But in Washington, a strategic approach spearheaded by the Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, has focused on restoring forests to their historic balance, fostering community fire resilience, and upping firefighting resources. Launched in 2017, the state’s 20-year forest health strategic plan saves forests and homes while creating jobs and revenue along the way.

Fire, whether from lightning strikes or controlled burns by Indigenous cultures, is crucial to the health of many Western American landscapes. Many old-growth trees depend on fire to clear overgrowth that competes for soil nutrients, and some native trees and plants even have seeds that can only germinate once burned. But decades of complete fire-suppression policy, combined with human activity like indiscriminate logging, have created overgrown forests.

“In the past, forest fires kept the landscape in a much more open condition, with fewer trees and less woody fuel,” said Derek Churchill, a DNR forest health scientist. “But what we have now is thousands of trees per acre that don’t belong there because we disrupted the ecosystem by suppressing all fire.”

The DNR uses forest science and fire risk modeling to assess which communities and forests are at greatest risk. Working with state and federal agencies and local communities, it prioritizes restoration treatments like thinning and prescribed fire and preemptively creating fire breaks and barriers in those areas. The program, funded by a 2021 state bill that earmarked $125 million per biennium for wildfire mitigation, also supports job creation efforts like training programs for wildland firefighters.

Partnerships help. Wildfires don’t respect property lines, but in many states, wildfire mitigation efforts are limited to state-owned lands, creating a huge barrier. “Wildfire is an existential emergency,” said Trevor McConchie, assistant division manager for federal lands at DNR. “So it doesn’t matter if it’s state, private, or federal land — we need to address it everywhere.”