Yes, the West’s wildfire situation can get worse. In fact, it will get worse, probably much worse. Why? Because most landowners are not doing enough to address the two underlying causes of catastrophic wildfire: the exponentially increasing number of trees that crowd national forests and the corresponding and excessive buildup of highly flammable woody debris: tinder dry needles and limbs, fallen trees, and all but dead ponderosa, fir, spruce and juniper pushed to the brink by unsustainable growing conditions, corollary insect and disease infestations and prolonged drought.

This year the wildfire crisis is centered in Arizona and Colorado. Two years ago it was New Mexico and western Montana. In 1987 in was northern California and southern Oregon. In 1988 it was Yellowstone, 1990 Arizona, 1992 Idaho, 1994 Colorado, 1997 Alaska, 1999 California. At this writing (Aug. 22) it is revisiting southern Oregon with a vengeance.

Year after year, the worsening crisis plays itself out in riveting images: retardant bombers flying at treetop level flash across television screens, towns are evacuated, guests flee destination resorts, dot-com billionaires man the roofs of their milliondollar retreats with six-dollar garden hoses, thousands with respiratory and cardiac problems flood emergency rooms, deer and elk roasted within an inch of their lives are mercifully shot, waves of fire undulate in the night sky like northern lights and yellowjacketed firefighters disappear into the smoky haze. Some will come out the other side in body bags. Thus far this year 19 have, including seven killed in accidents while traveling to and from big fires.

Even before the current wildfire season began talk of “another Los Alamos” was widespread among veteran firefighters. The May 2000 fire began as an ill-advised controlled burn set by the National Park Service in the Bandelier National Monument south of Los Alamos. High winds drove flames northward across 47,000 acres forcing evacuation of the entire town. 405 homes were destroyed.

“I am scared to death we are going to lose lives and communities again this summer,” declared John Bedell in an April interview. Mr. Bedell, the retiring supervisor on northern Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, characterized the situation as “the worst I have seen in my 33 years in the Southwest.”

“I see no sign things will improve in the foreseeable future,” Mr. Bedell said of the rapidly deterioriating situation and the Forest Service’s inability to get ahead of it. “On the Apache-Sitgreaves alone we have 400,000 adjacent to community acres that need treatment. And that doesn’t count the acres that are in watersheds or provide critical habitat for plant and animal species or are considered to be prime recreation areas.”

Mr. Bedell knows whereof he speaks. But for the grace of God, Prescott, Arizona would have been lost in a mid-May firestorm that was less than a tenth the size of the Rodeo- Chediski Fire, which drove more than 30,000 from their homes and left more than 400 families homeless. And had this colossus crossed the highway south of Show Low it would have burned across the top of the White Mountains, all the way into New Mexico. Well over a million acres would have been lost.

Just how bad could it get? Consider this. According to Forest Service and Government Accounting Office reports some 73 million national forest acres are on the verge of ecological collapse. But efforts to mount the large-scale long term thinning program scientists have been recommending for years have been repeatedly thwarted by legal, regulatory and management entanglements that Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth recently likened to “the Gordian Knot of ancient Greek mythology. And unlike Alexander the Great, I cannot simply draw my sword and cut it,” he said in June 12 testimony before members of the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.

Just how Congress and the nation’s various federal resource management agencies will [with their conflicting mandates] unravel what Mr. Bosworth termed “the piecemeal imposition of regulations, court decisions and internal agency process requirements” remains to be seen.

Despite its limited success, collaborative forestry—with its emphasis on consensus building and community empowerment— offers reason for hope. So too does the groundswell of public support for thinning as an alternative to catastrophic wildfire. But hope has given way to crisis. One in three acres is over-crowded, overstressed, dead or dying. And every forest scientist we know who is familiar with the West’s fire ecology confirms our worst fears. Unless Congress and the nation move swiftly in a new direction, federal forests in the Interior West will perish in increasingly frequent and ferocious wildfires.