A Burning Community

A landowner, in expressing reservations with Prescribed Fire, commented that his community was “just not a burning community.”  He’s right, the overwhelming majority of the acreage surrounding his farms haven’t seen fire since Native Americans used it hundreds of years ago.  In the short time that I’ve known this man, it’s obvious he cares deeply about those around him, and wants to have nothing but a positive impact on their lives.  Fire scares him!  Mainly because of his years as a volunteer firefighter and his worry that something bad could happen to someone else or their property.  Again, he’s right – bad fires, like the ones he has experience with, typically end in destruction and loss.  When high value property is destroyed by fire, that’s one thing.  When someone gets hurt or loses their life because of it, that’s another.  If bad fires were the only fires we had, “just not a burning community” would be easier for me to swallow.  That’s where Good Fire comes in.

Good Fire, as we define it, is a prescribed, ecological disturbance that reduces forest fuels, improves forest aesthetics, and enhances wildlife habitat.  Good Fires can reduce logging slash on a recently harvested site, thereby speeding up decomposition and nutrient availability.  Good fires can consume years upon years worth of accumulated forest debris that if ignited irresponsibly by man or by nature, could burn out of control and end in destruction.  Good fires, in disturbing the natural order of things, “brings mortality to certain organisms” in order to make room and/or food for others.  Over time, the diverse array of plants that come to inhabit these areas that are periodically disturbed by good fire are some of the most aesthetically pleasing wildflowers there are, that serve to significantly benefit pollinator and wildlife communities.

Just how significant are pollinators and pollinator friendly habitat? With roughly 67 % of all flowering plants dependent upon insects for survival up to as much as 75% in certain ecosystems like that of the Longleaf Pine, you tell me! (Campbell et al., 2006).   How do wildflower meadows, who’s diversity depends on good fire, benefit wildlife?  If you’ve ever planted a pollinator garden near your home or just about any type of flowering plants, you know that such habitat brings with it the lifeblood for many reptiles and birds – insects & seeds!  When you practice such stewardship in the forest, in the planting of wildflower and pollinator habitat and managing it with fire, you are increasing plant diversity and putting food on the table for many species that depend on insects and seeds for survival – Song Birds, Bobwhite Quail, Wild Turkey, Squirrels, Lizards, Frogs, you name it.  If it eats insects, it’ll be thankful for your commitment to practice good fire that encourages a smorgasbord of pollinator friendly plants.

Change the Stigma, Change the Perception, Change the Community

Person County, NC is 404 square miles or 258,560 acres in size.  County Ranger, George Brown, stated that approximately 500 +- acres were burned  last year by the North Carolina Forest Service.  Although he didn’t have paperwork on hand to shed light onto burns by private contractors, he was fairly certain that no prescribed burning was carried out by anyone outside of the Forest Service.  If we tack on an additional 500 acres of prescribed fire, just for good measure, less than ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT of Person County saw good fire last year.  So, if Good Fires are as good as we say they are, why are some communities, counties, states, and so on, just not ‘burning communities’?  Bad news travels fast and lingers like bad odors in closed spaces or wildfires in California.

Bad news travels fast.  Good News takes the scenic route. ~ Doug Larsen

The April 1939 issue of American Forests has several articles relating to fire, and even a letter from President Franklin Roosevelt in which he “urges greater public support of forest fire prevention.”  The front page alone is just about enough to tell you the direction the issue is going.  If not the letter from the President, the articles within will certainly do the trick.  After all, if  information comes from someone in a position of power or prominence you should believe it right? With headings like – “Forest Fire – The Red Paradox of Conservation”, “Fire or Forestry” (I really like that one), & “Burning Wildlife”  with a photograph of a deer and coyote trapped by a wildfire, it’s easy to see why certain factions of people, mainly in generations prior to mine, see any type of fire in a bad light.  As a society, they were nurtured to view things through a broken kaleidoscope produced by an ill-informed government.

The United States Forest Service with help from the American Forestry Association and the President himself, had set its heart on eradicating any and all fire from the landscape.  To do so, they believed to “protect it from fire” would be the best thing for our American Forests and the public interest.  Like many still today, Wall Doxey, a representative of the Mississippi Congress in 1929 and author of the above-mentioned “Fire or Forestry – The South’s Great Problem” viewed fire as the enemy of the commercial timber grower.  Based on the condescending verbiage used to relay a conversation with his tenant farmer, Mr. Doxey most likely hadn’t read Herbert Stoddard’s “The Bobwhite Quail”, a book that was published 8 Years prior.  When reading the article, you can most likely infer, as I have, that Mr. Doxey could probably care less about any benefits that good fire might have had on the flora and fauna that called his lands home.  He cared solely about “protecting” young trees and generating revenue from a crop that was in much higher demand than cotton.  It’s fairly safe to guess that Mr. Doxey had no clue how the southern “rough” or the dense shrubby understory he mentioned could skew and even prevent accurate field work within a stand, thus making it less attractive to buyers.  The “rough” that can overtake a southern forest can be nearly impossible to penetrate.  The sampling of individual forest inventory plots in a dense, un-burned stand happens only after considerable work and time with the machete, therefore increasing the same forest management costs some were looking to bypass by excluding fire.  Like so many of his time, I don’t think Doxey realized that a concerted, country-wide effort to keep fire out of the forest would atually be the spark that let bad fire in.

