In short, yes it is—and it’s one of the most effective tools we have! It sounds backwards, but deliberately setting small, carefully controlled fires is one of the best ways to prevent the massive, out-of-control wildfires that threaten California homes, lungs, and livelihoods. Here’s how it works and why it matters for your community.
What Is a Controlled Burn?
A controlled burn—also called a prescribed burn or beneficial fire—is a planned, carefully managed fire set by trained crews under safe conditions. The goal is to clear out the dry brush, dead plants, and overgrowth that would otherwise pile up and feed a future megafire.
These prescribed, science-backed burns have many benefits, including:
- Reducing built-up vegetation, which acts as fuel for uncontrollable wildfires.
- Improving tree health and vegetation health, creating more open and diverse forest ecosystems.
- Protecting nearby communities from life-threatening danger, poor air quality, negative economic impacts, and emotional distress in the event of a large-scale wildfire.
- Reintroducing a meaningful cultural practice used by communities native to California, who used fire as a tool for thousands of years to ensure a healthy forest and ecosystem.
By burning fuel off in small, intentional doses, controlled burns starve the next big wildfire of the kindling it needs to explode out of control.
Controlled burning is not a new idea. For thousands of years, California’s indigenous communities used fire as a tool for land management to keep forests healthy and resilient. Restoring beneficial fire is also a way of restoring that knowledge and partnering with the tribes who pioneered it.
Photo credit: steverts from Getty Images
Why Does California Need Controlled Burning?
For more than a century, California engaged in outdated fire suppression policies including aggressive logging of the oldest, most fire-resistant trees in the state. Those practices left forests overcrowded with thin, densely packed trees, low tree diversity, and decades of built-up brush—a recipe for out-of-control wildfires that burn faster and spread quicker.
The effects of climate change have escalated this problem. Hotter temperatures and longer droughts dry out brush even faster, so when a fire starts, it burns hotter, faster, and farther than it would have a generation ago. The result is the kind of catastrophic wildfire season Californians have come to dread—and what used to be a “fire season” in California is now becoming a year-round issue because of climate change.
Controlled burns attack the root of the problem by removing the fuel before the threat becomes unmanageable.
How Controlled Burns Protect People
The clearest benefits of beneficial fire are the ones that affect everyday Californians:
- Cleaner air and healthier lungs. Smaller, planned burns produce far less smoke than a runaway wildfire. Less smoke means fewer asthma attacks, fewer emergency room visits, and safer air for kids, seniors, and people who work outdoors.
- Safer homes and communities. Reducing fuel near towns lowers the odds that a wildfire reaches neighborhoods, displaces families, or destroys homes—and the lower risk can help ease the home insurance pressures squeezing Californians.
A more stable local economy. Fewer destructive fires means fewer evacuations, business closures, and cleanup costs that fall on communities and taxpayers.
Healthier Forests, Stronger Ecosystems
Beyond protecting people, controlled burns help forests thrive. Clearing out overgrowth opens space for a wider mix of trees and plants, creating more diverse and resilient ecosystems—the kind that can better withstand drought, pests, and future fires. This kind of stewardship is also central to California’s goal of conserving 30 percent of its lands and coastal waters by 2030, an effort known as 30×30.
Photo credit: Athena from Pexels
A Win Worth Celebrating: Beneficial Fire Is Now State Law
Here’s some good news. When this blog was first published in 2024, a bill called SB 1101 was making its way through the Legislature. It aimed to cut the red tape that made controlled burns so hard to plan and carry out, and to improve how the state maps and prepares for fire.
That bill is now law. SB 1101, authored by Senator Monique Limón, was signed by Governor Newsom in September 2024 after passing the Legislature with unanimous, bipartisan support.1 It streamlines CAL FIRE’s contracting process for large-scale prescribed fire, expands pre-fire planning, and requires better mapping of fire severity.
This law is proof that when we push for smart climate solutions, we win.
In March 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom also instituted an executive order that directed state agencies to accelerate the use of safe beneficial fire, including prescribed and cultural burning, across the state.
What’s Happening Now: The Future of Controlled Burns
Passing SB 1101 cleared away some of the bureaucratic barriers that made controlled burns difficult. The next challenge is capacity. In short, California simply doesn’t yet have enough trained crews to do beneficial fire at the scale the state needs.
That’s where new 2026 legislation comes in:
- The Beneficial Fire Capacity Act (AB 1891), authored by Assemblymember Damon Connolly, would dedicate a slice of California’s existing climate-investment dollars to train a workforce of people on beneficial fire practices.2 At least a quarter of that funding would go to California tribes and Indigenous-led organizations to support and sustain indigenous land management practices. In plain terms: it pays to train the people who actually do the work of prescribed burns, and it invests first in the communities that historically stewarded this practice.
