By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The 2026 wildfire season is running about 30% above the 10-year average, with 4,668,497 acres burned and 85 large fires still uncontained. The acres are elevated, but the figure that explains them is 117 million: the federal acreage the government itself rates at very high risk and has not treated.

By the numbers

• The season is ahead of pace. As of July 30, 4,668,497 acres had burned across 43,264 fires, against a 10-year average of 3,585,798 acres and 34,025 fires. That is about 30% more acreage and 27% more fires than a normal year to this date.
• The West is carrying it. Eighty-five large fires remain active, holding 2,814,679 acres, with the Northwest at the highest national preparedness level and 43 uncontained large fires there alone.

What they’re saying

• Washington’s governor pointed at the weather. Bob Ferguson tied the fires to “our drought conditions, unusually high temperatures and high winds all exacerbating our record-setting.” The drought and the wind are real.
• The national picture is more measured. This year’s acreage is above average but well short of the 10-million-acre seasons the country saw in the past decade.

What the media is missing

• The government owns the problem. Federal land accounted for more than half of all acres burned in all but five years between 1991 and 2021.
• The backlog dwarfs the fire. Agencies flagged 63 million acres under the Forest Service and 54 million under Interior as very high risk, then treated roughly 5.6 million acres in a year. At that pace the treatment gap is measured in decades, not seasons.
• The Forest Service treated 35% fewer acres for wildfire risk in 2025, a drop an analysis attributed to workforce reductions and a dry winter.
• Between 70% and 80% of wildfires start on nonfederal land, yet federal acreage takes the majority of the acres burned, because that is where the untended fuel sits.

Follow the money

• Suppression is the expensive half. Federal fire suppression averaged $2.5 billion a year from 2016 to 2020, up from about $728 million in the late 1980s, with the Forest Service carrying more than 80% of the bill.
• Prevention is the bill nobody pays. Thinning and prescribed burns cost money up front and move slowly through environmental review and litigation, so the fuel accumulates and the suppression tab compounds behind it.

Worth watching

The total is still climbing. With the Northwest at peak national preparedness and 43 large fires still uncontained there, the acreage gap over the 10-year average is likely to widen before the season turns.

The weather is real. So is the backlog. Only one of them is a policy choice, and a season 30% above average is a warning about the 117 million untreated acres, not just the sky.

-The Editors

Energy & Manufacturing · Upstream of the Swamp · August 4, 2026

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