Climate-Fueled Fires Put America’s Natural and Cultural Sites At Risk

Climate-fueled wildfires could scorch many of the sites that shape America’s cultural identity. 

A study published in May found wildfire risk threatens the majority of sites designated by the federal government as historically significant, from centuries-old homes to cherished churches and cemeteries. A separate forward-looking study published last week found worsening climate change could substantially ramp up average potential fire frequency in four of California’s national parks by the end of the century, under a worst-case emissions scenario. 

The researchers say this data could help park and site managers better protect these places from flames. However, as experts sound the fire alarms for iconic American sites, the Trump administration is on a mission to remove mentions of climate change from many of these places. 

History in the Line of Fire

Managed by the National Park Service, the National Register of Historic Places is the country’s official list of local, state and national landmarks “worthy of preservation,” according to the agency’s website. The inventory includes a sprawling hodgepodge of special sites, from the candy-cane-striped Sapelo Island Lighthouse in Georgia that served as a beacon for mariners about a century ago to the unusual row of eucalyptus trees along a side street road in Carmel Valley, California, planted more than 140 years ago.

However, more than half of the 100,117 places listed in the registry at the time the research was compiled are exposed to measurable wildfire risk, according to the May study. The researchers built a map of this burn risk using a high-resolution fire simulator developed by the U.S. Forest Service, which combines data on factors such as weather, terrain and vegetation that influence wildfire behavior. Here’s the map if you’re curious about the wildfire risk for sites near you. 

Much of the highest-risk area is in the Western United States, where anthropogenic climate change doubled burned forest area above natural levels from 1984 to 2015. However, the researchers also identified hotspots in Oklahoma, Arkansas and several states along the southeastern coast. 

“One of the things that I think we underappreciate is the threat that wildfire poses to these places that help tie us to the landscape, that help build our sense of place, our identity, our cultural heritage,” Cat Fong, a researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, told me. “We were surprised by the extent of exposure that these places had to wildfire hazard.” 

She pointed to the Dragon Bravo Fire that tore through the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park last year. Not only did the blaze burn nearly 150,000 acres, it also destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, a refuge first built in 1927 for visitors in the quieter side of the park. It had to be rebuilt in the 1930s following a fire before the recent blaze claimed the building once again. 

Sometimes the age and design of the buildings themselves makes them more likely to burn, Fong explained. Many older buildings do not follow modern fire codes, and retrofitting historical buildings to include things like sprinklers or ember grates can be highly expensive and detract from the historical value, Fong said. 

At some sites, vegetation that could ignite may be part of that historical value. Or in the eucalyptus-lined road’s case, the plants themselves are the history (and unfortunately, highly flammable). 

Fong noted the study focuses only on wildfire risk in these places based on historical conditions. A wide body of research shows that climate change could further stoke the fire threat. 

A separate study published last week suggests that a more severe fiery climate future threatens some of the country’s most beloved natural places: California’s national parks.

National Parks at Risk

Fire is crucial for forest health in many ecosystems across the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California, clearing out dense undergrowth and spurring the release of seeds for certain trees, including those that grow into giant sequoias nearly the size of Big Ben. 

But experts say high heat, dry conditions and poor fire management practices are changing California’s fire regime and forest biomes. Anthropogenic climate change has increased wildfire in California forests more than other regions in the U.S., tripling burned area above natural levels since 1996. 

According to the new study, climate change increased average temperatures up to almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels from 1895 to 2023 in four of California’s national parks: Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Lassen Volcanic. 

Under a scenario of the highest greenhouse gas emissions, a worst-case situation scientists now believe the world can avoid, the researchers found accelerated warming and below average precipitation could increase the average potential fire frequency of the national parks 150 percent to 350 percent by 2100. 

On top of this, fire-dependent biomes such as temperate conifer forest and mixed shrubland could shift upslope and replace red fir forest and alpine grassland, where wildfire is infrequent or absent. Even in areas where these red fir forests and alpine grasslands do not shift, the heat of climate change could severely increase wildfire, according to study co-author Patrick Gonzalez, a climate change scientist and forest ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. 

“The intensification or introduction of fire could damage these more sensitive vegetation types and eventually cause their local disappearance and the loss of their unique biodiversity,” Gonzalez told me over email. He previously served as the principal climate change scientist of the National Park Service and assistant director for climate and biodiversity of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Fire managers in the U.S. use pre-European American settlement as a reference condition to select areas for letting naturally ignited fires burn or for setting controlled prescribed fires that help clear dry undergrowth that could otherwise fuel worse blazes. But the new research “shows that conventional method misses vast areas at high risk under climate change,” Gonzalez said.

The study identifies high-risk areas at a resolution fine enough for the national parks managers to target specific places for proactive fire management. A key way to reduce climate-fueled fire risk, though, is by cutting carbon emissions, the researchers found. 

However, as researchers increasingly emphasize the rising climate and wildfire risks across sites managed by the National Park Service, the Trump administration has removed content that includes climate change-related information at parks and on the agency’s webpages. 

While the initiative faced legal pushback, a federal appeals court in July ruled the administration could continue removing park signs and exhibits related to topics such as slavery and climate change. 

“The pessimist in me worries deeply that we’re removing the climate narrative from all of our public-facing documentation around these things, around our national parks, and around our historic places,” said Fong. 

But she added that signs or not, warming impacts such as historic wildfire seasons and flooding have forced people to confront the reality of climate change.

“The optimist in me believes that simply stripping some words out of some public-facing material will not change the shift that we’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Fong said. “I personally don’t think as a nation we’re burying our head in the sand. I think that that’s just a handful of people who are putting lipstick on a pig.” 

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