New growth already sprouting after massive Pinelands wildfire. Why burning can be good if done right.

Bright green shrubs poke out of half-blackened trees across thousands of acres of Wharton State Forest just over a month after one of the largest wildfires in New Jersey’s history spread across the area.

Bill Zipse, a supervising forester with the New Jersey Forest Service, wades through the sugar sand in the Pine Barrens, off the path and into the brush Tuesday morning.

Zipse, pointing to the pitch pine in front of him, is not surprised by the forest’s resiliency.

Forest fires are not only common, but necessary for regions like this one in the Garden State. Authorities even intentionally start them during prescribed burns. But the latest blaze, dubbed the “Mullica River Fire,” was a record-setter and like all wildfires, extremely unpredictable. While Wharton State Forest is already showing signs of recovering, forest officials say wildfire seasons are growing longer and even more difficult to foresee — causing them to figure out ways to deal with it.

“This is a fire-adapted species. It has a number of adaptations that allow it to respond to a wildfire,” Zipse said, noting the green sprouting from the tree’s sides. “There are relatively few plant species that can do this.”

An illegal campfire started the blaze, which began June 19 grew to 13,500 acres and burned most intensely in Washington, Shamong, Hammonton and Mullica townships, officials told NJ Advance Media.

It was the state’s largest wildfire in 15 years and the 17th largest since records were kept in the early 1900s, authorities said.

Estimates show it cost upwards of $1 million to fight the fire and an investigation remains ongoing to locate the person or group who abandoned the campfire that sparked it over Father’s Day weekend, according to John Cecil, State Parks, Forests, and Historic Sites assistant commissioner.

The Mullica River Campground and Lower Forge Campground, where about 50 people were staying, were evacuated. No one was hurt or killed in the fire, officials noted.

While there’s always a risk to people, animals and property during wildfires, officials said blazes in densely forested areas serve a purpose too.

“The natural ecosystems are accustomed to having periodic fires as part of the normal kind of succession and regeneration,” said Greg Pope, a professor in the Earth and Environmental Science department at Montclair State University.

In New Jersey, an average of 1,500 wildfires damage or destroy about 7,000 acres of forests every year — historically between March and May, New Jersey officials said.

“People think of wildfires as primarily a Western thing, but it happens here in the East too, and we do have these fire-adapted ecosystems,” said Cecil.

The “big caveat,” Pope noted, is the unknown path of wildfires. So while fires themselves can have a positive impact on New Jersey forests, the key component is controlling them.

“If it was its own big ecosystem down there with no people, it could do its own thing,” said Pope. “But people are living in and around it ... what used to be summer cabins 40, 50 years ago are now permanent residences.”

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Prescribed burns and climate change

Without a fire in 50 years, trees would overpopulate swaths of Wharton State Forest, they’d require more water even as summers grew drier and ultimately become unable to produce an important resin that wards off the attack of insect species like bark beetles, Zipse said.

“Wildfires would also become much more intense if they got into these areas because the density would be so high,” Zipse said. “These trees would be really competing for water and for resources, for minerals and nutrients. Also, a lot of the understory vegetation here that supports a number of rare butterfly species, and rare insect species, that would get shaded out and you would see much, much less of that.”

“Some of those rare, unique features that you see in our pinelands would start to disappear,” he added.

That’s where prescribed burns come in.

Gregory McLaughlin, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, and Cecil, the assistant commissioner for State Parks, Forests, and Historic Sites, said Tuesday that the goal was to prescribe burn about 25,000 acres of forest each year in New Jersey. In the past two years, the agency has hit below that mark — more than 17,000 acres in 2021 and more than 16,000 acres in 2022 so far — due to weather conditions and having fewer people on staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said.

McLaughlin noted that like other industries and agencies, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service has faced staff shortages throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters worse, wildfires happen more often and are less predictable in part due to climate change, which has resulted in drier conditions and less overall rain, he said.

Historically, the week of April 25 has been the “busiest” part of the season with the largest wildfires, McLaughlin said.

“But now we’re seeing fires happening in February. We’re seeing fires happen in early March. We’re seeing fires happen in June and July,” he said. “So, the seasonality of fire here and across the country has changed dramatically.”

To fight the recent wildfire, forest officials said they employed a variety of tactics including controlled burns that can create barriers to slow down wildfires and by using “fuel breaks” — strips or blocks of vegetation or other materials used to divert fires or protect certain areas. In the case of Wharton State Forest, one such proactive measure was a 5-mile stretch of road carved into the landscape, known as the Washington Turnpike project.

It prevented the Mullica River Fire from expanding and possibly impacting nearby homes on forest grounds, said Shawn Judy, division forest fire warden.

“We’re definitely concerned about climate change and we’re definitely looking at strategies for the future and doing more things like (the Washington Turnpike project) to address what we’re seeing happen in the seasonality of fires,” McLaughlin said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in an April 2021 report that National Interagency Fire Center data indicates the 10 years with the largest acreage burned through wildfires in the country have all taken place since 2004.

“Multiple studies have found that climate change has already led to an increase in wildfire season length, wildfire frequency, and burned area,” reads an excerpt from the report. “The wildfire season has lengthened in many areas due to factors including warmer springs, longer summer dry seasons, and drier soils and vegetation.”

A spokesman for the DEP’s State Parks, Forests & Historic Sites said the majority of wildfires are human-caused. New Jersey forest fire officials recommended parkgoers ensure they are setting up in legal camping grounds and when building fires reach out to forest services, which can help review best practices are followed.

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Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @stevenrodasnj.