National Geographic - May 2022

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE

CALIFORNIA

THE DOME FIRE KILLED rise and a long drought
MORE THAN A MILLION persists; invasive
JOSHUA TREES IN 2020 grasses promote fire.
This relatively cool
Yet these icons of the pocket, where some
Mojave Desert already trees survived the
faced other threats. 2020 fire, is a potential
Seedlings appear less refuge. Volunteers
often as temperatures are planting seedlings
to aid the recovery.

KEITH LADZINSKI

T SOUTH OF
YELLOWSTONE
T H E F I R ST T H I N G YO U N OT I C E in this fire-scarred
forest is the color. Not long ago this square of WYOMING
land south of Yellowstone National Park was a
monochrome of ash and burned pines. But last THIS BURNED FOREST
summer, shin-high seedlings and aspen shoots IS GROWING BACK,
painted the ground an electric green. Purple BUT OTHERS AREN’T
fireweed and blood-red buffalo berries sprouted
around blackened logs. Yellow arnicas danced Ecologist Monica
in the breeze. Five years after 2016’s Berry fire Turner counts lodge-
chewed through 33 square miles of Wyoming, pole pine seedlings
this slice of scorched earth was responding to fire sprouting (along with
as Rocky Mountain forests have for millennia: It fireweed) among pines
had entered a season of rebirth. that burned in 2016.
Fire opens seed cones,
Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery. allowing lodgepoles
On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of to regenerate—but if
ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, another fire comes be-
shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50 fore trees mature, they
meters across the ground. She and a graduate may not grow back.
student were counting every lodgepole pine
seedling within a meter on either side. We were SOFIA JARAMILLO
far enough from paved roads that there was
no telling which forest inhabitants might be
lurking—elk, deer, moose, wolves. The air was
so hot I wondered fleetingly if the bear spray
canister on Turner’s hip might explode.

So many tiny trunks crowded the researchers’

48 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

feet that covering a distance they normally distinction set them apart. The site with fewer
would walk in seconds took almost an hour. pines had burned another time as well, in 2000.
In the end they counted 2,286 baby trees in an Trees that sprouted after that fire had not yet
area half the size of a tennis court. This spot was matured to produce enough seeds before being
producing 70,000 pines an acre. “This is what wiped out in 2016. In this place, rather than
lodgepole pines do,” Turner said. “They come reseeding the pine forest, the Berry fire was
back gangbusters.” resculpting the landscape into something new,
perhaps for centuries or even millennia.
Yet the previous day, in a neighboring patch
of burned timber, Turner had documented Yellowstone is part of a global trend. From the
something unsettling. Instead of a river of new Amazon to the Arctic, wildfires are getting bigger,
pine seedlings, the ground was a mix of flowers, hotter, and more frequent as the climate changes.
grasses, and caked earth. Aspens were there, but Australia’s forest fires in 2019 and 2020 burned an
so were invasive grasses and sour weeds. Along area as big as Florida. That’s devastating enough.
one 50-meter tract, Turner had spotted just 16 But often overlooked amid the initial carnage is
baby pines; on another, only nine. All told, this what happens after the trees die: Many forests
patch was producing fewer than one-fiftieth as now struggle to recover. That too is not limited to
many young conifers as its neighbor. Yellowstone, nor is it always triggered by fire—but
it is caused by climate change.
The two patches of forest were almost identi-
cal. Before the Berry fire, both sites had burned In many places, forests are no longer regen-
around the time of the Civil War. But one erating on their own. Some of the world’s most

T H E F U T U R E O F F O R E S T S 49

significant stands are instead transitioning to already are only a small fraction of the three tril-
something new. Some will never be the same. lion trees and 10 billion acres of forest on this
Others may not come back at all. planet. Climate change still poses less of a threat
to forests than logging and land clearing, but the
I T ’ S A TO U G H T I M E TO B E A T R E E . Earth has lost a threat is growing fast. “How big does that frac-
third of its forests over the past 10,000 years—half tion get over time, and when does it overwhelm
of that just since 1900. We logged them for timber. the other?” asks Matt Hansen of the University of
We cut them to make way for farms and cattle. We Maryland, who monitors forests using satellites.
cleared land to build homes and roads. Globally,
deforestation has decreased from its peak in the The problem is, we can’t yet quantify the
1980s, but trends vary by region. In Indonesia, planetwide scope of climate impacts. Satellite
which had been mowing down forests for oil palm data show that Earth’s tree-covered area actu-
plantations, primary forest loss has declined ally expanded from 1982 to 2016 by 7 percent,
since 2016. From August 2020 to July 2021, the an area larger than Mexico. But that doesn’t
Brazilian Amazon lost 5,000 square miles of rain- mean forests are doing fine: The data don’t dis-
forest, a 22 percent increase over the previous tinguish between natural forests and industrial
year. Since 1990, we’ve cut down more forest tree farms, such as the millions of palm, euca-
globally than there is forest in the United States. lyptus, and pine trees planted as crops while
rainforest is cleared. The data also don’t show
Now fossil fuel emissions spewing from coal which forests were lost to chain saws and which
plants and tailpipes are rearranging forests in were killed by climate-related events.
other consequential ways. As carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases warm the planet, No computer model can yet project how cli-
some of its estimated 73,000 tree species are mate will change forests globally—or how their
pushing poleward and higher up slopes, drag- carbon stores will feed back on climate. “Earth
ging other life with them. Alders, willows, and system models historically haven’t done a good
dwarf birches are expanding across the Arctic, job of capturing this,” says Charlie Koven, a
from Scandinavia to Canada, providing cover and climate scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley
food for snowshoe hares and moose. Trees are National Laboratory, who worked with the UN’s
growing faster as they soak up excess CO2—a key
ingredient for photosynthesis. That “greening” of SINCE 1990, WE’VE
the planet has so far helped slow climate change, CUT DOWN MORE
protecting us from ourselves. FOREST GLOBALLY THAN
THERE IS FOREST IN THE
But climate change also is killing trees. And UNITED STATES.
what has forest scientists increasingly uneasy
is the quickening pulse of extreme events—fire, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
more powerful storms, insect infestations, and, (IPCC). Only two of its 11 models include both
most notably, severe heat and drought, which fire and geographic shifts in plants.
can worsen the effects of all the rest. These sin-
gular, frequently unprecedented episodes can The global number of trees isn’t the only thing
swiftly inflict mass tree mortality, shifting for- that matters. Climate change is reshaping forests
ests that have been around since the last ice age locally almost overnight, transforming them even
to entirely new states. where there are policies to protect them. It’s hap-
pening so fast we can’t discern the consequences.
“We have a whole set of mechanisms that are While we’re losing trees of all types and sizes, the
pushing Earth’s forests to grow more and suck biggest and oldest harbor the most carbon, are
up more CO2,” says University of Utah biologist important for biodiversity, and will be the hard-
William Anderegg. But those mechanisms “are est to get back. “Big trees are disproportionately
fundamentally in tension with mechanisms that
are pulling Earth’s forests toward a cliff—with
more tree death and more loss of carbon.”

The forests that have plunged over that cliff

50 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

important and cannot be replaced quickly—if Monica Turner’s who retired last year from the
ever,” says Nate Stephenson, a scientist emeritus U.S. Geological Survey. He’s been trying to alert
with the U.S. Geological Survey. people to that danger for two decades now.

