The Big Story 

A burgeoning blaze dubbed the "Flying Bucket Fire" is raging south of Phoenix, as much of the U.S. West braces for wildfire season.  

© New Mexico National Guard via AP

The fire, which began on Monday, had burned 4,100 acres of unincorporated Maricopa County as of Tuesday night and was 30 percent contained, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.  

While no one had been hurt and no infrastructure had been threatened, officials told local media that they believed the fire was started by people who were target shooting in the region.  

Meanwhile, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management warned that “hot, dry and windy conditions” on Wednesday would be of concern to firefighters. 

The Arizona blaze was occurring amid Wildfire Awareness Month — a label that many states have adopted for the month of May, at which time warm weather starts drying out the wildland vegetation that serves as fuels for fires.  

On Sunday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared May 5 through 11 as Wildfire Preparedness Week, stressing that much of the West is “experiencing more challenging wildfire seasons amid intensifying climate impacts.”  

The governor called upon Californians to make their neighborhoods safer by implementing various preventative measures and embracing a "collective responsibility" to mitigate risk and increase resilience.  

Officials in neighboring Oregon likewise encouraged all residents to create a “defensible space” around their homes, noting that certain households may be eligible for a $250 payment to do so.  

“May is a great time to tackle these projects before the heat of summer arrives,” Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said in a statement.  

The country's top 15 metropolitan areas for wildfire risk are all located in the U.S. West, according to a recent report from the CoreLogic real estate analytics firm.  

Ten hotspots are in California, where Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco and Oxnard ranked highest. Three are in Colorado — Denver, Colorado Springs and Edwards — while one is Austin, Texas, and another is Bend, Ore. 

Although 2023 ended up being "a relatively quiet year in terms of acres burned," the analysis warned against complacency.  

Tom Jeffery, a senior hazard scientist for CoreLogic, acknowledged in a statement that “the number of fires per year is in decline,” but qualified that fact with words of caution.  

“The increasing size and intensity of those fires is creating more property damage than ever before,” Jeffery added. 

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I'm Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

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Climate Invaders 

© The Associated Press/ Charles Krupa

Pacific oyster density has grown up to 32-fold in Southern California waters in the past decade, due to climate-induced surges in summer seawater temperatures, a new study has found.  

That increase is raising concerns about how such warming is accelerating the establishment and dominance of non-indigenous species, according to the study, published on Wednesday in PLoS ONE.  

The good and the bad: The Pacific oyster, which originates in Japan, is also known as the Miyagi oyster or Magallana gigas, per the National Oceanic and Atmsopheric Administration. 

• These animals, which grow up to 10 inches in size, are filter feeders and can clean up to 50 gallons of water every day as they eat.
• In 2019, the U.S. produced 42.3 million pounds of Pacific and Eastern oysters collectively, valued at $221 million.
• While such oysters improve water quality and have a negligible ecological footprint, there is some concern that they could outcompete native oysters.  

An unanticipated ‘feral escape’: The global expansion of the Pacific oyster "may have been facilitated by climate change," according to the study authors.  

• The species was at first "introduced as an idea aquaculture fishery" animal in more temperate waters, under the assumption that it would not undergo a "feral escape" in colder conditions.
• Yet "warming seawater during summer has facilitated" their reproduction.  

Oyster outcomes in balmier bays: To evaluate the oyster's growth and impacts in Southern California, the researchers surveyed conditions at eight sites in Newport Bay and San Diego Bay from 2010 to 2020.  

• They found that population densities increased by between 2.2 and 32.8 times at seven of those locations.
• The growth coincided with surges of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in median monthly seawater temperature during summer months.   

The point of no return: While the authors acknowledged that the precise effects of this non-indigenous species on Southern California estuaries remains unknown, they cited "significant impacts elsewhere" on native oyster species as cause for concern.  

As such, they recommended that resource managers factor these findings into their future decision-making.  

"Abundance is among the most significant factors determining the impact of an invader and once a threshold is crossed, the whole structure of a community can be irreparably altered," they added. 

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