Numbers Show Forest Fires Are Way Down Over Decades

Wyoming almost made it through the summer of 2025 without any major wildfires.

ALMOST.

But now there are three major fires in the Bighorn Basin.

California has had some major fires, and Colorado has been battling them all summer long.

So are wildfires getting worse or better? Are we having more or less?

Far less, actually.

Let's look at the numbers.

The video below will help.

Globally, there’s been no increase in drought, and in the US, the EPA acknowledges, the last 50 years have been wetter than average.

Drought and fires were way worse in the 1920s and 1930s.

Then, part of America was called the “Dust Bowl.” The Dust Bowl belongs on the list of the top 3, 4, or 5 environmental catastrophes in world history.

The chart shown in the video above was also shown in the Jackson Hole News & Guide back on August 6 of 2025.

Looking at the graph of the complete data set from NIFC, prior to it being deleted, it is plain to see that from the mid-1920s to mid-1950s, tens of millions more acres burned each year in the United States than have burned in the latest 20 years. The U.S. topped 10 million acres burned in a year only three times in the last 10 years. Between 1926 and 1952, every single year topped 10 million acres. In 14 out of those 26 years, more than 30 million acres burned each year. (Jackson Hole News & Guide)

 

Some years have more forest fires than others.

But nothing that we are now experiencing is as bad as what we experienced back in the 1930s and 1940s.

Who knows what forests were like before humans were able to keep records and manage land?