Your informative article on fire in forests (HCN,
5/26/03: A losing battle) downplayed one perspective that is
crucial for future environmental planning. As a result of fire
suppression over the past century, standing fuel loads in many
Western forests are unprecedented.
Preindustrial
inhabitants lacked the technology to fight lightning fires
successfully, and recent research by ethnohistorians and historical
ecologists has shown that pre-Columbian peoples used wildfire
assiduously to drive game, foster preferred forage for favored
game, keep forest floors clear for easy travel on foot, and reduce
fire hazard to their dwelling places. Their habitual behavior
allowed forests to develop from the outset as comparatively open
woodlands, where frequent groundfires of low intensity keep tree
density low, and the lack of understory and midstory vegetation
prevented most fires from crowning out into the tall
timber.
Simply turning fire into doghair forests, or
letting them burn if ignited naturally, cannot remedy the
situation. Under current conditions, all too many ground fires leap
quickly into the forest crown and consume mature trees over wide
areas. Fire can only serve as a beneficial forest cleanser if some
means is first found to thin out the rank growth of brush and
crowded young trees that prevail over so much ground
today.
The current strategy of many environmental groups
to approve forest thinning only near settlements where risk to
property is high seems wrongheaded. To restore forest health only
to stands of trees already impacted by intense development, while
writing off more distant forested lands with a potential bright
future, seems to me an abdication of responsibility for effective
management. We bred what we face with our own policies, and only we
(not unrestrained nature) can reverse the deleterious effects of
past practices.
William R. Dickinson
Tucson,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline We must cleanse forests.
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