The fire ecology story: Severely burned conifer forests are magical places
Nowhere else on Earth can you see fireweed, lupine, and paintbrush carpeting the landscape, and nowhere but in a severely burned conifer forest can you see the combination of morel mushrooms, Bicknell's geraniums, jewel beetles, black-backed woodpeckers, mountain bluebirds, olive-sided flycatchers, and myriad other species that find burned-forest conditions ideal!
Take a look at the video below to see some of the magic for yourself...
Some species have evolved traits that tie them to severely burned forest conditions
Many of these plant and animal species have been associated with burned-forest conditions for such a long time that they have even evolved adaptations to live successfully in, and thereby become relatively restricted to, burned-forest conditions.
The following video shows why plant and animal adaptations provide a window into understanding historically important fire regimes...
Blackened forests are absolute jewels...so, what's the problem?
The problem is that most people don't even know how special blackened forests are because public messaging campaigns are designed to demonize rather than celebrate severe fire; just scroll through the three examples below...
Why are we so hell bent on demonizing fire?"
(1) Safety--most of us believe that forest fires are bad because they threaten human communities.
(2) Special interest groups--these include those who wish to paint forest fires in a bad light because their livelihoods depend on keeping forests green (e.g., timber companies, public agencies that are largely structured around timber harvesting on public lands, and an enormous fire-fighting industrial complex).
So, is there any way to address these concerns while also allowing conifer forests to occasionally burn severely, as most have for millennia?
Absolutely! Below, I outline steps toward achieving a land management philosophy that promotes safety and multiple use while sustaining the ecological integrity of a disturbance-based, conifer forest system...
Step 1. Accept that ECOLOGY is central to public land management
We humans live on a planet that can provide everything we need to sustain ourselves, provided we don’t do things that compromise the ecological integrity of the earth system. Realizing this, public land managers operate under a legal obligation to do no harm. Multiple use of public lands is acceptable if, and only if, the various land uses do not compromise the ecological integrity of the larger system that sustains us all.
The only way managers can know if a land-use practice is detrimental is to have an intimate knowledge of the ecology of the system being managed and to monitor whether there are significant negative ecological effects associated with that practice. Thus, ecology is key to effective land management.
Step 2. Use ecology to understand that all conifer forests are disturbance dependent and that the most important agent of disturbance in conifer forest systems is fire, which varies in average severity among forest types.
Step 3. Use ecology to understand that, even though fire regimes vary, MOST western conifer-dominated forests historically burned severely enough to yield mixed-severity effects.
Step 4. Use ecology to understand that ONLY high-severity fire can stimulate the critical process of forest succession. Don't be misled by messages suggesting that severe fires are "bad," and only low-severity, understory fires are "good."
Step 5. Use this ecological knowledge to develop land management practices that are not only economically viable, but ecologically sound as well. Specifically...
1. Thinning and prescribed burning before fire
Timber harvesting for the purpose of acquiring wood products from public lands is fine when conducted at modest levels, especially near human communities. Timber harvesting that is more widespread than that comes at too great an ecological cost within most western conifer forests because harvesting activity compromises forest integrity both before and after subsequent natural fire disturbance. Most western mixed-conifer forests are well within historical conditions, and are in no need of "restoration" thinning and burning.
Prescribed burning introduces the wrong fire intensity in all but the small minority of forests that historically harbored low-severity, understory fires. No matter where we conduct prescribed burning, it is generally conducted outside the natural burning season, which is not an ecologically sound management strategy—plants and animals have evolved to respond to fire at the right time of year! It also goes without saying that an unhealthy introduction of smoke at times of year when we have always been free of smoke is also a terrible idea.
SOLUTION—abandon the practice in most forest types and achieve timber goals through low-impact, sustainable roadside and WUI harvests. I am happy to say that future harvest plans developed for the forests near me are moving in that direction.
2. Firefighting itself
We may suppress 98% of all fires, but those efforts only serve to keep tiny fires from becoming slightly less small. Research shows that firefighting has little to no effect on reducing the proportion of fires that exceed 100 acres. The fires that we can’t suppress burn 98% of the land that burns in any given year—those acres will burn no matter what we do. Firefighting is, therefore, relatively ineffective, and it constitutes ecologically unsound land management for the plant and animal species that depend on the creation of severely burned conifer forest conditions.
Safety has little to do with fuels in the forest, as Jack Cohen from the USFS Fire Science Lab has shown (see videos below)...
Some argue that we still need to fight fire in the outback because trees need protection. But protection from what…their own reproductive success?
SOLUTION—support structural firefighters by restricting firefighting activity to areas immediately adjacent to the WUI. As glamorous as it may be, there is really no need for firefighters to suppress fires in the middle of nowhere. The whole fire-industrial complex needs to be reined in.
3. Salvage logging after fire
Not a single fire-dependent plant or animal species benefits from removing burnt trees in a forest that has just been restored by severe fire. The data are clear on that (see video below).
Except for safety reasons immediately adjacent to roads and trails and campgrounds, there is no justification for salvaging logging; even safety does not necessitate salvage logging until 5-6 years following fire--it takes that long to see any significant level of blowdown or treefall. Most importantly, there are plenty of green trees available to meet sustainable timber harvesting goals.
Salvage-logging is not the only way to provide economic help to local communities affected by severe fire; there are ecotourism alternatives that could generate significant revenue if they were embraced.
SOLUTION—avoid post-fire timber harvesting designed to salvage burned trees. Do this for the same reason that we avoid cutting old-growth forests; the economic benefits are heavily outweighed by the ecological costs.
This webpage summary was developed by Dick Hutto, who is an Emeritus Professor in biology and wildlife biology at the University of Montana. He taught there from 1977-2014 and focused most of his research on conifer forests that have been restored by severe wildfires.
Once he came to appreciate that most people have no clue about the naturalness and necessity of severe fire, his attention began to shift toward delivering research results through avenues that lie beyond the traditional publication route. These avenues include radio, television, newspaper, magazine, book, and web-based outlets like the one you’re looking at now.
For more information on Hutto's background and experience, here is a link to his personal web page: https://sites.google.com/view/rlhutto/home