Nebraska - One Fire In March 2026 Broke Annual Record For Area Burned; Ranching Making Grasslands More Vulnerable

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Throughout March, following the second warmest and fourth driest winter for the state on record, western and central Nebraska have been inundated with large wildfires. The Morrill, Cottonwood, Anderson Bridge, and Road 203 wildfires all erupted in central and western Nebraska within a few days of each other. As of March 30, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency estimated that wildfires have burned about 945,381 acres so far this year. Just over three months in, 2026 has already set a record for most documented acres burned by wildfire in the state, breaking the 2012 record, according to the Nebraska State Climate Office.

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Nebraska has about 23 million acres of range and pasture land, roughly half of which is located in the Sandhills, where the Wintz ranch is. The area contains the most intact temperate grassland on the planet, said Dirac Twidwell, a rangeland and fire ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Over the last 150 years, as the state built its infrastructure and its ag-based economy, the culture around fire shifted, Twidwell said. The land is accustomed to both wildfire and prescribed burns by Indigenous groups, going back thousands of years. Fire can promote biodiversity and control invasive plant species like the cedar trees, which fueled at least one of the recent wildfires. While people in some parts of the state continue to conduct prescribed burns, the practice is no longer widespread in Nebraska.

In areas like the Sandhills, the absence of regular fire and how the land is grazed have yielded a more uniform grassland ecosystem rather than what Mitchell Stephenson, rangeland management specialist at the UNL-Extension, calls a “shifting mosaic,” where a variety of plants grow in response to fire and heavy grazing. The buildup of a uniform fuel load, in tandem with this winter’s warm temperatures, low humidity, and high winds, can create ideal conditions for wildfires. “We’re entering a new kind of wildfire era for this generation than what past generations have experienced, and it’s pretty well established on why,” said Twidwell.

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https://grist.org/extreme-weather/in-nebraska-wildfires-are-turning-cattle-ranching-into-a-tricky-business/