Words of wisdom.
Wrong. Let’s clear a few things up:
First, the Forest Service was originally created to manage forests as crops, which is why the Service is a program of the USDA. It oversaw the selling of timber as a product. Of course, that’s not necessarily bad in and of itself assuming it’s done properly, however…
If forestlands are your crop, and you make money on your crop, then you want as much crop as possible. So what ensued was a century-long campaign by the Forest Service about how bad fires are, and how only YOU can prevent them, and FIRE BAD, etc.
But then ecologists started to realize that ecosystems (speaking specifically about North America) historically underwent regular forest fires, and that these fires helped enrich biotopes and encouraged healthy ecosystems. When Yellowstone National Park burned in 1988, while the public was horrified, ecologists threw their hands up and cheered because they saw an overgrown tinderbox that was reaching an end, in many ways, of its energy inputs.
Even though federal lands (via the Forest Service) are still parceled out and sold for harvest, the Forest Service also oversees the the management of National Parks and their conservation. However, they now realize that it’s important for wildlands to burn in regular cycles…but they’ve spent 100 years preventing that and encouraging the national public to prevent that, so now every time there IS a wildfire, its’ more intense and extreme than it could have been had regular natural burning been allowed. So they find themselves in this tough spot, because each time there is a wildfire they secretly know it needs to burn – and oftentimes they quietly allow it to as much as possible – but they can’t say this to the public because they have to keep up their PR/marketing of telling people “fire is bad” lest they be attacked with shovels and pitchforks.
So yes, currently, if a forest has been allowed to become extremely overgrown and is overly dense with fuel. that’s not a good situation. But if we’re going to be honest, we need to realize that fires need to burn through these areas to ‘reset’ things back to relatively healthy ecological and wildfire levels. Of course, you often have houses and structures scattered throughout these places, many of which aren’t built in a proper or responsible way as to make it through a ‘standard’ wildfire, but that’s a whole other rant…
Trufax. Fire is also important in preserving vanishing ecosystems like the American Prairie. See, when grassfires were suppressed and large grazers like buffalo were exterminated, where land isn’t used by crops it often becomes choked with (often non native) trees that grow out of control. Trees aren’t bad perse, but they do destroy the proper environment for prairie birds and plants to live in. Grassland is important too.
Therefore, to suppress the creeping spread of trees, often times a controlled burn is done. It kills off creeping saplings, leaves behind tough, hardy older trees like native oak (which is adapted to deal with fire) and provides a good fertilizing layer of ash that helps the prairie grasses grow back. And they do- VERY quickly. Last summer the park I visit often had a controlled burn, which they do every four years or so. I visited that park once a week during the summer. It took less than a week for the burned areas to be bright green with new life again. I even spotted a few rare and endangered plants, like the wood lily, growing in the burnout area.
Still, though, Smokey the bear has something right: You shouldn’t go carelessly setting fires yourself. Put shit out and pay attention to the fire danger warnings.
Fire is also essential to pitcher plant bogs, which are home to many rare species of plants and animals. Such rare plants require intense sunlight in order to grow properly. Fire also helps restore water tables by caus8ng invasive trees, like red maples, to dump their water supply back into the ground.
Fire yo, it’s important.
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