When last summer’s Dragon Bravo wildfire broke out on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizonans and people across the country watched in horror as the blaze overtook the historic Grand Canyon Lodge.
As the fire raced across hundreds of thousands of acres, the Lodge, along with other homes and structures, was destroyed. It took nearly three months for the fire to be contained.
Since then, officials across the political spectrum — from Gov. Katie Hobbs to the conservative Heritage Foundation — have criticized the way the fire was fought.
Grand Canyon National Park officials tried to manage and contain the blaze as a “controlled burn” — an approach that leading scientists and fire experts say is vital for the long-term health of the forest.
President Donald Trump’s appointee to lead the Forest Service has argued that wildfires should instead be suppressed as quickly as possible.
But controlled burns have wide-ranging environmental benefits, and science journalist M.R. O’Connor says the potential positive impacts of Dragon Bravo shouldn’t be ignored.
O’Connor is the author of the book “Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World.” She says periodic wildfires are necessary for the rejuvenation of the forest ecosystem. Among other things, it returns nutrients to the soil and opens up the tree canopy to encourage biodiversity.
Some tree species — like the beloved giant sequoia — actually depend on ash-rich soil to grow.
Back in December, O’Connor wrote a piece about Dragon Bravo for the New Yorker called “What America Can Learn from its Largest Wildfire of the Year.” As she told The Show in spite of the high-profile damage, the controlled burn approach to fighting Dragon Bravo was the right call.
Full conversation
M. B. O'CONNOR: I think it's really important to point out that when lightning struck in this part of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park, it struck in a place that had already been planned for a prescribed burn, I believe in 2027. And so there were already containment lines established. And in a way it was the perfect spot.
And so it was actually seen as a great opportunity, according to the sources I talked to, to allow fire to do this beneficial work. And they run sort of modeling software that runs thousands and thousands of weather scenarios, and it showed the chances of it reaching the lodge were estimated between like 0.2% and 4%.
SAM DINGMAN: So if I'm hearing you right, even at the most likely scenario, that there would have been damage to the Grand Canyon Lodge, there was a 96% chance that it would not be affected.
O'CONNOR: That's right. I think what's also important to recognize is that if we don't allow fires to ever burn, the risks of these catastrophic megafires does increase. In my opinion, wildfire managers at Grand Canyon National Park made a very calculated and reasonable risk to allow this fire to burn as a managed wildfire.
DINGMAN: Well, and as part of your piece on this that you wrote for the New Yorker, you went to the North Rim to take a look at how things have been progressing since the fire. And from what you saw and what some of your sources told you, it does seem like there are some potentially long term beneficial effects to the approach that was taken.
Even if there was, of course, catastrophic damage to things like the Grand Canyon Lodge.
O'CONNOR: Yeah, I think the full story of Dragon Bravo will, you know, we'll be seeing it over the next two, five, 10, even 20 years. It's good not to jump to the conclusion that every wildfire is a disaster. So while I don't want to minimize the loss of the historic lodge and of staff housing, and also the dangers that wildland firefighters were faced with, the firefighters that I spoke to who were on Dragon Bravo and who are very familiar with the North Rim, they really felt that there was a high potential for great effects from this fire.
And part of that is because the North Rim is a place that used to burn in large periodic fires, and it hasn't for a very, very long time. And by some estimates, the sort of density of trees and dead and fallen fuels on the ground was 300% higher than the historic average.
DINGMAN: So if I'm hearing you right, there's a way in which Dragon Bravo, as destructive as it was, has made future Dragon Bravos less likely.
O'CONNOR: Yeah, I think that's a very appropriate analysis. And I think what fire ecologists know about the benefits of wildfires is that the more you have, the more you create this sort of self-reinforcing ecosystem where wildfires that happen today can prevent wildfires that happen tomorrow.
And what they really want to achieve is what's called a mosaic, a kind of diversity of burn severities that creates really a wide range of different ecosystem types that benefit animals and wildlife and plants. It can help protect our watersheds. And that mosaic is what you're looking for.
So if anything, Dragon Bravo probably did help to create that kind of mosaic that has been missing from the landscape for so long as a result of fire suppression.
DINGMAN: I'm really glad you brought up this mosaic idea because there's a really fascinating passage in the piece that you wrote about this, and I wonder if you could kind of paint the picture for us here in this conversation. But as you were driving through the site of the burn, if I'm not mistaken. You witnessed some of this firsthand, these profound shifts in the nature of the environment as you were moving through the North Rim, right?
O'CONNOR: Absolutely. You know, there were parts of the roadsides where I saw trees that really look like burnt matchsticks. Just a lot of consumption of trees. And then other places where I could see the burn scar and the blackened soil, but I could already see fresh grass. And I was flushing deer in the aspen groves.
I was seeing bison eating in those burn scars. I saw plenty of living trees. And I was able to sort of walk off the road and sort of look at the soil and dig into it and see plenty of unaffected soil, you know, underneath the litter at the top. And so I think that's — obviously I can't tell the whole story of 145,000-acre wildfire just from my own ramblings — but I think it just goes to show that we can't take one piece of Dragon Bravo and infer the whole story.
DINGMAN: It's interesting to wonder whether the Dragon Bravo Fire would have been such an effective piece of evidence for those who want to argue for more rapid suppression of wildfires had it not been for the burning of such a visible historical landmark.
O'CONNOR: Absolutely. And I think that's really unfortunate. My favorite part about visiting the North Rim last fall to write this piece was the opportunity to stop just outside of Flagstaff, about 20 miles from the city, and see a managed wildfire that happened last June. So just before Dragon Bravo and went beautifully and burned almost 10,000 acres just over three days.
Just this fantastic example of wildfire experts allowing and helping fire to do what it needs to do and creating more security for the city of Flagstaff and helping to restore this incredible ponderosa pine ecosystem that everybody loves and wants to survive into the future. But that one received almost no, if any, media coverage.
So there you go.
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