As summer begins to wrap up here in Western Montana, we are all doing what we can to soak up the warmer weather before fall sets in. Whether you’re fishing along the Blackfoot, hiking in the Mission Mountains, or just getting outdoors in general, Montana summers are a brief and coveted time of year for our part of the world. While the summer provides a lot of opportunities to experience all that the Seeley Swan has to offer, it usually brings one unpleasant, unavoidable experience: wildfire.
This year, however, we seem to have gotten lucky. Like recent summers, many of us braced for an early start to the fires and prepared to live through a long, smoky season. But surprisingly, the fire activity was less than expected. While there’s still time left in the fire season for things to pick up, right now it looks as though we may have escaped the worst of what a big wildfire season can bring to a community.
Because of that, it might be tempting to think that we may be spared large wildfires in the future. Let’s not be fooled, however, by our good luck this year. Although the rainy spells in August reduced the chances that 2023 will go down as a major year for wildfires, long-term weather predictions only point in one direction – toward hotter, drier conditions overall, with longer fire seasons. That’s true here and across the West. We are experiencing more frequent droughts and, this past July, the world saw the hottest month on record. It’s becoming harder to predict what will happen each year, but we know that wildfire season is getting longer and fires will become more severe overall. We know that because we’re already seeing it happening.
While wildfire is a natural part of our ecosystems—in fact, a necessary component for keeping our forests healthy—they’re burning hotter and over larger areas than in decades past. The longer, hotter summers make it harder for forests to grow back following a fire, and the speed and intensity of these fires are making them sometimes impossible for firefighters to control. It is more important than ever that we prepare our communities and our landscapes to respond to these new patterns, especially by making the most of the reprieve during years when wildfire isn’t as big of a threat.
The Nature Conservancy has been working with a host of partners to help forests withstand hotter, drier, more fire-prone conditions. We do that by thinning overly dense forests to remove small and crowded trees. The smallest trees end up cut and scatter in the woods or stacked in slash piles to be burned in the cool, wet months. The trees we remove with merchantable value end up at Pyramid Mountain Lumber or Willis Enterprises. We also conduct controlled burns, which clear out flammable tree needles and dead branches, opening the forest floor for native plants and wildlife to thrive. Right now, we are working to thin the forests on the way into Placid Lake with support from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Clearwater Resource Council, and other land management agencies. The result will be a healthier forest with bigger trees that can better withstand fire, and less brush and small trees that can make a wildfire burn at high severity. We are also partnering with a local Tribal contractor to do some forestry work and restore native plants that are adapted to fire. More resilient forests with healthy plant communities make it safer and easier for firefighters to protect our homes and infrastructure.
When severe wildfire does inevitably come to the Seeley Swan, we want to be sure that we’ve done all that we can to prepare our landscapes and communities. Our forests, rivers and lakes provide our community with economic opportunities, a diverse ecosystem, and a place to pass on our outdoor heritage to the next generation. Montanans have long been known to be resourceful, adaptable people. With hotter and drier summers on the horizon, we need to be able to readily adapt to longer and more intense fire seasons to keep that heritage alive.
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