That will matter to us all. Humans are bound T U R N E R H A S A Q U I C K S M I L E , bobbed sandy hair,
to the woods. Our history is linked to trees. We and, at 62, a college student’s capacity to stay
climbed down from their canopies and used upbeat while working nonstop. I spent several
them to make fire. The advent of paper—and the days with her last summer in the John D. Rocke-
printing press—let literature and science flour- feller Jr. Memorial Parkway. The parkway is not
ish. Trees feed us, shelter us, give us medicine. a highway but a parcel of sagebrush and pine
We lean on them in ways we scarcely acknowl- larger than Manhattan. It links Yellowstone and
edge, as sources of wonder and inspiration or to Grand Teton National Parks. Turner seemed so
decompress in a noisy world. at home on this forested plateau that her Long
Island accent kept catching me off guard.
One of my favorite escapes is the Hoh Rain-
forest on the Olympic Peninsula, four hours Turner showed up in Yellowstone in 1978 to
from my home in Washington State. It’s a place work as a summer ranger, giving guided nature
where glistening ferns tall enough to hide elk talks at twilight. Yellowstone, with its golden
crowd the ground while ancient spruces and meadows and kaleidoscopic thermal pools,
big-leaf maples draped in emerald moss block transfixed her. She eventually would return and
the sky. What you can see in such places is com- spend decades studying its trees.
plex enough, but humans also are beginning to
appreciate how much is going on out of sight. In 1988 Turner and a colleague, ecologist Bill
Trees in a forest are not isolated individuals; Romme, crisscrossed its wildlands in a heli-
they share nutrients and data across species in copter, scanning the aftermath of the park’s
underground fungal networks. They talk to one worst fire season in a century. A third of Yellow-
another, passing chemical messages, warning stone—793,880 acres—had gone up in smoke
of pest invasions and other dangers. in a few months. Turner feared it would never
recover. But during that flight she began to
Old-growth forests are collaborative, Korena believe what Romme had recently suggested:
Mafune, a postdoctoral research fellow at the This was what Yellowstone was supposed to do.
University of Washington, told me as we walked
through the Hoh recently. She suspects a diminu- Many people had assumed Yellowstone’s fires
tive version of this fungal network may even exist blew up because firefighters more than a century
on high branches. She’s found soil beneath moss earlier had begun suppressing wildfires, allow-
growing in the canopy, with tiny trees sprouting ing excess trees to pack forests like kindling. This
from the living branches of big old ones—“a mini- is true in parts of the West. But while traversing
forest within a forest,” she says. She worries that game trails to map the park’s fire history, Romme
even this ancient place, so much richer than a discovered that Yellowstone historically burned
tree plantation, could change rapidly if a hot very severely once in a great while. “There had
enough dry spell lasted too long. not been very many fires even in the days before
fire suppression,” he told me one morning in the
Already, snow melting early in Alaska is park. “It was really kind of shocking.”
depriving yellow cedars of their warming blan-
ket, letting cold snaps freeze their roots and kill- Yellowstone is lodgepole country. Their thick,
ing them by the thousands. Heat and drought slender trunks occupy 80 percent of the park’s
sparked by climate change have killed up to 20 woods. Some are serotinous, meaning they need
percent of trees in Africa’s Sahel, in southwest fire to unlock cones that hold their seeds. Romme
Morocco, and in the western U.S. since 1945, had shown that these forests had seen monster
according to the latest IPCC report. Five of the stand-clearing blazes in the 1700s and 1800s.
eight most abundant tree species in the Ameri- Such fires were rare because the park was “too
can West have declined significantly just since moist, and it was too cool,” he said. But every 100
2000, mostly from fire and insect infestations. to 300 years, in an exceptionally hot, dry sum-
Lodgepole pines top the list. mer, enormous patches would ignite in one great

“Forests are far more vulnerable in the cli-
mate change era than people think,” says Craig
Allen, a landscape ecologist and collaborator of

T H E F U T U R E O F F O R E S T S 51

52

SOUTHEAST COAST

BRAZIL

FIRST CAME THE River. Drought had
DROUGHT, THEN THE stressed the trees,
DEVASTATING HAIL partly by boosting
the water’s salinity.
Six months after Hail and wind killed
Australia’s mangrove nearly a third of them.
die-off in 2015, the Globally, the main
same El Niño caused threat to mangroves—
a storm that hit man- clearing for timber or
groves in the estuary farming—has declined.
of the Piraquê-Mirím But climate change is
a rising concern.

VICTOR MORIYAMA

ALONG THE CAPE FEAR RIVER

NORTH CAROLINA

RISING SEAS near Eagles Island.
ARE CREATING Dredging encouraged
‘GHOST FORESTS’ the intrusion and killed
the trees long ago.
Seawater seeps into Cypress stands all over
aquifers and freshwa- the Southeast have
ter wetlands, killing been decimated since
vegetation such as the 19th century by
these bald cypresses logging and draining
of wetlands.

MAC STONE



conflagration, allowing the woods to be reborn. JEMEZ MOUNTAINS
Forests, Turner realized, were resilient. It
NEW MEXICO
would take time to accept how that could change.

A N E A R LY WA R N I N G C A M E I N 2 0 0 2 , during the A TREE’S RINGS up in the forest; a long,
Southwest’s worst drought in five decades. REVEAL A LONG HISTORY hot drought settled
Weeks before meeting Turner, I scrambled up OF SURVIVING FIRE in. A monster blaze in
a dusty embankment near New Mexico’s Ban- 2011 ravaged 45 square
delier National Monument. Beside me, Craig From 1650 on, this miles in its first night.
Allen and Nate McDowell, an earth scientist ponderosa pine survived The result? “An extin-
at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 15 fires—but in the 20th guished ecosystem that
examined a picture Allen had taken in 2002. century most fires were will never be seen again
It showed dense throngs of piñon pines, their suppressed. Fuel built here,” says scientist
needles tinged orange because they were dying. Craig Allen (right).

Allen swept an arm toward a nearby mesa. KEITH LADZINSKI
He’d studied forests in this scratch of arid wood-
land near the Jemez Mountains since the 1980s. trees protect themselves with deeper roots, for
Now the adult pines from his picture were gone. example, or by storing more water—but those
What remained was cracked earth, hardy juni- investments come at the expense of growing taller
pers, and an occasional seedling. to compete for light and space with other trees.

A drought in the 1950s had brought even less The upshot, scientists figured out in just the
rain, and yet between 2002 and 2004 the impact past decade, is that many trees in most land-
on trees was worse: In some areas, more than 90 scapes, from the hot, rainy Amazon to cold,
percent perished, many falling victim to bark dry Alberta, are operating at the limits of their
beetles, natural predators that spread as never hydraulic systems, even under normal condi-
before. All told, some 350 million piñons, New tions, with little safety margin. That means a hot
Mexico’s state tree, died across the Southwest. drought can push them over the threshold. The
Unprecedented fires eviscerated hundreds of 2002 drought in the Southwest did exactly that:
thousands of acres of ponderosa pines. Tree-ring records would later show it was the
driest and worst year for growth in a millennium.
Allen was taken aback by the severity. But No other year even came close.
bit by bit, he, McDowell, and their colleagues
came to understand: This drought was hotter. All this awakened Allen to what he now sees
The slight increase in temperature attributable as a grave global threat. “Seeing the transforma-
to greenhouse gas emissions was already enough tion of this landscape that I’d studied my whole
to set the death of New Mexico’s trees in motion. adult life … climate change wasn’t theoretical
anymore,” he told me. He started tracking the
And what’s become ever more clear to Allen, mass mortality events elsewhere. Over the next
through his own work and that of many others, two decades, heat and drought would kill bil-
is that trees the world over are vulnerable to lions of trees directly and indirectly—in Spain,
the added heat. The warmer atmosphere sucks in South Korea, throughout Australia. In cen-
more moisture from plants and soil. To cut their tral Siberia, Russia lost two million acres of firs.
losses during droughts, trees close pores in their In Texas in 2011, drought killed more than 300
leaves, called stomata, or shed leaves entirely. million trees—one out of every 16 in the state.
But that limits the CO2 they take in, leaving them
both hungry and parched all at once. When it’s Increasing warmth helped deadly forest pests
especially hot, they even leak some of the water spread, weakening trees and letting beetles and
they’re desperate to retain. moths live through the winters or reproduce more
often. Such invasions wiped out trees in Hondu-
When soil gets dry enough, trees can no lon- ras, Turkey, and Algeria. In central Europe they
ger maintain pressure in the internal conduits arrived as a shocking new plague.
that carry water up to their leaves. Air bubbles
interrupt the flow, causing fatal embolisms. Some On a chilly day last fall, I struggled up 227 steps
inside a former Cold War surveillance station on

