Wilder Than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future

"We are experiencing now the fires of the future."

- CAL FIRE Chief, Ken Pimlott

Beyond the normal destructive wildfire is the megafire which covers at least 100,000 acres and burns at a high rate of intensity. Before 1995, less than one megafire per year ignited in the US. From 2005 to 2014, the average has risen to 9.8 megafires a year. Increasing in frequency for the past decade, these fires are baked into our future.

Wilder Than Wild reveals how fuel build-up and climate change have exposed Western woodlands to these megafires and how the greenhouse gases released from the fires contribute to global warming. Filmmaker Kevin White takes viewers on a journey from the Rim Fire of 2013 to the wine country wildfires of 2017. Along the way, the film teaches how the proactive use of prescribed fire can reduce reliance on reactive fire suppression. It also introduces the viewers to a California tribe that is renewing the tradition of culture fire as well as to stakeholder groups working with scientists and resource managers to build consensus on how to restore and manage the lands we love and depend on.

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FILMMAKER'S STATEMENTS: "We made the film not to tell the story of a particular fire, because the news media do that so well. We wanted to put that in the larger context that wildfires are becoming larger and of higher intensity"

-Stephen Most

"We need to rethink how we're living with wildfire. Fire is a natural phenomenon that can have a positive effect on our forest ecosystems -- unless it burns at high severity that exceeds historical norms for the forest. Unfortunately, that's what we see happening more and more often due to a warming climate."

-Kevin White