This article was originally published in the Albuquerque Journal.
The 2025 wildfire season is already off to a troubling start. The beginning of the year saw devastating fires rip through Los Angeles, and today, there are already significant wildfires burning throughout the West, with over two million acres already scorched.
Larger, more destructive wildfires and extended wildfire seasons have become the new normal. But we don’t have to accept this fate. We have the tools necessary to reverse these trends and mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires. But to fully utilize these tools, we must cut through the red tape that has tied up common-sense forest restoration for far too long.
Here in New Mexico, the forecast already looks grim. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, most of New Mexico will be at “above normal” wildland fire potential. Early-season fires like the recent Trout and Buck fires confirm the danger. These fires are not merely natural disasters; they are, in large part, the result of the poor health of our forests. A century of fire suppression and lack of proactive restoration work has led to forests overloaded with fuel, creating conditions ripe for catastrophic wildfires.
Unfortunately, conditions in the Land of Enchantment illustrate this dynamic. Less than 6% of federal forest lands in New Mexico have been treated with tools like prescribed fire or thinning, leaving most of the state’s federal forests at high risk of wildfire.
To address this, we must increase the pace and scale of forest restoration, including selective thinning and prescribed burns. However, red tape and litigation often hinder these efforts. Environmental reviews and permitting processes, while important, can delay critical forest management activities and leave both our forests and communities more vulnerable to wildfire.
The environmental review process is meant to ensure that any major actions taken on our public lands are well thought out and carefully crafted to limit the work’s environmental disruption—an understandable goal. However, in practice, the review process too often delays projects by several years or even decades, with few changes between the proposed plan and the work that ultimately gets implemented years later.
Consider Montana. A forest service project meant to reduce fire risk in a local watershed and protect critical water infrastructure for the city of Bozeman was delayed by 15 years due to repeated litigation, citing concerns that the proposed work would disrupt the habitat of the endangered Canadian lynx. After more than a decade of litigation and reconsultations with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the project moved forward exactly as it was originally proposed.
Montana got lucky, as no fire broke out during that long delay. But the risk of such a calamity is very real. In 2021, a wildfire tore through the Klamath National Forest of Washington, decimating northern spotted owl habitat. The area had been sited ten years prior for a restoration project meant to reduce the severity of wildfire, but was tied up in procedural review over concerns that the work would disrupt the endangered bird. Unfortunately, before work could begin, the area in question burned, and the very habitat the litigants had hoped to protect was destroyed.
Even New Mexico’s devastating Hermits Peak Fire is the result, in part, of litigation delays. A court-ordered injunction stemming from Endangered Species Act (ESA) concerns shut down all forest restoration work across Arizona and New Mexico for more than a year, halting prescribed burns and thinning projects. When the injunction was finally lifted, forest conditions had deteriorated beyond what the agency had originally planned for. In trying to catch up, the service moved forward with a prescribed burn under poor conditions—conditions it might have avoided had earlier treatments been allowed to proceed. That burn tragically escaped control, torching thousands of acres and destroying hundreds of homes. In the agency’s post-fire review, the service cited ESA litigation as a contributing factor in the disastrous fire.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With smart regulatory reforms, we can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and ensure that the management actions taken on our public lands are responsible and judicious.
The Fix Our Forests Act, which has now passed the U.S. House of Representatives twice with bipartisan support—including New Mexico Congressman Gabe Vasquez—and was recently introduced in the U.S. Senate, offers common-sense solutions. The bill aims to streamline permitting and environmental review processes, increase public-private partnerships, and reform litigation standards.
New Mexico, and the entire West, cannot afford more seasons of inaction. Proactive restoration, backed by bipartisan leadership and regulatory reform, is our best defense against megafires. Implementing effective forest management strategies and enacting legislative reforms like the Fix Our Forests Act are crucial steps toward mitigating future disasters.
The time to act is now. Let’s fix our forests before it’s too late.
