2002 was a summer of seemingly endless wildfires. Nearly a thousand square miles burned in Colorado that year, and much of it was Forest Service land. Drought was an immediate factor, but there were other variables, like forests overgrown after more than a century of fire suppression. So a big lesson coming out of ‘02 was the need for more thinning and prescribed burns. Is that happening now? As part of our series, Scorched Summers, Ryan Warner talks with Forest Service’s Paul Langowski, Branch Chief for Fuels and Fire Ecology in the Rocky Mountain Region.
Find all the stories in our Scorched Summers series here.
[Photo: Megan Verlee]
