas are a grim preview of what is coming elsewhere. A changing climate is driving fire eastward across the United States, with fires beginning earlier in the season and lasting into winter. As a result, more states face a growing danger to people and property.
The governor’s task force made several recommendations to mitigate the threat, including improving weather monitoring and statewide communications. One of its biggest focuses, however, is on reducing the fire-prone, invasive Eastern redcedar. Earlier Kansans planted the dense, woody evergreen as windbreaks, but its rapid spread created fuels that burn hotter, faster and deadlier.
The Great Plains were once the most frequently burned lands in North America. Like other savanna ecosystems, the region experienced regular low-intensity burns that contributed to ecological health and stability. Over the past century, though, fire-suppression efforts, urban development and the conversion of grasslands to agriculture resulted in the near-total elimination of Midwestern wildfires.
But the extreme conditions under which fires now begin have upended conventional thinking. Hoping for a return of more natural and manageable fire cycles now seems naive.
Removing cedars is common sense, but it is also difficult. In Kansas, less than 1 percent of the state is public land — unlike more western states, where the percentage is often in the mid-double digits. Eradicating the trees takes more than money; it takes widespread permission and cooperation. Such collective action is rare, but when it happens, it works.
If Kansas wants to succeed in wildfire prevention, it won’t be just because of a top-down mandate from the government. Instead, it will take a lot of individuals working together. Such a model is already proving successful in the Kansas City region, where more than 1,000 volunteers and elected officials have organized to solve local emissions issues. The group doesn’t lobby for new laws, opting instead for regional partnerships to effect change.
The nation’s fire problem requires a similar approach. In states like Kansas, this means unusual alliances — farmers and bankers, utility companies and rural landowners, ranchers and suburban developers — each addressing the wildfire (or flood or drought) threat through shared responsibility. A generation ago, Kansans would never have considered such a proposition, but climate change is not just remaking our environment; it is changing our politics.
Climate advocates have long sought new federal regulations to protect our warming planet with little to show for it. Fire in unexpected places suggests that a better solution is public will.
