Devastating damage for livestock owners across southwest Idaho is prompting land and fire managers from multiple agencies to declare this year’s fire season the worst in over two decades.
“We lost over 665,466 acres of ground in our dispatch area made up of USDA Forest Service, state and Bureau of Land Management (BLM),” says BLM Boise District Fire Management Officer Christopher Cromwell. “Grazing occurs on almost all of it, so it impacted many people this year.”
The Paddock Fire, near Paddock Reservoir just east of Midvale, was among the hardest-hit areas, consuming nearly 200,000 acres. As the largest BLM-managed fire of the year, it disrupted dozens of grazing allotments, leaving ranchers scrambling to find alternatives for their livestock.
Natalie Cooper, assistant field manager for range and vegetation for the BLM, detailed the fire's impact on grazing operations, noting that 37 allotments, 219 pastures and 28 permittees were affected. Typically, recovery of vegetation takes two growing seasons, but she says the BLM is customizing recovery plans based on the specific conditions of each area.
This fire season, thousands of firefighters from federal, state, private and military organizations nationwide joined forces to support suppression efforts. Photo by Bryce Alexander.
“What we're doing is considering the percentage of pasture burned and input we receive from permittees. Then we'll determine whether a pasture will need to be closed for one growing season or if it would be, in fact, two growing seasons,” Cooper says.
The Paddock Fire’s rapid spread was catastrophic, burning 50,000 acres on its first day, 118,000 by day two, 153,000 by day four and 187,000 by day five. The only fire in the last 15 to 20 years of similar magnitude was the 2015 Soda Fire, a lightning fire which burned nearly 280,000 acres across southwest Idaho and southeast Oregon, scorching 41 grazing allotments.
An article by Idaho Soil and Water Conservation highlighted the Paddock Fire’s toll on ranchers like Steve Sutton, who lives near Paddock Reservoir.
“We were at ground zero,” Sutton said. “We saved our house, but we lost all of our range.”
According to the article, Sutton lost 10,000 to 12,000 acres of fall and winter range near his ranch. With no winter grazing land left, he was considering selling two-thirds of his cattle.
“I’ve spent a whole lifetime building up my cattle herd,” Sutton said. “It’s just really hard to imagine losing all of that. But without someplace to graze my cattle this winter, I’m not sure what else I can do.”
An unusual year
The fire season began unusually early for the region. Boise National Forest Supervisor Brant Petersen notes that by July 18, the national preparedness level had already reached level five, the highest designation, indicating full deployment of firefighting resources. This coincided with an exceptionally hot and dry summer, including a record of 20 days with temperatures exceeding 100ºF – just three days short of the all-time high.
“Our fuel conditions – which we call indices – were as high as they get on the Boise National Forest,” Petersen says. “I've been here since June of 1995 and this was the biggest fire season we've had on the Boise, from a complexity standpoint.”
Wildfires like the Wapiti and Lava fires further demonstrated the season’s severity. The Wapiti Fire burned approximately 129,000 acres, spreading from the Boise National Forest toward Stanley in the Sawtooth National Forest. The Lava Fire consumed nearly 98,000 acres, starting north of Emmett and burning toward Cascade and Indian Valley.
The only vegetation that survived in the Paddock fire zone was near water. Otherwise, it seemed to burn from the valley bottoms to the top of the mountains. Photo by Steve Stuebner.
“The majority of those acres were burned within a one- or two-day period,” Petersen says. “In other words, they started, we engaged them, and extreme weather conditions with really high winds moved in early on. In fact, there were winds upwards of 50 miles per hour recorded on the Lava Fire.”
The severity of the fire season can be attributed to several factors, including a surplus of fine, flashy fuels like grasses, which thrived after several good growing seasons. These fuels, combined with an unusually dry fall, high winds and a series of lightning storms, created the perfect conditions for rapid fire spread.
“We had multiple weather systems come through with 40 to 60 mph winds and little to no precipitation,” Cromwell says. “These conditions made it nearly impossible to control the fires, especially when aviation assets couldn’t operate in such high winds.”
The fire season extended well beyond its usual timeline, with fires active into late October due to an abnormally dry fall. Cromwell highlights the unusual nature of the season, noting a 400-acre fire near Boise on Oct. 30, just before Halloween.
The road ahead
Rehabilitation efforts are already underway. In areas like Paddock, aerial seeding is planned to restore native vegetation and prevent invasive species from taking over. The typical two-year recovery timeline ensures seeds have time to germinate and grow, with the second year fostering stronger establishment.
Despite the challenges, cooperation between agencies and local landowners has been a silver lining. Rural fire departments and Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs) played a critical role in firefighting efforts.
“A lot of the folks that did lose forage and ground and production this year also are out there with fire engines, equipment, tractors and dozers helping us put fires out, and we can't do it without them,” Cromwell emphasizes.
The Paddock wildfire burns toward a herd of cattle, silhouetted by eerie flames behind them. Photo by David Judy.
Petersen highlights the strong partnerships between Idaho state agencies, the BLM, and the USDA Forest Service in tackling these fires. Thousands of firefighters from across the country, representing federal, state, private and military organizations, have supported suppression efforts this fire season.
“This was the first year in a long time that we had a military battalion,” Petersen says. “We had 314th Engineering Battalion help us on the fires. So we've had federal, state, private and the military all working on these fires.”
Idaho wasn’t the only state hit hard with fires this year. Our neighbors to the west, Oregon and Washington, have burned a record number of acres, with Oregon totaling 1.94 million acres across the state.
Petersen adds, “We are experiencing an increase in large fire activity across the West and the Northwest is definitely seeing big, big fire seasons.” In total, the state of Idaho had roughly 1.3 million acres burn.
Petersen notes that each year brings increasingly severe fire seasons, surpassing both the previous and following years in intensity. “That cycle means that the firefighting resources we have every single year have been taxed,” he emphasizes. “The intensity and length of fire season continues to grow, and it taxes all of our resources, not just the firefighters, but it also means a lot of our other important work. We can't do recreation work, minerals work, range work, when everything around us is on fire. So it has a bigger impact on our whole program of work.”
The three largest fires are illustrated on the map. Image courtesy of InciWeb.
