PROVO, Utah — BYU researchers have put out new research that may come as a surprise to some. While wildfires can be alarming and destructive, preventing them could be worse.
Researchers even went as far as to point the blame at an American icon, Smokey the Bear.
“The Smokey the Bear fire suppression campaign has actually been problematic,” said Sam St. Clair, a BYU plant and wildlife professor. “We should be encouraging more fires in forests that are fire-adapted.”
The university report says that hotter, drier weather in the Western United States is compounding with fuel buildup from fire suppression efforts, leading to more megafires.
According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, all of Utah is under some form of drought, ranging from abnormally dry to exceptional drought. Utah Fire officials also say that in 2025's wildfire season, more than 1,100 fires burned more than 164,000 acres.
St. Clair is the principal investigator of the study and shared the positive impacts of megafires, which are defined by those burning more than 100,000 acres.
To study the impacts, researchers collected three years of data following the 2019 Pole Creek megafire in northern Utah. Researchers showed how the fire "created a mosaic of heavily burned and moderately burned areas in high elevation aspen/fir, mid-elevation maple/oak, and lower elevation pinyon/juniper communities."
Researchers measured tree density, height, and seedling browsing by wildlife and livestock across 34 burned and unburned sites and say that initially, herbivore browsing slowed the growth of some trees. However, by the third year of recovery, researchers claim, all tree species showed positive recovery.
“Deer and elk populations are much higher than they were historically, and now we have livestock, too,” St. Clair said. “We found that when a fire is large enough and burns with mixed severity, the resulting surge of tree regeneration across forest types exceeds what the animals can consume.”
Another point that researchers highlighted was the regeneration of trees from surviving roots and how they respond following a fire. According to the investigators, those species, like aspen and oak, grow faster and denser following fires. That supports the growth of other tree and understory plant species, which creates habitat and forage for wildlife.
“We need to get those fire cycles right,” St. Clair said. “Aspen trees are pioneer species that set the stage for the rest of the forest after fire; they should ideally be burning every 50-70 years.”
BYU researchers didn't go as far as to say that all wildfires should be allowed to burn, though. Instead, they say that allowing fires could be a forest management tool to be used in encouraging forest regeneration.
“While there are tradeoffs with the smoky air, the overall effects of fire on the forest communities appear to be positive,” St. Clair said.
