Hope
Amidst the Smoke
IN
SPRING 2019, blossom-topped hedgehog cacti lined
hiking trails and abundant wildflowers swarmed
islands of palo verde trees and saguaros in
Arizona’s Catalina State Park. Yet many of these
plants would die the following year when the
120,000-acre Bighorn Fire burned a third of this
stunning Sonoran desertscrub landscape. The
blaze, sparked by a lightning strike just north
of Tucson, exemplifies a new dynamic of
worsening desert wildfires that are impacting
beloved Southwestern landscapes and endangering
nearby communities.
Large
fires in Desert Southwest landscapes were rarely
noted during the nineteenth and much of the
twentieth centuries. But since 2005, nine
mega-fires above 100,000 acres have burned in
the Sonoran Desert and adjacent landscapes.
Wildfire frequency is also increasing. In the
Tonto National Forest outside Phoenix, home to
vast expanses of saguaros, one study reported an
approximate threefold increase in wildfires from
2000 through 2020 relative to the prior 20
years.
The
Southwest’s desert ecosystems are young, says
desert ecologist Benjamin Wilder, director of
Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers, a
cross-discipline, multinational coalition
focused on biocultural conservation. “Things
have kind of just gotten here,” he said
regarding the region’s flora. With climate
change, an expanding human population, and the
incursion of nonnative grasses driving this new
fire regime, scientists and land managers are
racing to understand how the Southwest’s
still-evolving plant communities are
responding.
Journalist Anna Marija Helt digs
into the growing fire risk in the Southwest,
unexpected desert resilience, and the dedicated
people working to preserve this unique
landscape. |
