Fighting fire with fire - forest fire - includes related articles

American Forests, July-August, 1995 by Herbert E. McLean

The prescribed-fire process also presents an intriguing new ecological challenge. As Stephen Pyne pithily suggests in his insightful book, Fire in America, ". . . to remove fire abruptly may be as serious a cultural and ecological event as to introduce it suddenly."

Today we are capable of doing both efficiently.

On a roll

On the other hand, consider the good news:

The Forest Service's 13-state southern region is tops in the nation for intentionally torching its forests. According to Marc Rounsville, prescribed-fire specialist headquartered in Atlanta, "We're burning approximately 550,000 acres a year - more than all the other [Forest Service] regions combined."

The national forests in Mississippi are the best "producers" in the region, with 135,000 acres burned annually.

Rounsville cites "fuel-hazard reduction" (generally meaning understory burning) as the reason for most of the activity, which takes place in a pine forest area where intentional burning has been around for decades. He also quickly ticks off habitat benefits to wild turkeys, quail, whitetail deer, and swamp bears. Fortunately, the humidity in his region quickly degrades ground fuels, increasing their moisture levels and lessening the chance of a big-time "blowout" like you might see in the West.

Hard against the Atlantic on the region's Francis Marion National Forest, District Ranger Glen Stapleton adds, "We tell people that prescribed fire is the single most important forest-management tool we have." He then cites 15,000 to 20,000 acres a year burned on his 120,000-acre coastal-plain district.

Stapleton's forest is still recovering from Hurricane Hugo (a billion board-feet of timber downed in just a few hours in 1989), but the ranger is focused not only on rehab efforts from that disaster but also on what prescribed fire can do for his longleaf pine ecosystem, which includes the endangered red cockaded woodpecker. His news is good.

Some additional prescribed-fire success stories from across the country:

* Kootenai National Forest, Montana: Ron Hvizdak, fire-management officer on the Rexford Ranger District, reports, "We're burning maybe 15,000 to 20,000 acres a year, but this forest burned 50,000 acres naturally before fire suppression." He also reports good chemistry between his fire folks and the community on prescribed burns: help from local volunteer firefighters, field trips by a high-school biology class, and locals who now understand why the process is desirable and accept it.

* Angeles National Forest, California: A prescribed maintenance burn on a firebreak just east of Altadena in the San Gabriel foothills played a major role in slowing the westerly movement of the disastrous Kinneloa fire near Pasadena, one of many that ravaged Southern California in late 1993. The scenario illustrates the benefit of prescribed fire in protecting homes during an urban interface wildfire event, claims fire-management officer Rich Hawkins.

* Boise National Forest, Idaho: The 33,000-acre Star Gulch fire near Idaho City last summer stopped in its tracks when it reached the so-called "Cottonwood natural fuels prescribed fire," ignited by Forest Service crews in the spring of 1994. "It looked like 75 percent of the green forest was still there - everything else was char," reported deputy fire-management officer Terry Teeter after a helicopter recon flight.