Wildfire Ecosystem

Guests: Jason Forthofer, M.S., and Bret Butler, Ph.D.; Researchers at the U.S. Government’s Fire Sciences Laboratory  Wildfires are Top of Mind today. There are currently about a dozen large ones burning in the Western United States. One in the San Bernardino National Forest of Southern California has already burned 17-thousand acres over five days and is threatening hundreds of homes and buildings. Another is racing through the densely wooded Olympic National Park in Washington. The number of mega-fires burning tens of thousands of acres has jumped exponentially since the 1980s, and fire experts say that’s partly because we’ve gotten so good at fighting fires.