For most of the last century, “wildfire” was a word New Hampshire mostly read about happening somewhere else. The Granite State’s image — green hills, hardwood forests, lakes that hold heat into October — did not lend itself to the idea of fire on the landscape. That image is not exactly wrong. It is just outdated. After the driest summer the state has logged in 130 years, the relationship between New Hampshire and fire is starting to look very different — and the people whose jobs depend on getting that relationship right are saying so out loud.
A wildfire that grew to roughly 22 acres outside Hopkinton on April 23 is the latest example. Brush fires that size used to be unusual. This spring, with soils still parched from last year’s record drought, they are part of a busier-than-normal pattern that began before the snow had fully melted out of the woods.
The Drought Behind The Fires
The drought of 2025 set a benchmark. New Hampshire State Climatologist Mary Stampone has previously told the New Hampshire Bulletin that drought running into late summer and fall has become a trend across the state over the past decade. Annual precipitation in New Hampshire has actually increased — but the rain is no longer falling evenly through the year. Long dry stretches arrive between heavier downpours, and forest soils dry out faster.
Forest Protection Bureau Chief Steven Sherman, whose data going back to 2021 shows wildfire counts ticking up almost every year since, told the Bulletin those “flash drought” conditions can descend quickly and create headaches for firefighters. Without enough years of data to call it a permanent shift, dendrochronologist Chris Guiterman, a Hanover-based climate scientist, was careful with the Bulletin: the prevalence of fire-friendly conditions is increasing, even if a bigger structural change in the fire regime cannot yet be declared.
That is enough to change how the state’s wildland firefighters plan their season. Spring and fall are typically the busy windows. What they saw last summer was different — a fire-friendly window that did not close.
A Forest That Has Forgotten Fire
A counterintuitive piece of the story is that New England’s forests historically did burn — just less dramatically than the West. “I didn’t think there were really any fire dependent ecosystems in the Northeast,” Guiterman told the Bulletin, “but that’s not the case.” His own surprise echoes a broader scientific re-evaluation. Generations of fire suppression have stripped fire out of the system, and the absence is showing up in the species mix. “Around here, when we remove fire from an ecosystem, the ecosystem changes really fast,” Guiterman said.
Fire-adapted species like pitch pine — once a more common feature of the Granite State’s drier soils — have been gradually outcompeted in stands where fire is no longer part of the cycle. As Guiterman put it, “So they’re losing the battle to other species, even though they have this embedded history of hundreds of years.”
What Fuels Management Could Look Like Here
The question that follows naturally is whether New Hampshire should reintroduce fire as a tool — selectively, with planning, on the schedule of foresters rather than the schedule of weather emergencies. “Are we in a time period now where, if we did actually start thinking about fuels management and using fire as a tool,” Guiterman asked, “could that save us in 10, 20, 30 years from a lot of risk and danger of wildfires like we see out West?”
Prescribed fire is established practice in the southeast and is increasingly common across western states. It is a politically and operationally heavy lift in New England, where smoke is unfamiliar to neighborhoods, regulatory frameworks are limited, and the public conversation about controlled burns has barely begun. But the alternative — letting fuel loads keep building inside drought-prone forests — is the scenario fire scientists are now openly calling unacceptable.
What This Means For Property Owners And Towns
For homeowners in the wildland-urban interface — and in New Hampshire, that increasingly means anyone with a wooded backyard — the practical takeaways are familiar to anyone who has read a Cal Fire pamphlet but new in this part of the country: defensible space around structures, careful attention to outdoor burning windows, and awareness of conditions during dry stretches.
The state’s broader policy questions are bigger. Funding for the Forest Protection Bureau, the cadence of red flag warnings, and the legal framework that would govern any expansion of prescribed fire are all sitting in front of the legislature in some form. None of those debates have moved with the urgency the data is starting to demand. (For the full reporting, see the New Hampshire Bulletin.)
The same legislature is already wrestling with climate-driven home insurance pressure and the resilience grant proposal designed to address it, as well as federal rollbacks to the Roadless Rule that could reshape White Mountain forest management. Wildfire is the next file on that desk.
For related coverage, see our reporting on New Hampshire Fire Deaths Drop To 18 In 2025.
For related coverage, see our reporting on Why the White Mountains’ Iconic Trails Are Eroding.
