Prescribed burns require 3.6-7.2 years of NEPA review before ignition, and liability insurance for burning has become nearly unobtainable, so 38 million hectares of Western land remain unburned

Prescribed fire is the single most cost-effective tool for reducing wildfire fuel loads, restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, and preventing catastrophic wildfires. Yet on federal land, it takes an average of 4.7 years from project initiation to actually lighting a prescribed burn, and 7.2 years if an environmental impact statement is required. On private land, the barrier is different but equally paralyzing: liability insurance for prescribed burning has become scarce or unaffordable because insurers have broadly retreated from any policies involving fire. Nearly 38 million hectares of land in the western United States are historically behind on burning — a fire deficit that grows every year these barriers persist. The cost of not burning is paid in catastrophic wildfire. When fuel loads accumulate for decades without low-intensity fire to clear them, the inevitable ignition produces fires so intense they sterilize soil, destroy seed banks, and convert forest to shrubland permanently. The 2025 data shows a 38% drop in Forest Service acres treated compared to the prior four-year average — less than 1.7 million acres treated in the first nine months versus a 3.6 million acre annual average. Each untreated acre is a bet that wildfire will not arrive before the paperwork clears. Communities in the wildland-urban interface pay that bet with their homes, their air quality, and occasionally their lives. The problem persists because of a mismatch between liability frameworks and ecological reality. States vary wildly in their liability standards: in counties with gross negligence standards, landowners burn significantly more than in counties with simple negligence standards, because under simple negligence, any escaped fire — even one managed with full professional competence — can result in ruinous liability. Insurers have responded to rising wildfire damage claims by dropping fire-related policies entirely, creating a doom loop: fewer insured burns means more fuel accumulation means worse wildfires means higher claims means fewer insurers willing to write fire policies.