Susan Prichard

Research Scientist, UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

Winthrop, WA

August 27, 2024

Outside of Winthrop, Washington on a Forest Service road traversing the ridge above 8 Mile Creek, a tributary of the Chewuch River, we drive through the dense forest of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir, observing the abrupt transition to bare scorched trees and fireweed gone to seed. The Cub Creek 2 fire burned 80,000 acres in 2021, starting on the Chewuch River and burning over the ridge in front of us and into the Falls Creek drainage.

With us is Dr. Susan Prichard, a research scientist with the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Her research focuses mainly on fuels management and climate-resilient forestry practices in the wake of higher severity wildfires.

“Even though it's tempting to say that all these wildfires are a result of climate change and warmer, drier, longer summers, I would say a huge part of the problem is loss of Indigenous burning which happened well over a hundred years ago through here and active fire suppression,” she tells us as we look across the burned landscape.

The valley used to be stewarded by Methow people, and was burned intentionally every 5 years. These understory fires were conducted primarily through grasses and brush. Susan estimates that when prescribed burning was regularly implemented, severity effects of wildfires were much lower, consistently falling in the range of less than 20% of the vegetation burned. “We’re looking at over 120 years of fire exclusion here,” she concludes.

The wind picks up and we all stand and listen as the snags begin to fall across the valley.

by Gwen Marbet