SAN FERNANDO, Calif. — Extreme drought conditions have caused changes in vegetation in the Angeles National Forest.

The drought is also impacting how rangers prevent future fires.

Steven Bear, resource officer for the Gateway Ranger District, has seen it all. He’s navigated the terrain for over 30 years, working on reforestation, vegetation reduction and wildlife management. He was a boy scout in Philadelphia, and when it came time to find a career, he knew he had to be outside.

"I like planting trees and going in and making the forest more resilient and things like that," Bear said.

Since Bear has been in the Angeles National Forest for decades, he knows when conditions are changing. He says the warmer temperatures and the drought have truly impacted the vegetation and even how rangers do their jobs.

Some trees, for instance, now have brown needles. This is because they are stressed from the drought and more susceptible to bugs.

“If we continue to have a drought and those needles are then attacked, the tree will probably die," said Bear.

From an overlook, we can see the devastation from the Station Fire in 2009 — which was the biggest at the time — and the Bobcat Fire from 2020, which became one of the biggest in Los Angeles County history and threatened Mt. Wilson Observatory.

“The drought makes the fire intervals shorter, the fires bigger and the damage that they do much more extensive,” said Bear.

As fire seasons get longer and more dangerous on the West Coast, the U.S. Forest Service has halted the “let it burn” policy to help prevent dangerous fires. But Bear says the Angeles National Forest was never really able to “let it burn” due to the proximity to homes and people.

"It wouldn’t mean much here," he said. "We suppress every fire. Within a day’s time, it would hit somebody’s house. We don’t have that luxury of waiting a couple weeks before it pops out somewhere, where it could do damage to someone’s house."

Bear added that it's important to trim brush and thin trees. Due to the extreme fire threat right now, they can’t use a lot of their usual machines, such as the masticator that could spark a fire. But if they left it as is, it would be dangerous.

“Oh yeah, we would probably lose it in the next fire,” said Bear.

For now, teams will go out by hand to clear the brush and hopefully prevent future fires.