Utah sets new record for woodland area lost to wildfires by a wide margin, U. researchers say

SALT LAKE CITY — The Wildmouth 2 Fire burning in Millard County suddenly surged to over 84,000 acres over the past week, quickly putting the 2026 destructive fire year closer to an unwanted record.

Over 474,000 acres have already burned this year — now either the second or third most, depending on two different numbers that have been published over the past decade for 2018. State land managers previously reported that nearly 486,000 acres burned in 2018, but now list that year as burning 438,983 acres.

Given the conditions, this year's total may vault past the higher number this week either way, making its place in the record books more definitive. The record remains 629,212 acres burned, which happened in 2007, although modern fire tracking only dates back a few decades.

However, what makes this year more surprising is what has burned, putting the 2026 fire year in a category of its own, researchers at the University of Utah School of Environment, Society and Sustainability say.

Nearly 290,000 acres of woodland and forested land combined have already burned this year, which is more than in any other year on record, according to preliminary research that the university released on Wednesday.

It surged past the previous record of 235,585 acres set in 2018, a massive jump in a trend that has slowly become worse over the past few decades, said Phil Dennison, a University of Utah professor who specializes in wildfire-related impacts, and who led the research.

"We've entered this period where Utah's forests and woodlands are burning much more frequently, (and) they're burning much larger areas," he said. "This is a very concerning trend that we're seeing because it's something that we didn't see in past years in Utah."

This year's total surge comes as Utah has experienced more massive fires than in recent history. The Cottonwood and Babylon fires, combined, burned over 204,000 acres in southern Utah between June and July, which is more land than what burned in the state last year.

These two also account for the two highest acreage counts in forest and woodland lost over at least 1986.

Forests are areas with at least 10% cover with taller tree species, like aspens, pines, spruces or furs on state, federal or private land. Woodland areas have smaller tree species like junipers, pinyon pines and gamble oaks in similar land types. The data was collected by reviewing fire perimeters and vegetation type maps that the U.S. Forest Service updates every year.

Combined, the Cottonwood and Babylon fires burned 172,260 acres of forest and woodland spaces.

The Cherry and Iron fires essentially merged within the same period to burn 76,194 total acres near Eureka, Juab County, but neither burned quite as much as forest or woodland areas.

Monsoonal activity helped slowly put out these fires, but after a relative lull in fire activity toward the end of the middle of July, the hot, dry and windy conditions returned to start August, fueling the Wildmouth 2 Fire's rapid growth. It has already burned over 60,000 acres of forest and woodland area, jumping to the sixth-highest on record and counting.

While more than 750 wildfires have been reported so far this year, these five fires currently account for over three-fourths of the state's acreage burned.

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