wildfires

Nearly 11 months after Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast of Texas, the USDA said it will pay up to $900,000 in disaster relief to producers who suffered losses due to hurricanes or wildfires last year.

After a record-setting fire season in 2017, this year “is showing all signs of another historic year,” said interim Forest Service chief Vicki Christiansen on Thursday. “I will say above normal is our new normal.”

Cattle producers in Oklahoma lost $26 million in stock, fencing, and facilities to wildfires during April, estimated Derrell Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University.

Research by UC-Davis says that half of California’s vegetation is at risk of dying from global warming by the end of the century, reported Capital Public Radio.

There is a higher than usual risk of wildfire through April in the central and southern Plains, said Kansas State University scientists and the National Interagency Coordination Center, which studies wildfire risks.

The House passed an $81-billion disaster relief bill that includes $3.8 billion for farmers and ranchers, with Florida expected to get a large share of that money, said The Hill newspaper.

In a preliminary estimate, Ventura County agriculture commissioner Henry Gonzalez said two-thirds of the 10,000 acres of county farmland burned by the Thomas fire are avocado groves, reported The Packer.

An area the size of New Zealand, some 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres), was stripped of tree cover during 2016, says data on Global Forest Watch, an increase of 51 percent from the previous year. "Forest fires seem to be a primary cause for this year's spike, including dramatic fire-related degradation in Brazil," wrote two World Resources Institute analysts in a blog.

Climate change will come with a serious price tag, says a report by the Government Accountability Office, urging President Trump to take the phenomenon seriously. The study “says that different sectors of the economy and different parts of the country will be harmed in ways that are difficult to predict,” according to The New York Times.

Following the most expensive year ever for fighting wildfires, the Senate Appropriations Committee included $507 million in emergency wildfire funds in a funding bill for the Interior Department and related agencies.

The national forests are frequently judged on two criteria: How many board feet of timber they produce and how much the government spends to fight wildfires, says the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute. In a report, it says the 2018 farm bill could create rural jobs, protect drinking water and wildlife, and reduce fire risks by doubling forest restoration work.

Washington chef and restaurateur Jose Andres hit a milestone in relief work in Puerto Rico: Serving the 1 millionth meal to hurricane victims in three weeks through his World Central Kitchen, aided by hundreds of volunteers. Restaurateur Guy Fieri, a resident of Santa Rosa, Calif., cooked meals for wildfire evacuees in Sonoma County.

With wildfires still blazing in Northern California and 222,000 acres already destroyed, vineyard workers are breathing particulate-filled air as they bring in the grape crop. Many of the workers are undocumented and can't afford to lose a paycheck even if their homes were destroyed in the fires that have consumed the region.

The wildfires in northern California destroyed vegetable farms in Sonoma County, "including several that were founded in the past six years by young farmers taking part in the local organic farm movement," says the San Francisco Chronicle. Growers lost homes and farm buildings and say that getting back into production will be an uphill battle.

With two million acres already on fire this year, wildfires in the West are starting sooner in the season and consuming more land under climate change. “A 2016 Climate Central analysis showed that the annual number of large fires has tripled since the 1970s and that the amount of land they burn is six times higher than it was four decades ago,” says Climate Central, adding that the average fire season is 105 days longer than it was in the 1970s.

As average summertime temperatures rise across the West and southern Plains, wildfires are also becoming more frequent. Already this year, they have consumed more than 2.5 million acres.