Only We Can Stop Forest Fires
When most of us think of wildfires, Georgia probably isn’t the first state that comes to mind. I personally think of the January 2025 wildfires in Southern California which directly killed 31 people and indirectly killed hundreds more. Those fires destroyed over 18,000 homes and structures and burned some 50,000 acres. Over the course of a few weeks, we saw just how much damage and destruction can happen when our environment is under threat.
Earlier this year, Georgia got a hard reminder about how much can go wrong when we fail to take care of our environment. Thanks to a combination of extreme drought, millions of fallen trees uprooted by Hurricane Helene and very high heat, tens of thousands of acres burned for weeks in South Georgia. At one point, the smoke was so intense that it blew into Metro Atlanta hundreds of miles away.
If we don’t make some changes, disasters like this will go from once in a century to once in a decade – to every year.
In total, more than 50,000 acres burned and hundreds of our brave firefighters took nearly a full month to get the two biggest blazes under control. Fortunately, nobody was injured, but the fires are considered the most destructive in state history, according to Gov. Brian Kemp, with over 120 homes wiped out by the disaster.
If we don’t make some changes, disasters like this will go from once in a century to once in a decade – to every year. Regardless of what President Donald Trump’s sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency might say, human activity is having a real, dramatic effect on nature.
In August 2016, before the EPA was stacked with fossil fuel allies, the agency released a report laying out the impacts of climate change on Georgia. It said over the next few decades, we can expect more extreme floods and drought, harm to livestock, reduced access to water and increased risk of heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses.
That report came out 10 years ago, and what is happening now only proves that if anything, the researchers who compiled it were conservative with their timeline. As our wildfires were raging, the entire state of Georgia was facing severe drought conditions, with about 30% of the state classified as suffering from exceptional drought, the highest level possible.
Obviously, there is only so much we can do to combat a global problem like climate change from a single state. On that front, I would encourage our state leaders to set an example by investing more in renewable technologies and continuing to support our burgeoning solar energy industry.
But while we only have so much control over our atmosphere, there is plenty that we can be doing on the ground. On the state level, one of the quickest solutions would be to add manpower to the Department of Natural Resources. As I mentioned earlier, fallen trees from Hurricane Helene provided a lot of fuel for the wildfires, and if we had cleaned all of it up before the fires broke out 19 months later, we might have been able to get the fires under control more quickly. There’s not much that fires love more than copious dead plant matter.
However, given that over 90% of land in Georgia is in private hands, landowners have a significant role to play here as well. The state has the power to support and incentivize better land management practices such as regular prescribed burning, implementing regenerative agriculture practices (one-quarter of Georgia’s land is farmland, after all), and removing artificial barriers from our waterways to name a few.
While we have taken a few small steps to bolster conservation, including the overwhelmingly successful and popular Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program, which became effective in 2019, now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We need to act to ensure that future generations enjoy all the benefits of our natural world, from productive farmland to drinking water and clean air.
The wildfires we experienced this year were just a warning, and it is incumbent upon our leaders to listen to it. They were not simply the result of forces or conditions beyond our control but also a direct consequence of how we practice conservation – or how we don’t. We demand that nature provide us with all our fundamental needs and we cannot keep pretending like we don’t have a responsibility to give a little more back.
I cannot imagine Georgia without its lush forests, generational farms, golden coastline, soaring mountains or precious animals. Both our legacy and prosperity are inexorably intertwined with nature.
When our lands burn, we burn with them. Our leaders are holding the firehose. It’s time to turn it on. 
Tharon Johnson is founder and CEO of Paramount Consulting Group.
