When 95% of wildfires are started by humans — especially in a part of the country like Southern California with 25 million people — stopping wildfires before they start is a lofty goal. But for Nicole Molinari, an ecologist for the Forest Service, a recent mapping effort contains a compelling insight — nearly two thirds of human-caused fires occur along roadsides in the area. The compiled dataset, California Southern Zone Forests & Human Caused Fire Ignition Analysis, maps 26 years of fire starts across the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres, and Cleveland national forests, including 850 miles of national forest roads. Equipped with this data, and with the recent memory of the two fires that devastated parts of Los Angeles last year, federal, state and local land managers are developing strategies to reduce ignitions in this highly flammable, densely populated region.