Nebraska Faces Tough Choice: Controlled Burns vs. Wildfires in Record Fire Season

Fire Chief Jason Schneider and his volunteer crew faced an uphill battle as the fast-moving Cottonwood Fire tore through Nebraska’s Loess Canyons in March. The terrain—steep slopes, narrow valleys, and few roads—was exacerbated by pockets of invasive eastern red cedar trees, which can spread embers and even explode when burning.

“You think you would have it put out, and you keep on moving north, and you’d look back south and it’s just going again behind you,” Schneider recalled of the blaze. The situation improved when Schneider’s crew partnered with the South Loup Burn Association, a group of landowners and ranchers who demonstrated how to conduct back burns—controlled, low-intensity fires set ahead of the wildfire to consume flammable material and halt its spread.

About 92 percent of Nebraska’s fire departments listed with the National Fire Department Registry are volunteer-based. A drip torch owned by Austin Klemm was used to help contain the Cottonwood Fire, which burned across Dawson, Lincoln, and Frontier counties.

“It would have burned a lot more if they hadn’t showed up and helped us get it stopped where we did,” Schneider said.

Nebraska’s Unique Wildfire Season

Unlike other regions where wildfire season peaks in summer or late fall, Nebraska’s fire season peaks in spring. The state has experienced its worst wildfire season on record in 2025, with approximately 981,502 acres burned as of May 6, devastating ranchers and communities alike.

The debate over prescribed burns—a centuries-old land management practice—has gained urgency. While the Cottonwood Fire was contained using prescribed burn techniques and past burns, the same month saw the Road 203 wildfire ignite from smoldering remnants of a prescribed burn in the Nebraska National Forest. Fueled by heavy winds, the wildfire consumed nearly 36,000 acres.

The Role of Prescribed Burns in Fire Management

Decades of fire mismanagement and climate change have left landscapes across America primed to burn. In response, fire districts, land managers, and local authorities from California to Florida to New Jersey are increasingly adopting prescribed burns to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

According to the National Association of State Foresters and the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils, states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina burned between 250,001 and 1 million acres in 2020 alone. Meanwhile, California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona burned between 50,001 and 250,000 acres.

In the Great Plains, prescribed burns are now common practice in states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, said Dirac Twidwell, a rangeland and fire ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska, particularly in its eastern and central regions, has also embraced the practice. The Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council reports that 2025 saw the most acres burned by prescribed fire in one year in recent history.