A few years ago, the Forest Stewards Guild conservation group could buy an insurance policy to conduct controlled burns to cut wildfire risk - or for other ecological purposes - for about $10,000 per year.
"Right now it costs nothing, because I can't get it," said Dave Lasky, a former director of fire management for the group.
Lasky, based in Colorado, said several underwriters had offered to provide a million-dollar policy but at an annual cost of $100,000 - well out of reach for private groups who do much of the burning to cut fire risks in the United States.
"How can you afford a $100,000-a-year premium?" asked Lasky, now a board member of the Ember Alliance, another nonprofit fire management group. These days, insurance "is either outrageous or unavailable," he said.
For centuries if not millenia, people have used controlled fire as a vital tool to curb wildfire risks by preemptively burning dry timber and other fire fodder that could fuel out-of-control blazes.
Around the world, such proactive fire-setting is seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to limit catastrophic fire risk, which is swiftly rising as climate change brings hotter temperatures and harsher droughts.
But in the United States, spiking insurance costs and wary providers now present an existential threat to such efforts, according to officials and groups trying to promote "good fire."
"Without sounding alarmist, it frankly couldn't be direr - at least on the national level," Lasky said.
Analysts say the approaching end of affordable "prescribed burn" insurance coverage is just one example of how, as climate change drives growing losses from disasters such as wildfires, floods and storms, access to insurance protection from them also is weakening.
That is leaving many more families, organizations and governments at growing financial risk, they say.
Reuters