Western forests three times the size of Yellowstone could be transformed by midcentury

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Hotter and drier conditions are destroying the ability of many Western conifer forests to spring back after wildfires, a new study has found.

The onslaught of destructive fire and climate change risks turning an area of Western forests three times the size of Yellowstone National Park — about 2.2 million acres — into ecosystems where pine, spruce and fir seedlings cannot grow, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But deliberately set, lower-intensity fires offer a way out, researchers noted — and added that this is a method that the U.S. Forest Service had embraced after a long history of fighting all wildfires.