Today, here in North Carolina and the Southeast, we control that famed southern rough with good fire, thereby helping to curtail large conflagrations or bad fires.  With less rough, field work in the management of a forest is safer, easier, more accurate and more economical.  With less fuel, wildfires aren’t that wild and communities are safer.  Ira N. Gabrielson, the Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey in 1939 got one thing right in his article “Burning for Wildlife” – Wildfires can certainly be bad for Wildlife.

What I think he failed to realize was that there is a direct correlation between an increase in good fires and a decrease in bad ones.  And too, as implied in his article, the mindset back then was that by removing fire from the forest we were “protecting the natural habitats, food plants, and breeding grounds, without which birds and wild animals cannot live.”  Today, we burn to “disturb” optimal wildlife habitat into existence.  The natural habitats of many of our most precious American Species actually depend on fire to survive – Species like, Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, Southern Fox Squirrels, Karner Blue Butterflies, & many, many others.  Bob-white Quail and Wild Turkey might not be wholly dependent on fire to survive, but you can rest assured that fire is a part of any landscape where they thrive, as is the case with white-tailed deer and many of our other game species.   At the end of the day, it has only taken +- 80 Years but the perception on good fires is finally changing.

To do our part to amass a community of burners and bring other communities into the fold, we must remain steadfast in our efforts to educate those around us by staying positive and sharing our own stories as keepers of the flame. We must continue to learn, grow, and prepare.  Every certified burner, landowner, forester, biologist, government entity or otherwise that practices prescribed fire will ultimately have close calls, escaped fires, and maybe even loss to some degree.  Accidents can and will happen – Mother Nature can always have one up her sleeve.  The fact is, though, that the benefits of good fires far outweigh any smoke they emit or other temporary issues they might cause.  Hopefully, more and more people will come to understand that as time goes on.

Perhaps W.B. Greeley of the West Coast Lumbermen’s Association had the best title of them of all for his article in the same April 1939 issue of American Forests referenced above.  “Forest Fire – The Red Paradox of Conservation” he called it.  As Greeley put it, “Fire is the enemy of the young forest, of growing timber, just as the boll weevil is the enemy of cotton, just as the corn-borer is the enemy of corn, and as drouth is the enemy of all farm crops.”  Mr. Greeley and certain others of his generation did their part to disseminate or spread the information they were privy to during that time.  Unfortunately, like the wildfires that still plague our nation today, it spreads out of control.  Instead of becoming a community and nation of folks who appreciate fire’s natural place across our American Landscape, we were nurtured to believe otherwise.  I personally believe that Greeley and the other authors and purveyors of the worst of the worst information, whether on fire or otherwise, do so not because they are ignorant or oblivious to other viewpoints or contradictory evidence, but because they have a different, sometimes hidden agenda.  Back then, the agenda was to preserve timber production and minimize management costs to feed a growing nation that would soon be heading into the Second World War.  The fear mongering tactics of those in positions of power back in the early part of the 20th Century did well to ensure that the American Community was not a community of burners that were wise to the benefits of good fire and its natural place across our lands.  Instead, we became a nation afraid of fire.  Even today, many foresters steer clear of recommending prescribed fire or other  tools or “outside of the box” approaches towards forest and wildlife management for fear of their ideas being shot down, frowned upon, or looked at with crazy eyes because it might impact the bottom line or starve the mills of wood.  In many places, the institutionally instilled notion that if you’re not recommending a clear-cut followed by an herbicide treatment and replant of loblolly pine, you’re doing your landowners a disservice.  In such a scenario, fire is fundamentally removed from the landscape for upwards of 15-20 years or, even longer.  At the end of the day, the only paradox or absurd notion as it relates to forests and fire, is that we should curtail voicing our ideas on any method management that leads to more good fire across the landscape.  To become a burning community, we must learn together, burn together, & grow together.

P.S. If you’re interested in old reads on Fire, Forest Management, Wildlife Management, or the like, my friend Dunkin found the 1939 set of American Forests on Ebay for $85, along with copies of The Longleaf Pine and The Bobwhite Quail, both for reasonable amounts.  As you see, I’ve attached screenshots of certain pages of the April 1939 issue.  I’ve added a few more below for your reading pleasure! Enjoy!