A new report by CSP and the Grand Canyon Trust charts a path for forest and fire management on Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau.

In the summer of 2025, the Dragon Bravo and White Sage fires burned nearly 204,500 acres on the Kaibab Plateau and destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge. What should land managers do next and what happens when the next fire comes?

In a new report co-produced with the Grand Canyon Trust, CSP’s Caitlin Littlefield, Allison Jones, and Brett Dickson synthesized the best available science on the climate, forest, and fire trajectories of the Kaibab Plateau, the forested “sky island” that forms the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Drawing on fire history reconstructions, climate projections, and treatment records from across the Plateau’s managing agencies, the assessment finds a landscape primed for substantial ecological change: an increasing risk of large, high-severity fires over the next one to three decades, short-interval reburns, and fire-catalyzed shifts in vegetation, particularly along the Plateau’s lower and northern margins. In addition, the work was informed by CSP’s previous collaborations on vegetation projections.

From that assessment, the report sets out 12 recommendations for post-fire recovery and long-term stewardship. Together they call for retaining beneficial fire as a core management tool, restoring fire-resistant forest structure while protecting large and old trees, safeguarding wetlands and wet meadows, avoiding broad-scale salvage logging, and grounding decisions in meaningful tribal co-stewardship. As the authors note, the most ecologically sound path forward is neither striving for past conditions that are no longer tenable nor doing nothing.

The full report, Adapting to a New Fire Future: Recommendations for fire management on the Kaibab Plateau and the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, can be found here.