56 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C



ROOTS OF A CRISIS HEAT AND DROUGHT PESTS OTHE

As temperatures rise because of climate change, Hotter air pulls more water from soil Under repeated stress, even the D
trees are being hit with heat waves and drought, and trees during a drought, even most pest-resistant trees are at
killing them or weakening their resistance to a as heat stress requires trees to pump risk. Bark beetles, previously not E
cascade of pressures, from pests to rising sea levels. more water to leaves. To survive known to kill giant sequoias, have R
mounting stressors, trees may tempo- recently felled dozens of the an- te
rarily shut down some processes. cient trees after droughts and fires.

HEALTHY Carbon Water STRESSED HEALTHY STRESSED
dioxide 3
converted Closed
to food CO2 stomata

CO2 Open Greater 1
stomata atmospheric
Inside pull of water 1/8 inch
leaf
Needle Cedar bark
beetle
Water
Bark beetles b
OPEN ACCESS LOCKDOWN their assault b
attacking bra
To make food (car- Stomata close to avoid where bark is
bohydrates) and stay water loss, but this stops
cool, the tree absorbs the uptake of carbon Healthy / Stre
carbon dioxide and dioxide. The tree can Resin
releases water through die if it depletes its
pores called stomata. food reserves. 2

Food Water Food Water A healthy tree
chemical defe
Air abundant res
bubbles out invaders;
weakens thos
Cork Xylem
Tunnels
WORKING FLOW Phloem BROKEN FLOW
3
The atmosphere pulls Bark 2 Lack of water can create
water from roots to can- RESERVES air bubbles in the xylem,
opy through the pipelike Food impairing water trans-
xylem. Food is distrib- port and raising the risk
uted via the phloem. Water of tree death.

Root Piñon Root Giant Fire Once inside, b
Water pine sequoia scarring bore tunnels a
Less on the bark’s
water layer that sho
distributing f

WET SOIL 1 DRY SOIL Life cycle Life cycle Rising temper
2 years 1 year may speed up
Roots can expand or Dry soil In a drought, a tree must cycles of some
contract their sur- retains water. compete with dried-out leading to mo
face area and depth soil for water. The tree has of attacks.
in response to water greater demand for water
availability in the soil. even as less is available.

MONICA SERRANO, NGM STAFF; MESA SCHUMACHER. SOU
NATHAN L. STEPHENSON, USGS; ANNA W. SCHOETTLE, U.

ER FACTORS PAT H O G E N S Climate LOSS OF WATER VAPOR Rising SEA-LEVEL RISE Rising
change temperature temperature
Drought Trees can contract and host The Amazon’s tree canopy releases Mangrove forests buffer
infectious diseases such as blister Rising most of the rainforest’s water Drought many of the world’s shore- Extreme
xtreme fire rust, which ravages many pine temperature vapor, key to Earth’s greatest water lines but need freshwater weather
Rising species. A warming climate recycling ecosystem. If too many to survive. Rising seas are
emperature can alter pathogen life cycles trees die of heat and drought, the cutting them off from that Drought
and extend sporing times. system could collapse. vital resource.

Blister rust has a second ATMOSPHERIC Under normal conditions, Heat and drought
host, Ribes plants, which WATER salt-tolerant mangroves increase atmospheric
release spores that infect rely on oxygen and demand for water, fur-
pines; pines then reinfect 1 freshwater intake from ther pressuring a system
the Ribes plants. their roots to thrive. strained by higher seas.
Water vapor
Spores Some pines in drier, cools forest. Less total
higher elevations can water vapor
avoid infection, but their
ecosystems are changing. RAIN HEAT RAIN

begin 59% Water Greater
by CO2 atmospheric
nches Total water pull of water
recycled
thinnest. back into CO2

essed atmosphere

2 White-pine 26%
blister rust
Needle stomata from canopy
must be open disease
to be infected.
3

2

Defenses 22% Cooling water
breached vapor is lost
from when stomata
evaporation close under
stress.

e produces 6.5% 3 Less
enses and water is
in to flush from recycled.
stress subcanopy
se defenses.

Red When sea levels rise,
mangrove inundated mangroves
suffer from lack of oxy-
4 4.5% gen and extreme salin-
ity. This can lead to
Blisters discharge from stress conditions similar
more spores. understory to drought on land.

beetles Brazil nut Dying Rising sea level
and feed tree tree
phloem
ould be Whitebark O2 O2
ood. pine 1
Freshwater
ratures 1 inflow, low salinity Less freshwater Saltwater
p the life Soil level inflow
e pests, Ribes plant
ore waves (Gooseberry)

A changing climate can Sporing Host susceptibility 2 When this water Nutrient-rich Soil erosion and high
also alter the timing Current conditions recycling system is soil deposited salt concentration
of host susceptibility, 41% diminished, less water
creating more opportuni- Increased warming reaches coastal man-
ties for infection. River runoff groves via rivers.
feeds coastal
mangrove forests.

URCES: CRAIG D. ALLEN, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO; BRENDAN CHOAT, WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY; ANGELO BERNARDINO, FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF ESPÍRITO SANTO;
S. FOREST SERVICE ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESEARCH STATION; GRETCHEN BAKER, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; NATE MCDOWELL, PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

WORLDWIDE LOSSES

Trees are facing unprecedented mortality events around the globe. These
die-offs are projected to accelerate as more frequent and severe droughts

and heat waves push trees—especially old-growth forests that matured
under bygone conditions—beyond their threshold of survivability.

NORTH EUROPE ASIA Die-offs in boreal forests
95 62 and rainforests, both
AMERICA critical absorbers and
285 AFRICA storers of carbon dioxide,
48 are likely underreported.

SOUTH OCEANIA Location of 675
AMERICA 128 published tree
Total sites 57 mortality sites
(1970-2018)

Boreal forest

Humid tropical forest

ALL FORESTS HOT & WET
ARE AT RISK
160 Number of tree
Trees have a range of inches mortality sites
climate conditions they
can withstand. But 675 100
when temperature and
precipitation change unique sites of 50
in frequency, duration, scientifically re-
or severity, trees and ported die-offs 25
entire forests can fail. over the past 10
five decades 5

42

COLD & WET HOT & DRY
90°F
140 Forests cannot 69 HÖLSTEIN, NEAR BASEL
inches grow in these 80
cold and wet 60 70 SWITZERLAND
120 extremes.
36 77
WET TEAMnPnEuRalATaUveRrEage
137 HOT
100 60

80

Elevation AnnPuRaElCaIvPeITrAagTeION60 50 WHICH TREES WILL plant ecologist Ans-
(feet) SURVIVE A HOTTER, gar Kahmen (at right)
MONICA SERRANO AND CHRISTINA DRIER FUTURE? and technician Lucio
Over 9,000 5 studies 40 84 SHINTANI, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: WILLIAM Rizzelli regularly ride
7,000-9,000 13 40 How exactly do trees into the canopy of a
HAMMOND ET AL., NATURE die of thirst? As part research forest. Here
5,000-7,000 19 20 30 COMMUNICATIONS of a 20-year project to they’re measuring the
3,000-5,000 27 COLD & DRY answer such questions, water vapor that a
1,000-3,000 40 University of Basel Norway spruce sheds
COLD through its needles.
0-1,000 48 DRY
ORSOLYA HAARBERG

CLIMATE DATA SHOWN HERE REPRESENT THE
AVERAGE OVER FIVE DECADES, FROM 1970 TO 2018.



