Untrammeling the Wilderness via Prescribed Fire: Journal Article and Story Map

 

Thanks to The Fire Networks for this link.

Here are 4 key takeaways from our work:

  • The exclusion of fire from wilderness over the last 120 years – including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of Indigenous cultural burning – demonstrates a clear alteration of historical ecological processes, with cascading negative effects that include substantial changes to fire-adapted forest ecosystems, increased risk of uncharacteristically severe wildfires, and greater vulnerability to fire-driven conversion from forest to shrubland, grassland, or other vegetation types that do not resemble long-standing conditions.

  • Intentional burning may be necessary to restore historical fire regimes to certain wilderness landscapes. Such burning also provides opportunities for increased engagement between federal agencies and Tribes seeking to resume practices of cultural burning.

  • Despite calls for the use of prescribed fire in wilderness spanning decades, the implementation of intentional human-ignited fire in wilderness continues to face specific and unique barriers and challenges.

  • However, some wilderness areas have been able to successfully implement prescribed fire. We provide several examples, including the positive effects of this burning.

And check out the journal article and/or the story map .  The story map has great photos.

4 thoughts on “Untrammeling the Wilderness via Prescribed Fire: Journal Article and Story Map”

  1. A huge majority of Sierra Nevada Wilderness Areas are in mostly granitic high elevation zones, where fire is really a non-issue. We can look at Yosemite National Park to see the results of ‘free-range wildfires’ in lower elevation forested areas.

    Sure, it’s very easy to blame the past, when they didn’t really know the science behind today’s policies. It’s a cop-out, though. Sure, if we had a few centuries to eliminate human impacts (impossible) and to “let nature take its course” (after those few centuries), the landscape would be more “natural”. However, those preservationists have no plan to eliminate all human impacts on our current forests. The desire to have a pre-human landscape, in a human-dominated world is kinda crazy. (Yep, that’s the right word, alright.)

    Reply
  2. Yet another Fire as a panacea article. Magically forgets about huge amounts of historical burning by sheepmen/cattlemen to get rid of trees & green grass in spring. Not to mention mining era deforestation in the Greater Basin and other places, and general settler burning.

    Reply
    • So Native Americans burned.. settlers burned.. in the SE, settlers learned their burning practices from the Native Americans. Then some folks wanted to stop intentional burning at least out West.. and here we are. I don’t understand your point.

      Reply
  3. A retired veterinarian and conservationist put a bumper sticker on his truck: “Wilderness – land of no uses”, he didn’t think much of Wilderness. I was a Ranger at the time, and formed a pretty close relationship with the old guy. Of course I knew, or thought I did, what Wilderness really was. I think he taught me more than any “Wilderness for Line” training ever could.

    The old guy was a descendent of the first Indian Agent in the Upper Arkansas River Valley – Utes. He still lived in what was part of the Agency building, having lived in that community all his life. Talk about a living legend….

    Wilderness; I’m still not entirely sure what it is, its many things to different folks. I’ve done my best to uphold the Wilderness fundamentals, but that’s a tough row to hoe! Managed fires in Wilderness tend to not abide by Wilderness boundaries and burn other valuable crap up. We do not have the capacity to currently manage Wilderness fires successfully, or if we do, our managers are generally irresponsible and inept.

    Reply

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