The Latest Breaking News on Wildfires

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Admirers of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains are familiar with the swaths of blackened trees flanking its sprawling green forest ranges. A new University of California, Berkeley study quantifies that devastation, finding nearly a third of southern Sierra conifer forests have died in the last decade.

Failure to cut carbon emissions means ‘rapid transformation of societies’ is only option to limit impacts, report says

The top 10 places in the U.S. with the worst air quality today are all in Washington or Oregon as fires rage in the states.

Wildfires are a major source of air pollution. They are also predicted to worsen as climate change progresses.

LOS ANGELES — Conservationists have long warned that Southern California mountain lions could vanish within decades due to inbreeding and loss of habitat. Now, biologists have identified another threat that could hasten their demise — extreme wildfires.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s record-setting wildfires of 2020 destroyed 4.2 million acres of forest — and erased years of progress the state made on battling climate change.

In the arid American West, wildfires now define summer. Recent years have seen some of the worst wildfires in recorded history. Climate change, the loss of Indigenous burning practices and a century of fire suppression are increasing the risk of larger, hotter and more frequent wildfires.

Wildfires would rank as the 2nd-biggest source of CO2 emissions statewide in 2020.

As wildfires continue to burn in parts of the United States, state public health officials and experts are increasingly concerned about residents’ chronic exposure to toxin-filled smoke.