SOUTHWEST OF COPENHAGEN

DENMARK

WHAT FORESTS DO “forest bathing,” has
FOR US TRANSCENDS been shown by scien-
CALCULATION tists to reduce mental
and physical stress. At
The tangible benefits— Camp Adventure, visi-
food, wood, carbon tors ascend a spiraling
storage—are not the 150-foot-high board-
only ones. Immersing walk to get a fresh
oneself in woods, or perspective on trees—
and perhaps on life.

ORSOLYA HAARBERG



a 4,300-foot peak outside Prášily, a Czech vil- some spots and skipping others. The mosaic let
lage near the border with Germany. I huffed to animals and trees recolonize easily. Her own
keep pace with Petr Kahuda, a ranger at Šumava work, influenced by that long-ago chopper ride,
National Park, and Zdeněk Patočka, a forest sci- had thoroughly documented that pattern. But
entist at Mendel University. The tower was built what if the system no longer worked that way?
in the 1960s to listen in on NATO radio transmis-
sions, but after the Iron Curtain fell, the Czech Turner started investigating. She learned that
government opened it and this 170,000-acre park baby pines grew poorly in hot, dry seasons. She’d
to the world. At the top, a circular balcony over- been taught that young lodgepoles were too green
looks rolling forests that once fueled the region’s to burn, but she found them supporting explo-
glass industry. Now, huge portions of its trees are sive fires. She watched areas of the park burned
dying, victims of bark beetle attacks. in 1988 catch fire again. She saw fires crashing
through before young trees produced mature
In 2018 central Europe experienced its worst seed cones. Some burned so big and hot that
drought in five centuries. Summer temperatures no seed trees survived to regrow the forest.
hit nearly six degrees Fahrenheit above average.
Tree deaths skyrocketed, and weakened survi- In five spots around Grand Teton and Yellow-
vors attracted beetles. Worst hit was Czechia. stone, Turner found forests coming back sparsely
Loggers raced to salvage what they could. People or not at all. Climate change was reshaping some
were so desperate, Kahuda said, that one man of the most storied scenery. Simulating a future
offered Šumava National Park his sheep, hoping in which we don’t curtail emissions, she caught
their smell might drive away the insects. glimpses of some of her favorite places as her
children might one day see them: At Oxbow
In Germany, 750,000 acres of forest died from Bend, where Mount Moran is reflected in the
2018 to 2020. No one knew quite how to respond. Snake River, the thick stand of conifers could
History aggravated the crisis: Almost no native be replaced by sagebrush, grasses, and aspens;
forests remain in central Europe. Humans have along Firehole Canyon Drive or the Madison
thoroughly transformed the landscape. Origi- River, the pine forests could become meadows.
nally dominated by beech and oak, many for-
ests had been replanted with Norway spruce and Turner had thought of Yellowstone as “the
pine. After World War II, clear-cuts were made most resilient place in the world.” Now her
to ship timber and pay reparations to the Allies. research showed its forests transitioning to a

But while spruce grows naturally at higher, FIRES ARE RESHAPING
cooler elevations, foresters also planted it down STORIED SCENERY:
low. It did fine there for 70 years. Then, says Hen- SOME FORESTS ARE
rik Hartmann, a forest expert at the Max Planck COMING BACK SPARSELY—
Institute for Biogeochemistry, “climate change OR NOT AT ALL.
made this formerly suitable habitat inadequate.”

F O R A W H I L E , Turner kept her faith in Yellow- new state. Other scientists were reaching sim-
stone’s cycle of fire and rebirth. Trees die; it’s ilar conclusions elsewhere. Camille Stevens-
part of the equation. But at a 2008 conference in Rumann, a forest ecologist at Colorado State
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she was confronted with University, examined 1,485 sites from 52 fires
the possibility that the equation had changed. A in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.
colleague presented maps suggesting that Yellow- The number of burned sites that didn’t recover
stone in coming decades could see fire seasons jumped from 19 percent before 2000 to 32 per-
like 1988’s nearly every summer. That year “would cent in the years after. “And by ‘not recovering,’
no longer be exceptional—and the exceptional I mean not a single tree—not one,” she says.
years would be out of control,” Turner recalls.
Not long ago, the U.S. Forest Service mostly
She didn’t buy it at first. For thousands of
years Yellowstone’s monster blazes had burned
erratically at different intensities, scorching

66 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

planted trees only after forests had been the canopy of a nearby sequoia and stared over at
logged—it counted on burned areas regen- the President. My throat itched from the smoke
erating naturally. Now, “over 80 percent of of a nearby wildfire. My legs ached from hauling
our reforestation needs are being driven by myself 200 feet up a climbing rope to join forest
catastrophic wildfire,” says David Lytle, the ecologist Anthony Ambrose. I’d come because
agency’s forest and rangeland management he and other scientists were suddenly rattled.
director. More than half of the millions of acres
burned recently in 154 national forests won’t In 2014, two summers after that story was
grow back without replanting. Even then, on published, sequoias began shedding needles,
tens of thousands of acres, seeds may never a severe move to curb water demand during a
take root, Lytle says. horrendous drought. Then scientists noticed
33 trees succumbing to fatal beetle attacks.
But around the world, more than just drought Ambrose saw tunnels carved through bark. He
and fire are at play. After extreme heat and saw branches trying to push insects out by ooz-
drought had weakened mangroves across hun- ing pitch. He worried other trees might be next.
dreds of miles of northern Australian coast, an El
Niño event in 2015-16, likely worsened by climate Before then, sequoias were considered “freaks”
change, caused a temporary regional drop in sea of the conifer world because “nobody had ever
level. Eighteen thousand acres of mangroves died seen one killed by insects,” Nate Stephenson
of thirst. In southeastern Brazil, the same El Niño had told me the day before I met Ambrose.
drove down precipitation, stressing mangroves Stephenson would know. After studying these
along the flat, brown Piraquê-Mirím River. Then, monarchs for more than 40 years, he probably
one June day in 2016, plum-size hail pummeled understands them better than anyone else.
this hot landscape for the first time on record, as
60-mile-an-hour gusts blew foliage off trees and In 2015, shortly after the needles fell and the
drove trunks sideways across 1,200 acres. bugs arrived, Stephenson met with Christy
Brigham, who’d recently arrived as the park’s
Five years later I visited with Angelo Ber- chief of resources. “How bad is it?” she asked.
nardino, an oceanographer with Federal Stephenson saw no reason for panic.
University of Espírito Santo. From a boat on
the river, we watched soil around the dead trees Drought and fire threats to sequoias had been
sloughing into the water, ensuring that few if predicted by climate modelers, but most didn’t
any mangroves would ever sprout here again. expect serious danger for decades. Sequoia and
Kings Canyon National Parks had pioneered the
I F A N Y S P E C I E S C O U L D W I T H STA N D climate shifts, setting of prescribed burns to clear brush and
you might think it’d be giant sequoias, many of logs from the understory so that wildfires didn’t
which have stood since the reign of Julius Cae- explode. The parks would now light even more
sar. Instead, change has come frighteningly fast. controlled blazes, Brigham decided. She hired
Ambrose and forest ecologist Wendy Baxter to
In 2012 the cover story in National Geograph- track how sequoias were managing water stress.
ic’s December issue profiled one stunning
specimen in Sequoia National Park. At 247 feet Ambrose has climbed enough sequoias to
in height, nearly half that of the Washington Mon- know they are tough old beasts. He’s seen them
ument, the President, as the behemoth is called, struck by lightning only to grow new canopy
was thought to have been a seedling when fewer branches. He’s watched them slow their photo-
people walked Earth than live in modern France. synthetic machinery in dry times. Trees that can
It held more leaves than there are people in China. drink 800 gallons of water a day don’t survive
Our story told of sequoias’ remarkable resil- thousands of years without learning to “hunker
ience: the way tannins supposedly made them down,” he says. But by 2021, as we sat together
impervious to wood-boring beetles; how their staring at the President after the most shocking
thick bark was nearly flame resistant. Research- fire season on record, Ambrose was wondering
ers were wary about the future but not alarmed. how much more these trees could take.

