Fire: burning things causes problems. So does not burning things

Vegetarian Times, March, 2005 by Alan Pell Crawford

In the fall of 2003, in the biggest wildfire in California history, 22 people lost their lives, thousands more lost their homes, and hundreds of thousands of acres burned. It was a terrible fire year for the entire country--almost 5 million acres went up in flames. Yet, by recent standards, 2003 wasn't off the charts. In 2002, 7 million acres burned.

Today's fires burn more intensely than did those of past decades, scientists say. But as we all know from the nightly news, these fires, no longer confined to wilderness areas, also tear into residential neighborhoods with horrifying results. When 137,000 acres caught fire in Florida in 1998, 25,000 people near Daytona Beach fled their homes. Three years earlier, eastern Long Island faced 40-foot waves of flame.

Why have wildfires--a threat that once seemed to have disappeared--returned with such fury? To find out, VT interviewed Stephen J. Pyne, author of the new book Tending Fire: Coping with America's Wildland Fires. A professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe, Pyne is no ivory tower intellectual: He spent 15 years as a fire fighter at the Grand Canyon and at Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks.

Q: You write that fire had once "receded from everyday life" but is now "more virulent than ever." Why? What's going on?

A: We've made public lands--supposedly protected places--habitats for fire because of the way we manage them. In our determination to keep them from burning, we've allowed the very things that catch fire--pine needles, twigs, brush--to accumulate. So when lightning strikes or a campfire gets out of control, fire spreads more quickly than it otherwise might.

At the same time, we've begun building housing developments next to woodlands. This complicates matters. We know how to fight fires in woodlands. We know how to fight fires in towns. But these are two different challenges. So when a wildfire in the woods spreads to the suburbs, fire fighters who are trained to work in forests don't necessarily know how to respond. So a fire can roar through one of those housing developments, causing devastation.

Q: Have we always viewed fire this way--with these results?

A: No. Years ago, we used fire routinely in farming. We understood fire better then, so we weren't as terrified by it. We knew it could be used responsibly. Native Americans also once used fire regularly. They burned their fields, which helped limit the accumulation of brush and branches that fuel wildfires. But Native Americans were driven out. Then settlers in the 1870s and 1880s overgrazed the lands, stripping them of the grasses that tend to burn slowly, and replacing them--again--with materials that burn quickly.

By the time protected lands were created, our impulse was to suppress all fires that would naturally occur otherwise. That meant pine needles, twigs, etc., were allowed to build up. Insects, with all the damage they do, were allowed to thrive. In times of drought mid high wind, these "protected" forests become tinderboxes. So when a fire starts, it burns more intensely and spreads more rapidly.

Q: You're suggesting that some amount of fire is good.

A: It is. Fire functions ecologically in a way that nothing else does. Fire performs biological work that only it can do. It sets into motion a natural recycling of plants and animals. Old trees and bushes are cleared away, so the wind and sun can reach the soil. New species can replenish an area.

We almost never think of the good things fire does; we have been conditioned to think only of the damage. We think that fire destroys a log, for instance, which it does. But by destroying the log, it releases everything in the log for other important biological purposes. When a log is turned to ash, phosphorous, calcium and magnesium are released. These chemicals are put into circulation again--in the air, soil or water. Different environmental conditions favor different species of plants. Some plants need lots of light; others don't. Some, such as fireweed, do well in burned-over areas, while others go to seed, waiting for new conditions in which they will do well. The best ecological system is one in which there is continual change, and new species come and go. Periodic fires help make that possible.

Q: So fire can be a good thing. But what's the worst that can happen if we continue in our present course of trying to suppress it?

A: You can't suppress fire. Fire will come--through lightning, if nothing else--and when it does, it will spread more rapidly and burn even more intensely in areas that no fire has claimed recently. As a result, it will do more damage than a "normal" fire would have done.

You're destroying the same wilderness you've set out to protect. Also, unless the brush and pine needles I keep talking about are burned off regularly or otherwise removed, they form a "pavement" of pine needles and twigs that covers up flowers and grasses, which is terrible for the soil beneath. When pine needles break down, they change the chemical composition of the soil, making it more acidic. Most flowers and grasses need soil that is more alkaline, so they won't grow where pine needles build up.