Wildfires driven by warm, dry weather in May and August, have burned more than 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of forest in Alaska this summer, almost three times the annual average, state officials said this week. The last wildfire season to consume as much acreage in Alaska was in 1997, said Andy Williams, spokesman for the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center, the group of federal and state agencies that manage wildfires. The unusually large amount of burned forest is not viewed as unduly alarming in the sparsely populated Arctic state, but considered a normal part of the forest cycle.