Last summer, less than a decade later, I sat in Sequoias need low-intensity ground fires to
release seeds from their cones and clear soil, so
seeds can take root. Their high branches make
them unlikely hosts for canopy fires. But in 2020
our history of suppressing fire collided with a
rapidly changing climate. The same dry spell

T H E F U T U R E O F F O R E S T S 67

NEAR BOULDER

COLORADO

HOW BURNED TREES a forest that burned
CAN NURTURE THE in 2020. The mulch
LANDSCAPE will help stabilize the
slopes in these foothills,
With the help of a letting new vegetation
helicopter, charred take root and pre-
trees ground to mulch venting soil erosion,
are showered like which otherwise
cremated remains over could harm nearby
lakes and streams.

KEITH LADZINSKI



GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK

NEVADA

HOW THESE ANCIENT here in 2000. Some
TREES COULD WEATHER bristlecones are
CLIMATE CHANGE about 5,000 years
old, making them the
A pale moon shines longest-lived indi-
through the skeletons vidual organisms on
of bristlecone pines 21 Earth. Seedlings have
years after a wildfire— sprouted among the
made rare and more dead, offering hope
intense by years of fire that this species might
suppression—ripped be one of the best
through 1,650 acres equipped to endure
a warming climate.

KEITH LADZINSKI



that cost sequoias foliage had killed tens of mil- might soak up more carbon than spruce over
lions of trees—sugar pines, incense cedars, and time and be less likely to burn. But soils hold
white firs—in densely packed forests nearby. most of the carbon in the boreal region, and for
That’s where the Castle fire began. now they seem very vulnerable.

Soon it jumped ridges and spotted into the Meanwhile, in the boreal forests of Siberia,
sequoias. Long flames ignited their crowns. intensifying fires have mutated recently into multi-
Heat and wind shot smoke tens of thousands million-acre monsters that threaten to release
of feet high. Embers exploded. High branches huge reserves of ancient carbon from the perma-
collapsed, plunging seed cones into flames, frost. Those burns are turning some forests into
incinerating future generations. shrublands or grasslands, which store less carbon,
says Heather Alexander of Auburn University in
In one grove Brigham found hardly any seeds. Alabama. Yet the switch to a lighter-colored land-
“There was nothing on the ground except ash. scape also has a cooling effect, because it reflects
We have never seen that before. Never.” After more sunlight than darker forest—especially
the fire, Brigham took stock. Up to 14 percent of when blanketed by winter snow. The bottom line
all the large sequoias in the Sierra Nevada, their for climate, Alexander says: “Unknown.”
native habitat, were dead or mortally wounded.
The Amazon rainforest presents a clearer and
Months after I left Ambrose, it happened more urgent picture. It produces much of its
again. Fires in September 2021 charred sequoia own rain, recycling water vapor over and over.
bark and sent twigs raining for miles. Ambrose’s The clearing of forest for cattle ranches and soy
study trees lost water 24 hours a day. Flames
came so close to the General Sherman—the EACH REGION IS ITS
biggest tree on Earth—that firefighters wrapped OWN CASE, BUT THE
it in flame-resistant material. THREAT TO FORESTS
IS GENERAL AND
The 2021 fires claimed another 3 to 5 percent of GLOBAL. ‘THERE’S
large sequoias. Up to 19 percent of these magnif- JUST RED FLAG AFTER
icent trees—trees that had weathered everything RED FLAG,’ ECOLOGIST
for a millennium or more—had been lost in just JENNIFER BALTZER SAYS.
two years.
farms has accelerated again under President Jair
L O S I N G F O R E S T S TO C L I M AT E C H A N G E isn’t just Bolsonaro, and climate change may be hasten-
about such heartbreak. There are other con- ing the approach of a dangerous tipping point.
sequences for people and wildlife. Wildfire Grueling droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2015-16
smoke increasingly fouls the air of major cities killed billions of trees outright and helped
such as San Francisco and Seattle. Australia’s spread fires that killed more. As forest is logged,
2020 megafires killed 33 people—and a billion burned, or dried out, that reduces rainfall in a
animals, including 60,000 koalas. The fires may self-reinforcing spiral. Some scientists fear that
have expanded the country’s list of endangered spiral threatens to send the world’s biggest rain-
animal species by 14 percent. forest hurtling toward a transition to a savanna.

Losing forests also releases carbon that ampli- Each region of the world faces its own par-
fies the climate threat. The future on that score ticular challenges, but the threat to forests is
looks uncertain but worrisome. general and global. “There’s just red flag after
red flag where these forested ecosystems are
In North America’s boreal forest, from Alaska being pushed right to their limit,” Baltzer says.
to Newfoundland, massive fires now release
incredible amounts of carbon—not only from
the trees themselves but also from the moist peat
soils in which they grow. Jennifer Baltzer, a forest
ecologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario,
has found that in many burnt patches, the dom-
inant species, black spruce, is being replaced by
other species such as aspen—which in principle

72 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Yet increasingly, governments from Japan to four times more land, up to 50 million acres, over
the United Kingdom are setting up complex trad- 10 years—if Congress provides the money.
ing schemes that allow businesses to offset fossil
fuel emissions by protecting forests rather than But that’s not enough. We also need to restore
to cut emissions at the smokestack. Often those damaged forests, primarily in equatorial regions,
schemes don’t account adequately for the possi- where native trees can come back quickly, but
bility that forests may not be protectable. As I was elsewhere too. The infrastructure bill signed by
visiting sequoias last year, a wildfire in Oregon President Joe Biden last fall authorizes billions
was releasing carbon that tech giant Microsoft of dollars to increase nursery and seed-growing
had purchased to offset its own emissions. capacity and kick-start the largest U.S. refor-
estation campaign in history by replanting four
N O O N E K N OW S W H AT AWA I T S this summer, or million acres in a decade.
next. But it’s time we embraced our new reality.
We can no longer forestall rapid changes to some And of course we need to break our fossil fuel
forests. The planet won’t stop warming until we addiction, quickly.
completely halt fossil fuel emissions, and that
will take decades. As Craig Allen witnessed in On my last day in Yellowstone with Turner, we
New Mexico and Nate Stephenson has seen with visited old burns from another 2016 fire. This one
giant sequoias, some changes may be drastic. had ripped across a plateau above the Madison
River, which also had burned in 1988. The recent
But we can keep things from getting even blaze had so scorched the landscape that it even
worse. To start, we must halt the destruction of incinerated downed trunks, leaving nothing but
native forests, especially tropical, boreal, and lines of white ash that stretched like shadows
temperate old-growth forests. The benefits they across blackened soil. Turner called them “ghost
provide aren’t replaceable. The good news: Many logs.” In 30 years of traipsing through fire scars,
are still healthy, for now. she’d never seen ground so pummeled by fire.

