Environmental News, Opinion, and Art                                                         March 25, 2007
A Black Landscape Is A Beautiful Landscape
By Rachel Simons

On August 12, 2002, four others and myself were flown into the middle of Yellowstone National Park's Thoroughfare. The Thoroughfare is one of the most remote areas in the United States, located in the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park. The helicopter set down in a vast expanse of the alpine tundra of Two Oceans Plateau. To not walk in to such an astonishing and wild place was clearly cheating, but we were there on official business. As the Yellowstone Fire Use Module, we were assigned to monitor the Phlox Fire that had started two days previous on August 10, 2002. The Phlox Creek Fire was designated as a fire use fire, which meant that it would be allowed to burn for the purpose of benefiting the ecosystem itself. Our little fire was only a few acres, burning two-thirds of the way up a steep, north-facing slope in the Phlox Creek drainage. It was burning in sub-alpine fir, spruce and white-bark pine trees.

Over the next two days, we documented fire behavior, took weather observations, and collected information in order to predict the spread of the fire. We took measurements of relative humidity, winds, and temperature at 30-minute intervals. We took samples of vegetation-grouse wartleberry, arnica, tree needles and grasses to send back for testing of "live fuel moistures". We filled little canisters with dead pine needles, twigs and chunks of wood. All of these samples would be used to determine what was "available" or capable of sustaining a wildland fire. We mapped the slowly growing fire edge. We could see the effects of the 1988 burn in the Yellowstone River drainage below.

The expansive Yellowstone River valley showed signs of a once-thick forest, now dotted with standing and fallen dead snags. Between these sentinels of the past were four- to six-foot tall young lodgepole pine trees that dotted the open Yellowstone River plain below. The Phlox Creek drainage was a short, steep drainage that flowed into the Yellowstone River. The fires of 1988 had missed this drainage on their way through, and Phlox Creek was still densely packed with sub-alpine fir, spruce and white-bark pine trees. The 1988 fires burned through 35 percent of Yellowstone National Park. Amazingly, however, it left many unburned patches like this one on its way through the park, thus creating an ever-changing mosaic pattern across the landscape.

Two Oceans Plateau was a treeless, high alpine tundra environment: fire would naturally stop at the plateau. Fire would also stop at the old 1988 burn down in the Yellowstone River drainage. Because of these natural fire barriers, we knew that there was little chance this fire would escape to threaten any human-made structures.

For four days, the fire crept around on the ground, occasionally consuming a tree or two, before dropping back to the ground. It wasn't doing much, really. Then, we got winds ranging from 30-50 mph. We spent the fifth day monitoring the fire from the safety of Two Oceans Plateau (named because the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers on either side of the plateau flow to the Atlantic and Pacific, respectively). We watched as the fire ran approximately 3,000 acres in one day.

It struck me that "fire use" was very different from the fire suppression I had done for the past five years. I was reminded of countless fires, when several 20-person crews had worked long, hard days with chainsaws and hand tools to put in an effective fire line on three- to four-acre fires similar to this -- only to have a sub-alpine fir go up in flames and send spot fires across our line. I remembered numerous times, where unexpected weather events sent multiple crews running for safety zones. I remembered sitting at fire camps with hundreds of other firefighters, knowing there was no safe way to attack the fire that day. It became clear to me that, where fire use was possible, it was by far more cost effective, environmentally sound and safer than fire suppression.


A History of Fire in our Landscape

Fire has been a major, widespread disturbance process in North America for several thousand years. Fire scars on giant sequoias reveal 2000 years of frequent ground fires. Fires were ignited by lightning and Native Americans. The diaries of Lewis and Clark repeatedly remarked on smoke from wildfires. One entry from Lewis, made on May 28, 1805, states,

The air was turbid in the forenoon and appeared to be filled with smoke: we supposed it to proceed from the burning of the plains, which we are informed are frequently set on fire by the Snake Indians to compel the antelopes to resort to the woody and mountainous country which they inhabit.

Native Americans intentionally set fires for purposes ranging from maintenance of traditional hunting grounds to maintaining major thoroughfares for travel. An example of this can be seen in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, just 30 miles east of Missoula. Between 1700 and 1875, fires occurred on average once every seven years in this forest. For the past 130 years, however, there have only been a few fires. [1] Tree ring studies and historical accounts both agree; ongoing, persistent, cyclic fire regimes have been drastically altered as a result of settlement, development, disruption of Native American lifestyles and organized fire suppression.


What is Fire Use and Why Should We Use It?

Wildland Fire Use is the management of naturally ignited fires for the benefit of the ecosystems themselves. Fire use allows lightning caused fires to naturally burn without suppression. Fire use fires are never human caused, and because these fires are naturally ignited and allowed to burn, they reintroduce processes that have been in place for a millennium or more. Fire dependent species constitute a majority of the plant communities of the inland northwest. These plant species are rejuvenated by fire use. Dead woody debris is cleared away, and nutrients previously locked away become available for plant use. Disturbances such as fire, insects, and disease have been shown to be a major contributing factor to ecosystem diversity, and therefore, ecosystem health.

