Piute Creek, in the eastern Mojave Desert, is just as remote a place today as it was 150 years ago when Indians and soldiers were still facing off against one another. Henry Martyn Robert ...

“It’s a public misconception that the desert doesn’t burn, but we’re seeing right here that that’s not case,” said Sierra Willoughby, a supervisory park ranger at Mojave National Preserve.

Few places host more species than California’s Mojave Desert, a center of biodiversity for lepidoptera, the insect family encompassing roughly 180,000 known moth and butterfly species.

Fires like this have long been rare in Mojave desert ecosystems, with some estimates putting the fire return interval at every couple hundred years. Now, they’re becoming a feature of the ...