“Extreme drought and rising temperatures in the US are poised to overwhelm the Trump administration’s plans to control wildfire by logging federal forests, scientists say.
Industrial-scale logging and forest thinning can’t prevent or significantly reduce wildfire threats amid a drought that’s ravaging 58% of the US, many scientists say. The drought is expected to lead to catastrophic wildfires that stand to become the new normal amid climate change, the researchers say.
‘The type of drought we’re seeing this year across the West is a glimpse into the future,’ said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. ‘Thinning and logging forests—that’s not going to control wildfires.’
The US is on track in 2026 for more wildfires than 2025, a much wetter year. More than 5 million acres burned last year—more than double the land that burned in 2020, one of the worst wildfire years on record. As of April, 1.8 million acres had burned so far across the US—double the acres burned in the same period last year.”
Bobby Magill reports for Bloomberg Environment June 8, 2026.
