July lightning fires renew discussion about fire’s role in Superior National Forest
More than 70,000 acres burned in July wildfires that spread across the Superior National Forest. The fires drew national attention as smoke drifted east toward the Atlantic Coast, prompting cancellations of outdoor activities due to hazardous air quality conditions.
The conditions that contributed to the fires — and the fires themselves — are not unprecedented, according to Lane Johnson, a research coordinator and forester at the Cloquet Forestry Center.
“Going back 20 years, we’ve seen other July lightning fire outbreaks on the Superior National Forest, most notably the 2006 Cavity fire that started around mid-July and burned into late August. That was at the end of the Gunflint Trail, and kind of impacted that area west of Seagull Lake,” Johnson told WTIP. “I don’t think they’re really as unprecedented as maybe some people have heard.”
The Cavity Lake Fire burned approximately 31,800 acres in the Superior National Forest. Johnson said fire was historically common across Minnesota, with approximately 100,000 acres burning each decade before 1910.
“Minnesota’s current fire suppression policy largely originates from a mix of state statutes developed between 1895 and 1925 in response to wildfire catastrophes in 1894, 1910, 1918,” Johnson said. “This process was a very conscious act of land use change, with entire fire-dependent landscapes and communities starved of the fires essential for their function and integrity.”
Johnson said state foresters favored what he described as “indiscriminate protection” of young forests as future timber reserves over maintaining diverse, fire-shaped landscapes and habitats.
“While the technologies we use for fire prevention, detection, and suppression today are quite sophisticated, the philosophy and practice of total fire suppression is antiquated and requires thoughtful modernization,” Johnson said. “With total fire suppression, each wildfire that we extinguish in mild to moderate conditions leaves more fuel for a future wildfire that will burn under more severe conditions and be more difficult to suppress. In our fire-prone landscapes, fire hazard does not diminish over time but grows in annual increments. Each wildfire battle won today increases the odds of us losing the war on wildfire down the road.”
Johnson said fire suppression can deprive fire-dependent landscapes of beneficial fires while also creating complacency in populated areas vulnerable to wildfire. He added that communities may underestimate wildfire risks or fail to take precautions if residents assume fire management agencies will be able to protect their homes.
Johnson pointed to the concept of “fire-adapted communities” as one approach to reducing wildfire risk. Such communities focus not only on fire suppression but also on opportunities to mitigate risk throughout the year. Those efforts can include community fuel-reduction projects, home hardening, Firewise practices and agency-led landscape treatments such as timber harvests and prescribed burns.
WTIP’s Staci Drouillard interviewed Eric Carlson, a fire technician and burn boss who works in the wildfire division for the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa for the Boundary Waters Podcast. Carlson discussed historical research on wildfires and the effects of fire suppression on the landscape.
“There’s research that’s been done on tree ring data, and when a tree is impacted by fire, there’s like a black ring. So there’s a couple of different scientists who went up all throughout the Boundary Waters, took core samples not just of like living trees that showed evidence of fire impacts, but also like kind of like old rotten stumps with some fire data in their tree rings,” Carlson said.
Carlson said the research showed fires occurring every 10 to 30 years across much of the wilderness.
“The fuels were never allowed to build up till there’d be these extreme fuels like we’re having nowadays,” Carlson said.
Carlson pointed to the Nelson Act of 1889 and the displacement of Anishinaabe people from their homelands. He said tree-ring data indicates a subsequent change in the frequency and severity of fires on the landscape.
“The tree ring data shows that there’s no fires for like 200 years, and then when those fires happen, they’re just blowing the tops out of all the trees and totally sterilizing the landscape,” Carlson said. “So instead of having this healthy condition, which was maintained by people who lived there, and having fires every 10 to 30 years. Now we have this very unhealthy forest, which is just loaded with fuel that doesn’t burn except for the most extreme fire weather, and then it sterilizes the landscape. The whole forest is very unhealthy.”
Johnson said fire should be considered a natural part of the region’s landscape, much as communities plan for rain and snow. He also encouraged residents to attend community meetings and provide feedback to public officials about prescribed fire and fuel-reduction projects.
“Those types of projects are difficult to implement without strong community support and input,” Johnson said.
WTIP spoke to Johnson regarding the July Lightning Fires and the future of fire in the Superior National Forest. The audio of that conversation and the Boundary Waters Podcast featuring Eric Carlson, can be found below.
Josh Hinke August 25, 2026
