New Fires in PNW, More Carbon Projects Getting Smoked – 7/24/2026

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In the Pacific Northwest, numerous new wildfires have been growing since a fast-moving lightning storm moved through the region on the afternoon of July 22nd.

Many of the large fires that started a week earlier have burned much of the fuel that was available to them and gone out, or been extinguished by firefighting.

Despite many new starts west of the Cascade Crest, in both Oregon and Washington, on the morning of 7/24/2026, the only major fires showing heat on overnight satellite heat detections west of the Cascade crest were the Magnum and Castle fires, burning west of Diamond Lake, on the Umpqua National Forest.

The Magnum and Castle Fires are growing on the Diamond Lake District of the Umpqua National Forest
The Akawa Butte Fire expanded slightly to the east from previous mapping, but it had not burned into the 2025 Flat Fire scar. Yellow outline is previous day’s perimeter.
Two new fires, Beachcomb and Bench, have started north of the Akawa Butte Fire, west of Madras.
The Box Springs Fire north of Prineville had significant growth to the south. 

Box Springs is vaporizing trees which were supposed to be storing carbon pollution under California’s Cap and Trade program. You can track where carbon projects are burning up using this website from CarbonPlan. This fire has burned about 80% of the total project area for the ‘Opal Mountain’ carbon storage project. Here is a list of companies who have paid for this project to offset their carbon pollution emissions.

The Ten-Mile Fire is burning NE of Madras, on US Route 97.
The Watson or Shingle Fire are burning south of Highway 26, west of John Day.
The 567 Fire is burning east of Shaniko.
The Cottonwood Fire has burned over ten thousand of acres, joining existing fires in the Hay Creek Complex.
New fires are burning south of Burns, Oregon.
Several new fires burning in the far SE corner of Oregon, near the Owyhee River.
In Washington, on the Colville Reservation, the Kaiser Canyon Complex has grown over 30,000 acres in the past 24 hours, moving toward Omak Lake. 

The Kaiser Canyon Fire is also burning up ‘forest carbon offsets’. The Colville Reservation is home to one of the largest carbon offset projects ever contrived, but has seen multiple major fires over the past decade, which means that the people who paid to sequester their carbon pollution in these dry, fire-prone forests aren’t getting much bang for their carbon-washing buck. However, there is no penalty to the purchaser or seller of the offset when this happens. Tribal forestry programs were a major target of forest carbon hustlers in the later 2000s and early teens. The Yurok, Warm Springs, and Colville tribes have sold some of the largest offset projects in the country. A major offset project on Warm Springs lands had to be retired last year after many wildfires resulted in the land actually losing much more carbon than it was able to store. The Warm Springs and Colville areas which were set aside for carbon banking both had very robust fire histories before the projects were sold. Both Opal Springs and Colville carbon projects were put together by a company called Finite Carbon. Dry forests burning in the interior West should not be a surprise to anybody.

Here is a list of companies who have paid the Colville Tribe to sequester carbon to offset pollution from their businesses.

The costs of purchasing these offsets have been passed on to anybody who uses services from these gas, utility and manufacturing companies. And now the supposed climate benefits of this tax have been turned to ash and CO2. The real winners in the whole process are the consultants who have billed millions of staff hours devising the sketchy math and inventory methods that justify paying someone to let nature run its course and grow vegetation – something that is going to happen whether Chevron pays a forest landowner to do something or not. And the tribes have made a lot of money, too, but that can’t replace the forests that have burnt up.

East of the Kaiser Canyon Fire, the Modrite Fire has not spread significantly. The Kaiser Canyon and Modrite Fires are both burning across tribal lands which were being managed to ‘sequester carbon pollution’ under California’s Cap and Trade program – that CO2 is free to roam the atmosphere, again.
The (new) Little Giant Fire has burned over 10,000 acres in the North Cascades, west of Lake Chelan.
The Hagen Fire east of Pendleton has been actively spreading for over a week and continues to grow steadily.

 

The Powder River Fire east of Baker City has not shown significant new spread.

Burnt Creek Fire north of Enterprise, which has had some growth in the last 20-40 hours.