The West Fork Complex Fire, a wildfire that has been burning in southwest Colorado for the better part of the past month continues to spread and firefighters still have the blaze at 0 percent containment.
Wildfires have been ravaging Colorado as well as other nearby states including California and Arizona in recent years. Experts suggest that these blazes may be the result of climate change.
7 News reports that the West Fork Complex Fire is estimated to have burned through 81,331 acres of land as of Wednesday. One major factor that has kept the fire burning has been an unusually large number of dead trees in the affected area, killed off by spruce beetles, and providing potent kindling to keep the fire going.
According to a report from NBC News, drought conditions have plagued Colorado and other areas in the vicinity for months and according to the U.S. Forest Service, winter temperatures in Colorado in recent years have not been cold enough to trigger the natural mortality rate of the spruce beetle that they should.
With severe drought conditions and warmer-than-average winters contributing to an increased population of the beetles responsible for killing off the trees, drought paired with hotter summer weather is enabling the ignition and spreading of wildfires. This combination favors the beetles and the incidents of fires, simultaneously.
"The culprit here is the unusual weather conditions, which may become the new norm with climate change," said Jesse Logan, a retired U.S. Forest Service researcher.
A similar situation to what we're now seeing in Colorado occurred in 1988 around Yellowstone National Park, when wildfires ate up over 1 million acres of land.
"Independent of what the beetle has done in certain areas of Yellowstone, the whole thing went up in flames," Logan told NBC News. "You can point your finger in various directions. It might be the mountain pine beetles, or it might be lack of response to a lightning strike. But really what was driving that was unusually dry weather conditions, and that's what's happening in Colorado."
It's up in the air if these problems could be remedied in the future. To find a way to stop, or at least slow down the effects of climate change, will take a massive effort, likely on the part of the U.S. government. However, global warming and climate change are hugely contested issues on Capitol Hill and we may be in for a very long wait before a consensus is reached and solutions created in a highly divided Congress.
President Barack Obama, however, recently announced his intentions to use his executive powers to be proactive in making changes and creating policy in response to the problems associated with climate change. Will he succeed in this venture? We can only hope.
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