For example, humans have cleared far less of Do we want even more of this?
the Congo rainforest, the world’s second largest, This spring marks 150 years since President
than of tropical forests in Asia or South America. Ulysses S. Grant signed the act creating Yellow-
The forest is getting less precipitation, but it’s stone, America’s first national park. It required
showing resilience. While some trees in Gabon “preservation, from injury or spoliation” and
produce less fruit, providing less food for forest “retention in their natural condition” of the park’s
elephants (see article on page 96), the Congo has wonders. The effort that entails has expanded
avoided widespread tree mortality. Even in Bra- since Grant’s day, when threats were direct and
zil and Southeast Asia, millions of square miles local. Turner projects that if global temperatures
of lush forest remain intact. were to rise four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees F)
from preindustrial values, the region’s high-
“We need to protect the forests we have,” says elevation spruces and subalpine firs, such as
Robin Chazdon, a restoration expert with the those near the Snake River’s headwaters, could
University of Connecticut. “That’s number one.” be wiped out. Forest cover could drop by half by
2100. The density of what remains would drop
We also need to manage forests better, espe- even more.
cially for fire. In cooler, dry months in northern That’s far from inevitable. If the world’s
Australia’s Arnhem Land, Indigenous rangers nations keep their current promises, the planet
carry drip torches or drop fire starters from will warm less than three degrees Celsius (5.4
helicopters to ignite ground-crawling blazes in degrees F). Stabilizing emissions closer to two
the tall grass (see article on page 74). So far, that degrees or less could limit forest losses in Yellow-
has dramatically curbed explosive late-summer stone to 15 percent. High-elevation trees would
forest fires. In the U.S., the White House still struggle, and there’d be more Douglas firs
announced plans in January to help government and aspens. But some old growth would persist.
and private landowners start more prescribed Yellowstone’s forests, like many in the world, will
burns and thin more forests, where appropriate, never be the same. But they might be close. j
with logging. The aim is to reduce fire risks on
Senior writer Craig Welch has been reporting on
climate change for more than 20 years. In the past
year he has written cover stories on electric cars
and the culture of whales.

T H E F U T U R E O F F O R E S T S 73

FIGHTING
FIRE
WITH
FIRE AU ST RA L I A’ S A B O R I G I N A L P EO P L E
HAVE REVIVED THE ANCIENT
PRACTICE OF PLANNED BURNING

TO PRESERVE AND RENEW

THEIR HOMELANDS—AND HELP

SUPPORT THEIR COMMUNITIES.

BY KYLIE STEVENSON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY M AT T H E W A B B OT T

75

Smoke from a fire set PREVIOUS PHOTO
deliberately hovers
over Arnhem Land in Conrad Maralngurra
northern Australia. starts a low-intensity
Aboriginal people have blaze to protect
inhabited the area for his community in
tens of thousands of Mamadawerre, an
years, managing it by outstation along
burning grasses and the northern border
underbrush early in the of the Warddeken
dry season to prevent Indigenous Protected
wildfires from ravaging Area. In summer,
forests later, when it’s lightning strikes
hotter and drier. routinely spark fires
in the tropical savanna.







IT’S Tabetha and Estella
FIRST Nadjamerrek, who are
LIGHT, cousins, fling heavy-
duty matches, igniting
early November, near a place small brush fires that
called Deaf Adder Gorge on the western edge will burn out on their
of the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area. own. Comfortable
Northern Australia’s tropical heat pummels with fire, Aboriginal
Arijay Nabarlambarl as he jumps out of a helicop- people use it in many
ter and strides toward a fire. Low and snaking, aspects of their culture,
the flames have scorched the bone-dry wetlands, including hunting and
leaving singed earth and black-socked paperbark traditional ceremonies.
trees. The 25-year-old falls in behind two other
rangers, and a symphony of leaf blowers drowns
out the crackle of fire. The trio methodically
walks the perimeter, blasting leaf litter from the
edges back onto the fire to keep it from spreading.

They’re one of three groups of Indigenous
rangers in this remote pocket of Arnhem Land,
about 160 miles east of Darwin, fighting a
late-season wildfire, triggered by lightning, that
has fingered off in several directions. In some
patches the flames leap in tall spinifex grasses;
in others they creep shin-high into the crevices
of sandstone formations.

Nabarlambarl pauses to assess his section of
the blaze. He’s been a ranger since he finished
high school; the job gave him a chance to move
from the town where he was educated back to
his ancestral land. In the eight years since, he’s
learned the fire stories from his elders, stories
that span the tens of thousands of years his
people have inhabited the land. He kicks at
smoldering bark from the bottom of a tree, pre-
venting the fire from gripping it. “It’s looking
good because of the early burn and the creek
nearby,” he explains. Nabarlambarl wipes his
brow and gazes through the smoke. The land
is home to a host of endemic and threatened
species, including the black wallaroo, the north-
ern quoll, and the white-throated grasswren. It
brims with stunning waterfalls, rock formations,

80 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

rivers, and unspoiled forests. Even though it’s and conduct prescribed burns from the air, drop-
burning, it’s undeniably beautiful. ping incendiary pellets from helicopters.

The blaze is just one of 53 that Warddeken’s Moist vegetation, low winds, and lower tem-
rangers worked to suppress last year in the late peratures at that time of year mean the fires they
dry season. Between August and December, light are smaller and less intense, typically burn-
fire is relentless. Tropical savanna is the most ing out overnight. If the land is burned gently,
fire-prone landscape on the planet, and up to the wildfires that will inevitably come later won’t
one-third of northern Australia burns every year. be as destructive. It also gives the rangers a fight-
ing chance at extinguishing them.
But fire isn’t just the problem—here, it’s also
the solution. Protecting the environment with fire, and
from fire, is a role Aboriginal rangers take seri-
During the cool of northern Australia’s early ously. They are the land’s owners, its caretakers,
dry season, when moisture lingered on the land, and they have a deep, spiritual connection to it.
Nabarlambarl and his fellow rangers weren’t
fighting fires; they were lighting them. From April “I love being out on country,” Nabarlambarl
to July each year, rangers walk hundreds of miles says. It’s what made him become a ranger. It’s
armed with drip torches, setting the land alight, what brought him home.

F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E 81

TOP BOTTOM

Mary Kolkiwarra During an evening
Nadjamerrek talks to around a campfire
schoolchildren about on the bushwalk with
rock art. She helped lead their clan, Garnarradj
a movement in the 1970s and Gamarrwu teach
to get Aboriginal people Vinnisha, who is three,
to return to their land. how to use a spear.

82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

TOP BOTTOM

A kangaroo painting, in Students from a school
an x-ray style that shows in Mamadawerre use
organs, decorates the tablet computers to
roof of a cave known photograph trees.
as Manaamnam, one of Classes, often held out-
tens of thousands of such side, blend traditional
sites in Arnhem Land. and standard education.

F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E 83

Using long-handled
crowbars to probe
the marshy grasslands,
Warddeken rangers
Rosemary Nabulwad,
Arijay Nabarlambarl,
Margaret Nabulwad,
Janice Nalorlman, and
Lorna Nabulwad spend
a day off hunting for
turtles burrowed into
the mud. They’re a
popular delicacy in
Arnhem Land.



