This article was originally published in Commonplace.
It’s the dead of winter, and yet the nation’s attention has been gripped by wildfires. The devastating fires in Los Angeles have tragically taken the lives of at least 27 people, displaced thousands of families, and destroyed historic neighborhoods. While the threat of wildfire is an inevitability in our fire-adapted forests and shrublands, its utter destruction of American cities is not. Parts of California currently burning could have been made more fire-proof but for misguided environmental regulations.
There are many culprits, both direct and indirect, for the tragedy unfolding in LA, from state and municipal resource mismanagement to natural forces beyond anyone’s control. However, there are concrete steps we can take to prepare for this cycle of nature. Specific policy changes could mitigate the destruction from future wildfires, foster healthier forest ecosystems, and protect our communities.
A mainstream narrative that often emerges after a destructive wildfire is that climate change is to blame. Climatic changes that create longer periods of hot, dry weather certainly do exacerbate the conditions that drive wildfires. But blaming wildfires primarily on climate change isn’t accurate. It sidesteps tangible solutions that, if implemented, could make the next wildfire less severe. Moreover, subsidizing the adoption of electric vehicles as a climate policy, for example, won’t mitigate the impact of next season’s wildfires. Forest restoration practices, however, could.
The primary culprit behind the devastating wildfires we see today is excess fuel, which is itself a result of bad policy. After a century of misguided fire suppression during which state and federal authorities sought to immediately extinguish all fires regardless of their threat to human communities, unnatural amounts of highly flammable dead brush and undergrowth have built up in public forests. Much of our forests in California and throughout the West are fire-adapted, meaning they require regular intervals of low-intensity fire to clear their understories and aid in regeneration. When humans prevent this natural cycle from taking place with policies like fire suppression, forests become overly dense. This density makes them more vulnerable to insect infestation, disease, drought, and wildfire.
Today, there is broad consensus among fire scientists and forest ecologists that active management is needed to restore our forests to a healthier state. Management practices like selective thinning and prescribed burning help clear deadfall and underbrush, reducing the fuel an unplanned fire can consume. Dense undergrowth serves as a ladder that channels fire up into the canopy of a forest, where a wildfire can spread rapidly and do more damage—scorching rather than rejuvenating forests. If land managers are able to proactively remove such ladder fuels, then when a wildfire does break out, it is more manageable and easier for firefighters to contain.
Despite that knowledge, actually implementing these solutions remains exceedingly difficult. Well-meaning yet counterproductive regulations and litigation, often weaponized by environmental activists, regularly delay and thwart restoration projects.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires a rigorous review of any project that could negatively impact our land, water, or wildlife. From building a solar farm to digging a well, NEPA requires careful consideration of a project’s impact. Forest work, however, is uniquely burdened by this process. In the last five years, the U.S. Forest Service has prepared more environmental impact statements—the most stringent type of review under NEPA—than any other federal agency.
According to research from my organization, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), from the time that environmental reviews under NEPA begin, it takes an average of nearly four years to start thinning trees and nearly five years to start prescribed burning of them. For work that requires environmental impact statements, the duration before a project can begin averages 5.3 years for thinning and 7.2 years for prescribed burning.
These timelines are simply unacceptable considering the scale of the challenge we face. The Forest Service is in charge of 193 million acres of forest land, 63 million of which have been identified as at high risk of wildfire. Under the status quo, it will take the agency decades to restore our forests, all while wildfires continue to burn in the meantime, stoked by the excess fuels choking our forests. In California alone, the Forest Service has stated it needs to increase its restoration efforts from 200,000 acres per year to 500,000 acres per year to reach its restoration goals in the state.
The red tape of environmental reviews ensures a slow process from project initiation to actual implementation on the ground. But the delays don’t end there. Litigation serves as a wrench in the gears once a project has begun, with environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act often weaponized by opponents to justify grinding projects to a halt.
The mere threat of lawsuits hangs heavy over our forest managers, leading the Forest Service to spend time and resources “litigation-proofing” their project proposals. That’s time and resources that would otherwise be spent on restoration efforts—making forests safer. If a lawsuit is filed, the research by my PERC colleagues found that it takes an average of roughly two additional years to begin forest restoration projects that are litigated when compared to ones that aren’t challenged in court. During that time, a project sits idle while the threat of wildfire looms. And the window of opportunity for litigation is wide. Lawsuits can be filed up to six years after a project is approved, meaning a project that is well underway can be halted. And according to research from the Breakthrough Institute, most courts rule in favor of the Forest Service, meaning litigation served only to delay projects, not to fundamentally change the work on the ground.
For the ongoing fires, these problems aren’t merely conceptual. The costs of both litigation and regulation might have played a role in the Pacific Palisades Fire—one of several burning in LA—as a project meant to upgrade infrastructure and reduce the risk of wildfire in the area was terminated over concern for an endangered plant.
In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing wooden utility poles originally installed in the early 20th century. The project was concentrated in Topanga State Park, nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains on the northern border of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The goal of the project was to replace wooden poles with steel ones, expand fire breaks and roads in the area, and install wind and fire-resistant power lines. The project came to a standstill, however, when it was discovered that an endangered plant species—the Braunton’s milkvetch— had been harmed by the initial work. The California Coastal Commission—a state agency with judicial authority over land and public access along the state’s coastline—approved a cease-and-desist order, stopping the project. LADWP was also required to pay $1.9 million for the violation, and repair any damage to the plant caused by its initial work.
Six years later, the Palisades Fire has ripped through the area, decimating not just the Braunton’s milkvetch, but also destroying over 5,000 structures and taking dozens of lives. With the brutal clarity of hindsight, perhaps halting that project was a tragic mistake. Unfortunately, the LA fires won’t be the last of 2025. Inevitably, more fires will rage across the West, decimating forests and, tragically, communities. But the utter destruction we witnessed in LA need not be the new normal. The wildfire crisis we face demands urgency, yet the efforts intended to address the crisis are too often delayed, with the laws meant to protect our environment working against it. This, fundamentally, is the hurdle that must be overcome. To truly get a handle on the wildfire crisis, we should focus our energy on regulatory and litigious reform and unshackle the hands of our forest managers.