Fire use requires extensive planning. Land managers who allow fire use fires examine the potential for soil erosion, stream sedimentation, impacts on flora and fauna, and the safety for the public and firefighters. They establish maximum management areas, or MMA's, as pre-determined boundary lines that trigger suppression actions on the fire. They consider the effects on houses, historical sites and artifacts. Equally heavy to weigh, however, are the long term impacts and possible risks to human and ecological values if a policy of fire exclusion continues.

Nowadays, most land management agencies realize that natural disturbances such as fires, floods and insect infestations play key roles in many ecosystem processes. Many such agencies are presently developing or implementing fire-use plans. Some individual forests have chosen to try to "mimic" natural disturbances with logging, thinning and prescribed fire. These programs are far more expensive and less ecologically effective than fire use. Thinning and prescribed fire programs in the name of fuels reduction are implemented frequently at great expense to the taxpayer and the landscape. It has been shown that fire use, where possible, is far superior to logging, prescribed burning and thinning operations on an economic and ecological level.

The "no action" alternative of continued fire suppression "business-as-usual" is now being recognized as having many undesirable impacts. People are seeing an increase in large, higher intensity wildfires resulting from forest structural changes and ladder fuels. There is an increasing risk to firefighter and public safety as more extreme fires come in contact with more people and houses in the woods. Some areas are now seeing a loss of ecosystem diversity. Fighting wildfires is invariably much more expensive on a cost-per-acre basis. For example, in 2002, The Big Fish Fire Use Fire burned over 17,000 acres of Colorado's Flat Top Wilderness at a cost of $112 per acre. In contrast, the nearby Black Mountain fire was a typical full suppression fire that burned 345 acres at a cost of $3,188 per acre. [3] If long-term fire exclusion risks to life, property and habitat are factored into the fire policy net equation, fire use comes out clearly ahead.

Obstacles to Fire Use: Wildland Urban Interface vs. Black is Beautiful

While fire use is a cost-effective and ecologically sound mechanism for restoring fire to ecosystems, it is not always safe or popular. When structures could be lost, fire use is not considered a reasonable choice. Because of this potential threat to homes, fire use is most frequently practiced in high elevation "rock and ice" and/or wilderness areas. For fire use to be considered a tool at lower elevations, effort and attention must be applied to the ever-growing number of human-made structures being erected in the woods. These houses built in the middle of fire dependent ecosystems are lumped together under the name Wildland Urban Interface.

Thinning, logging, and prescribed fires immediately adjacent to the structures themselves, could open the way for fire use fires in lower elevations. Most of this would, by necessity, occur on private lands--however small parcels of public lands would likely be included in the prescribed burning aspects. When these pre-fire fuel reductions have been implemented around structures it serves double duty: it protects the homeowner against wildfire, and makes fire use a reasonable consideration. The homeowners have also provided for increased firefighter safety by doing their part to defend the space around their home.

There are places where human-made structures are virtually indefensible due to topography and fuel loading (i.e. the amount of stuff present to burn). Summers are increasingly hotter and drier. Meanwhile, more people are building more and more houses in the woods. The economic and ecological costs of defending some of these structures may be entirely too high. Yet firefighters will often stay too long trying to defend these homes. It is time to consider restrictions on new construction in fire-prone forested areas.

At the heart of most resistance to fire use are basic social value structures. Fire has been considered an enemy to be fought for 400 years in this country. Values tend to change slowly. If a community has had no positive experience with fire use or prescribed fire, it may take a brush with wildfire to change their minds. Worse yet, they may have had bad experiences with escaped prescribed fires, or grown distrustful of fire managers due escaped burnout or backfiring operations. Most people simply don't like the black, charred appearance of the landscape.

To these folks, I would like to pitch a "Black is Beautiful" campaign. The following excerpt from an article written in the Missoulian by writer Michael Jamison on August 11, 2005 [www.missoulian.com/articles/2005/08/11/outdoors/od01.txt] could kick it off quite nicely:

"Most folk know about lodgepole pine and their serotinous cones that open only under the heat of wildfire. But beyond the lodgepole, almost all Western landscapes are fire-adapted to some degree, from the soil beneath to the plants and animals above.

Western larch, for instance, hate the shade. They need a fire to create a clearing, and then they have about three to five years to take root before the window of opportunity is shaded over by competitors.

Fire is also critical for red-stemmed ceanothus, a plant whose seeds can lay dormant for centuries while waiting for the flames. It's a favorite of deer and elk and moose, popular big-game species that gobble it down like so much leafy ice cream.

Spirea loves fire, as does fireweed and arnica and dragontail mint and pine grass. Bicknell's geranium, like ceanothus, only appears in burns. Western tanagers, for instance, thrive in low-severity fires. Juncos prefer medium-severity burns. Black-backed woodpeckers, mountain bluebirds and olive-sided flycatchers like their forests well done. And the woodpeckers generally prefer thick-barked trees, ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, trees that withstand all but the hottest fires".

Fire use allows natural ecosystem functions to run their course with minimal interference. "Black" has made this beautiful landscape we have come to love.

Rachel Simons is a 10 year veteran firefighter, forest worker and treeplanter and current WildWest Institute Board Member.
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