F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E is not a new concept. anbinik exist only in natural fire refuges, such
Fire management is used by Indigenous peo- as gorges, or in strange, isolated clumps in the
ple all over the world but has gained renewed savanna. (The Disney Conservation Fund pro-
attention. As the climate warms and wildfires vided a grant to the Karrkad Kanjdji Trust to
become more extreme, forestry experts globally help Indigenous rangers protect anbinik trees.
are calling for a return to traditional practices. The Walt Disney Company is a majority owner
of National Geographic Partners.)
In Arnhem Land, lighting early dry-season
fires was once systematic and widespread. Fire Traditional owners believed fire was the com-
was used for hunting, for regeneration, for cere- mon thread. Arnhem Land was being ravaged by
mony. Aboriginal elders say fire brings the land intense, uncontrollable wildfires that affected
to life again; after a burn, the land is reborn. everything. They called for a renewal of strategic
Even now, it’s common for Aboriginal people to early dry-season burning. It would be a way of
deliver their own fire management—to see land not just caring for country but also reconnecting
that needs fire and simply take a match to it. with aspects of their culture.

Like many Indigenous Australians, Terrah “Land needs fire,” Guymala says simply.
Guymala has been comfortable with fire since
childhood. Now 56, he recalls lessons from his A N C I E N T P R AC T I C E B E C A M E modern reality
elders about using fire: to drive kangaroos toward through a novel approach designed by Bininj,
hunters; to create smoke for rituals, particularly as western Arnhem Land’s Aboriginal people call
around death; to burn each type of vegetation themselves, along with non-Aboriginal people,
at the right time of year. Guymala is a senior known as Balanda. They combined customary
traditional owner for Manmoyi—one of the out- knowledge on how, when, and where to burn
stations in and near Warddeken’s 5,400 square with modern tools such as satellite mapping and
miles (nearly the size of Connecticut). Owned by helicopters to conduct aerial burning and drop
36 clan groups, the area is managed through a firefighters into remote areas. In 2006 the world’s
complex system of customary law. “Back in the first savanna-burning carbon-abatement project
day,” Guymala says, “this land was full of people, began in western Arnhem Land, supported by
and they used to manage the fire.” Land bereft of the liquefied natural gas facility in Darwin, which
its people—“empty country,” he calls it—is why was required to offset its emissions.
wildfires began consuming the landscape.
Aboriginal groups, including those in Ward-
Guymala’s family, like so many others, moved deken, now participate in Australia’s carbon
away from their land, into missions and settle- market, with polluters buying credits represent-
ments in the years following colonization. His ing an amount of greenhouse gases kept out of
family came back when he was a child. Their the atmosphere. In some places, credits are sold
return was part of the homelands movement based on how much carbon is stored in protected
that began in the 1970s, led by Indigenous leader forests. That’s controversial in part because for-
and world-renowned Aboriginal artist Bardayal ests can burn down. But savanna burning works
“Lofty” Nadjamerrek. Traditional owners like differently. Strategic fires in the early dry season,
Nadjamerrek noticed that in their absence the along with firefighting in the late dry season,
country had shape-shifted. Non-native weeds limits wildfires, protecting forests and reducing
and feral animals, such as cats and buffalo, had the overall amount of smoke. The emissions
moved in; some native animals, such as emus, avoided are sold as credits.
were scarcer; ancient bim (rock art) sites were
being damaged by buffalo and fire; and the Indigenous groups now run about 80 savanna-
health of monsoon rainforests, floodplains, and burning projects in northern Australia, gener-
the savanna was deteriorating. ating about $53 million a year in revenue. The
approach has drawn overseas interest. A project
Most worrying, the culturally and ecologically in Botswana is in the pipeline, and fire ecologists
significant anbinik forests were in trouble. The say the methodology could work in Southeast
giant, endemic trees—some living more than a Asia, as well as in Central and South America.
hundred years—were once widespread in the
landscape. Their sap was used as an antiseptic, “It’s hugely innovative, it’s globally significant,
their wood to make fighting sticks, and their and Indigenous people are, by far and away, at
shade as a place to shelter from the sun. Now the pinnacle of it,” says Shaun Ansell, the for-
mer CEO of Warddeken Land Management, the

MARTIN GAMACHE, NGM STAFF; CRAIG MOLYNEUX. SOURCES: COLLABORATIVE AUSTRALIAN PROTECTED AREAS DATABASE, COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA;
COMMONWEALTH SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION; NAWARDDEKEN ACADEMY; NORTH AUSTRALIA AND RANGELANDS FIRE INFORMATION

HARNESSING Thousands of square milesTHE SIX SEASONS
THE FLAMES
How the Aboriginal people of western
For tens of thousands of years, Australia’s Aboriginal Arnhem Land divide the year, shown
people used fire to prevent out-of-control wildfires. below in the Kundedjnjenghmi language:
Today, after many returned to their northern Australia
homelands in the 1970s, that practice has been Kudjewk
revived. Setting small, strategically planned blazes Hot, wet, and humid with monsoons
using drip torches and incendiary pellets dropped
from helicopters, Indigenous rangers create patches Bangkerreng
of burned savanna that act as firebreaks. Over the Last storms of the wet season
past two decades, the total area burned by fire
in western Arnhem Land has diminished significantly. Yekke
Cooler, drier period
WHEN ITBURNS
Wurrkeng
Lightning-sparked fires are Cool, with winds from the south
common between October and
December, before monsoons Kurrung
set in. Prescribed burns to Hot and dry period
prevent wildfires are typically
lit in the cooler, drier months Kunumeleng
from April to July. Humidity, thunderstorms, and lightning

Fire frequency (2000-2020) Total Burned Area (2000-2020)
0 5 10 15 20 160

Managed burns
during cooler
120 seasons

MAP AREA 80

NORTHERN 40
TERR.
0
AUSTRALIA
J F MAM J J A S OND
Canberra
INDIGENOUS SUCCESS
Monsoon forest Rangers in the Warddeken
IPA take advantage of the
Islands Cobourg Peninsula 25 mi rocky terrain when deciding
Tiwi 25 km where to set prescribed
GARIG GUNAK BARLU burns. These burns and
Bathurst Melville Island NATIONAL PARK the favorable landscape are
Island two key factors that have
Van Diemen Gulf helped lessen fire prevalence
since 2000.

Boucaut
Bay

Beagle Gulf Maningrida

Darwin Gunbalanya Mamadawerre
(Oenpelli)

DJUKBINJ Djelk
NAT. PARK MARY I.P.A.

RIVER
South Alligator Jabiru Warddeken Manmoyi
aly Indigenous
Protected

Area Kabulwarnamyo

LITCHFIELD Batchelor N.P. KAKADU Deaf Adder A r n h e m
NAT. Adelaide
PARK River Arnhem NATIONAL Gorge

D PARK Plateau

Land tropical savanna Bulman
Weemol
LAND
Nauiyu

Peppimenarti tropical savanna Pine Creek South East
Arnhem Land
Kimberley NITMILUK
NATIONAL I.P.A.

PARK Carpentaria tropical savanna

Katherine

TOP BOTTOM

With his son Tyson at his A helicopter guided
side, Maralngurra talks by Terrah Guymala, a
with archaeologist Ches- Warddeken ranger, drops
ter Clarke about clearing incendiary devices that
brush from rock art sites slowly react chemically
to protect ancient paint- and then ignite after
ings from being burned. they are on the ground.

88 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

TOP BOTTOM

A cleared path circles Enosh Nadjamerrek
an isolated grove of works to extinguish a fire
anbinik growing on the in the late dry season.
savanna. Many of the Rangers use leaf blow-
huge trees, cherished by ers to push the fire back
Aboriginal people, have onto itself and to remove
been lost to wildfires. debris in its path.

