Tell your state leaders to support wildlife reintroduction for fire resilience!

As temperatures rise, landscapes across Europe are finding that wildlife reintroduction can help prevent severe wildfires! Thanks to rewilding efforts, the Guadalajara province of Spain is now home to 35 rewilded Przewalski’s horses, as well as populations of European bison and aurochs-like Taurus cattle. All these species are incredibly useful for wildfire resilience, reducing fuel load and creating natural firebreaks as they graze long grasses and break down shrubs and small trees.

In America, there are already several studies and proof-of-concept examples of using animals for fire resilience. In one famous case, a herd of 500 goats were credited with saving the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California in 2019 by eating away the surrounding flammable scrub before a wildfire hit. Wild black-tail and mule-deer populations can also reduce fuel load across California and the American West.

And for most of the rest of the country, a golden opportunity exists to accelerate the comeback of American bison (aka “buffalo”) as a wildfire resilience measure! It’s well-known that bison were once common across America’s Great Plains. But it’s less well-known that until extirpated by overhunting in the 1700s and 1800s, bison were also abundant east of the Mississippi, from New York down to Florida. George Washington hunted bison in what’s now West Virginia!

A Nature Conservancy project has reintroduced a herd of bison to the Kankakee Sands of Indiana, and they’re already creating a more diverse and lower-fuel ecosystem as they recreate the prairie with their grazing.

There’ll be lots of local details specific to ecosystems and landscapes, but the general idea of using browsing and grazing animals to reduce the risk of severe wildfires is one that state leaders and state agencies should support and incentivize. Notably, herds of bison (and many other species) can be deployed as either “wildlife” or “livestock,” whichever is politically and legally easier — they’ll shape the land with their grazing patterns either way!

Tell your state leaders to support wildlife reintroduction for fire resilience!