This bill protects communities and restores ecosystems in California through a common-sense solution: building a trained workforce so that good fire can actually happen at scale.
The movement for beneficial fire practices isn’t just accelerating in the legislature—it’s also a major priority in the executive branch for Governor Newsom. The state launched its first-ever Tribal Stewardship Policy in March 2026, setting a goal of expanding tribal stewardship over at least 7.5 million acres of California’s lands and coastal waters. And as of June 2026, California has fast-tracked more than 400 wildfire-prevention projects, with prescribed fire treatments nearly doubling between 2021 and 2026.
Planning for the Fires That Still Happen
Prevention is the priority, but California also has to be ready for the wildfires, smoke, and extreme heat events that will still occur due to climate change. By 2050, California’s average daily temperature is projected to rise by roughly 5 degrees, bringing longer summers, deadlier heat waves, and bigger fires—with the heaviest burden falling on farmworkers, outdoor workers, children, seniors, and people without stable housing.
California’s communities need to come first. That means controlled burns to prevent the largest wildfires, clean air and extreme heat refuges for communities under duress, and increased community resiliency to climate events.
The Bottom Line: More Fire is the Solution
More fire, used wisely, means fewer catastrophic wildfires and fewer community impacts. Controlled burning clears the fuel that powers megafires, protects our health and the air we breathe, and keeps California communities safer. California has already taken a big step in 2024 by making beneficial fire easier to do. Now it’s time to build the workforce to put it to work.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources
- U.S. EPA, USDA Forest Service, DOI, and NIST, Comparative Assessment of the Impacts of Prescribed Fire Versus Wildfire (2021) — federal assessment finding prescribed-fire smoke and public-health impacts are substantially smaller in scale than wildfire. https://www.globalchange.gov/highlights/comparing-air-quality-and-health-impacts-wildfire-and-prescribed-fire
- U.S. EPA, “Wildfire Smoke: A Growing Public Health Concern” — explains that prescribed-fire smoke is generally shorter in duration and more localized than wildfire smoke, which can travel and affect entire regions. https://www.epa.gov/wildfire-smoke-course/wildfire-smoke-growing-public-health-concern
- American Lung Association, “Air Quality and Health Impacts of Wildfire and Prescribed Fire” — identifies children, seniors, pregnant people, outdoor workers, and those with respiratory or cardiovascular conditions as most vulnerable to wildfire smoke, and supports prescribed fire as a mitigation tool. https://www.lung.org/policy-advocacy/healthy-air-campaign/prescribed-fire
- California Case Study of Wildfires and Prescribed Burns: PM2.5 Emissions, Concentrations, and Implications for Human Health — peer-reviewed modeling finding PM2.5 emissions were roughly halved under prescribed-burn conditions versus wildfire in Northern California. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10976878/
- CAL FIRE / Ready for Wildfire, “Prescribed Fire” — the state fire agency’s explanation of how prescribed burns are planned and why managed smoke is more controllable than wildfire smoke. https://www.readyforwildfire.org/forest-health/prescribed-fires
- Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “Governor Newsom fast-tracks 400 wildfire prevention projects, expands prescribed fire, and unveils draft five-year action plan” (June 5, 2026) — state data showing prescribed-fire treatments have nearly doubled since 2021. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/06/05/governor-newsom-fast-tracks-400-wildfire-prevention-projects-expands-prescribed-fire-and-unveils-draft-five-year-action-plan/
- SB 1101 (Limón), “Fire prevention: prescribed fire: state contracts: maps,” Chapter 778, Statutes of 2024 (signed September 27, 2024). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1101
- AB 1891 (Connolly), the Beneficial Fire Capacity Act (introduced February 2026). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1891
- California Natural Resources Agency, California Extreme Heat Action Plan (2022) — temperature projections through 2050. https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Climate-Resilience/2022-Final-Extreme-Heat-Action-Plan.pdf
- “‘Fire is medicine’: the tribes burning California forests to save them,” The Guardian (November 21, 2019). https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/21/wildfire-prescribed-burns-california-native-americans
Further Reading from EnviroVoters
- How to Manage Smoky Air during Wildfire Season — https://envirovoters.org/wildfire-manage-smoke-air-fire-season-quality-pollution/
- Insurance Affordability in California — https://envirovoters.org/insurance-affordability/
- 30×30: How California Is Doing on Conserving 30% of Its Lands by 2030 — https://envirovoters.org/30×30-how-california-is-doing-on-conserving-30-of-its-lands-by-2030-and-how-you-can-help-the-cause/
- As LA Wildfire Recovery Prompts Insurance Price Hikes, Big Oil Must Pay Its Fair Share — https://envirovoters.org/as-la-wildfire-recovery-prompts-insurance-price-hikes-big-oil-must-pay-its-fair-share/
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