F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E 89

Aboriginal-owned company that’s responsible A black kite, one of
for the protected area. “It’s putting so much three raptors known
investment back into remote communities as a firehawk, circles
where so few economic activities can happen.” over a fire set earlier
by hunters. Sometimes
In western Arnhem Land, the results have been congregating by the
transformational. In 2004, before fire manage- hundreds, firehawks
ment began, 71 percent of the area burned, mostly prey on fleeing insects,
in intense late-dry-season wildfires. By contrast, lizards, and other small
in 2020, 32 percent underwent strategic burning, animals. They’re known
containing wildfires after August to just 2.1 per- to carry burning sticks
cent. That left 65.9 percent unburned, despite more than half a mile
near-catastrophic fire conditions that year. away to start new fires.
Instead of thousands of blackened square miles,
vast areas of leafy canopies remain unscorched.

As the vegetation benefits, so does the wild-
life. Anecdotally, people have reported the
return of many native animals, including emus.
Ecologist Cara Penton says the results of Ward-
deken’s project to monitor species are still being
collated, but cameras set out on the savanna to
track small mammals often capture species her
Indigenous colleagues haven’t seen for years.
Northern quolls—small carnivorous marsupials
classified as endangered—were an exciting find,
she says: “People were really, really pleased to
see the quoll was still here.”

“ N G A N A B B A R R U ! ” Tinnesha Narorrga pulls
the four-wheel drive to a swift stop on the red,
dusty road. The 25-year-old ranger and two other
women slide from the front seat. One grabs the
rifle, and all three disappear into the bush, hot
on the hooves of a small, retreating herd of buf-
falo. The Daluk Rangers are on the hunt.

Warddeken established the Daluk Rangers
(daluk means “female” in the area’s Aborigi-
nal languages) in 2017, and Narorrga’s mother,
Suzannah Nabulwad, was a key player. “I saw
my brother and the other men going out and
thought, We can do that too,” she says. Employ-
ment would give the women independence. She
helped get the program running, then when her
daughter completed high school, she joined too.

The bush goes quiet, as if on pause, waiting
for a gunshot that doesn’t come. As twilight set-
tles in, Narorrga and the other rangers reemerge
from the scrub empty-handed. Nganabbarru are
faster than you’d think.

The Daluk Rangers are just one of Ward-
deken Land Management’s suite of ranger
programs funded by carbon credits. These pro-
grams employ 240 Indigenous men and women
across three ranger bases at the Mamadawerre,

90 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Kabulwarnamyo, and Manmoyi outstations. country, and the history that surrounds it, valu-
Being a ranger is a huge source of pride, espe- able,” Ansell explains. “By being on country and
cially for young women, like Narorrga, who oth- being out there and engaged with it, it keeps it
erwise likely would have to leave their traditional relevant in our modern society.”
lands for employment in cities and towns.
L E G S C RO S S E D, FAC E S U P, eyes wide, a scrum of
Money from carbon credits allows rangers to schoolchildren sits on a bright blue woven mat
undertake a variety of land management activi- under the shade of a rocky outcrop. It’s midmorn-
ties, including culling feral animals, like the buf- ing, and they’ve come by four-wheel drive down
falo that Narorrga was chasing. From July 2020 a dirt track from Kabulwarnamyo to Kundjor-
to June 2021, Warddeken’s rangers removed 2,336 lomdjorlom, where the Warddeken Indigenous
feral animals, including 1,913 buffalo. The rangers Protected Area was dedicated in 2009. In front
also eradicate invasive weeds, monitor wildlife, of them, in a rickety camp chair, is 89-year-old
and protect rock art. Traditional owners make all Mary Kolkiwarra Nadjamerrek, senior tradi-
the decisions on how to manage the land. tional knowledge-holder and the late Lofty
Nadjamerrek’s wife. The rock walls are covered
“With the ranger program, you’re making
that traditional knowledge and connection to

F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E 91



After lighting the bark
on some nearby trees,
Stacey Lee hunts
for snakes in the fires’
glow, while Evelyn
Narorrga, carrying a
flashlight, already has
one wrapped around
her right hand. The
harmless snakes will
be eaten. Aboriginal
people have used fire
to hunt for millennia.

with painted images. It’s one of an estimated Children spear fish
30,000 rock art sites in the protected area. in a creek veiled by
smoke from a strate-
Until recently, although around 50 children gic burn. By controlling
came and went from Kabulwarnamyo each year, wildfires and reducing
the outstation didn’t have a school. Students the amount of smoke
had to travel long distances or live with family in the atmosphere,
in bigger towns far away to get an education. In Aboriginal people
2015 the community decided to use money from are able to sell carbon
carbon credits to build its own school. It estab- credits. The income
lished Nawarddeken Academy, which has since helps pay for the rang-
opened schools in two more outstations. All offer ers’ efforts and other
a bicultural program giving equal weight to programs, such as
Bininj knowledge and the standard curriculum. schools, allowing them
to live in outstations
As the sun climbs in the sky, Kolkiwarra in their homelands.
Nadjamerrek speaks to the students in the Kun-
winjku language about connection to country
and the importance of culture. When she finishes,
she sweeps her arms outward, encouraging the
children to look at the ancient artworks. They
scatter, scaling rock walls and ducking beneath
ledges. This is a history lesson at its best.

“We do the formalized literacy and numeracy
in the classroom, but everything else we try to
take it out bush,” explains Jodi Vallak, senior
teacher at Kabulwarnamyo. She says basing her
lessons on ties to country means the children
are especially enthusiastic about class. “It does
have that powerful narrative that it’s actually
worthwhile learning.”

The importance of the schools is difficult to
understate, Vallak says, as she watches her stu-
dents explore their past. The boost in population
brought about by the rangers triggered the need
for schools, but now the schools are part of the
attraction for people to return to country. Elders
hope this generation will gain both the tradi-
tional knowledge and the education to create
opportunities of their own here. The land needs
their children and grandchildren to care for it.

I N H I S K H A K I U N I F O R M , Terrah Guymala drags a
chair onto the back deck of the Manmoyi ranger
station. A hint of smoke has woven its way through
the paperbarks and screw pines and settled in
the air. In the days after the Deaf Adder Gorge
fire, several more blazes have broken out on this
side of the Indigenous protected area.

In the face of global warming, Guymala knows
his work here is more critical than ever. He says
Aboriginal people see the climate changing
every day. “As a boy, we used to walk around
and see big mobs of animals, and we had lots of
rain. And we used to see everything was in time.

94 N A T I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

But these days, it’s out of time,” he explains. “It’s meaningful employment, family, and education
meant to be green-plum season right now, but are what will keep them here. He’s confident that
it’s out of time. It’s affecting everything—our by returning to country, they can restore what’s
lifestyle, our food season, our water.” been lost. In Bininj hands, he believes, native ani-
mals will come back, dry creeks will refill, the
Guymala shoos a fly orbiting lazily around him seasons will resume their usual patterns. Perhaps
and looks out at the bush. “It’s from people, not even the mighty anbinik will flourish once again.
nature,” he says. “Nature is beautiful, innocent.”
“If we respect our Mother Nature, she will
Climate studies project that by 2050 Australia’s listen to us, and it will come back to normal. We
north can expect an average annual tempera- believe that,” Guymala says. “More talking to
ture increase of up to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, the nature, more singing to the nature. That is
a substantial rise in the number of days over what will help.” j
95 degrees, and longer fire seasons, with 40 per-
cent more days of very high fire danger. Kylie Stevenson is the Darwin–based co-author
of a book about Larrimah, a dying town in the out-
Despite these grim predictions, Guymala is back. Matthew Abbott is a photographer based
hopeful. History and spiritual connection have in Sydney who lived for two years in Arnhem Land.
brought many Aboriginal people back, but

F I G H T I N G F I R E W I T H F I R E 95

The Central African
country of Gabon
is home to the most
forest elephants, about
95,000—two-thirds of
the entire population.
Poaching for ivory
and habitat loss have
reduced their overall
numbers by 80 percent
in the past century.

96