Wildland fire is as natural and necessary as sunshine or rain to a healthy forest. For as long as there have been forests, there have been fires, and different forest types depend upon differing frequency and severity of fires. Some forest types, such as ponderosa pine, depend upon frequent, low-intensity fires that keep the forest floor clean of debris, encourage the growth of the grasses that many animals eat, and insure that trees have plenty of room to grow strong and fire resistant. Other forest types, such as high-elevation spruce-fir or lodgepole pine forests, have evolved with infrequent fires‹sometimes centuries apart‹that generally occur during droughts, and burn hot enough to replace entire stands of trees.
While such stand-replacing fires can seem destructive to the forest, they actually help recycle nutrients, rejuvenating the land and creating a diversity of habitats for wildlife. For example, the famous Yellowstone fire of 1988 burned nearly 1.4 million acres before snowfall finally extinguished it and was at the time considered a "catastrophe." But by the following spring, the newly enriched soil was adorned with lush carpets of wildflowers and today lodgepole pines again punctuate the landscape. Scientists and land managers now realize that wildfire was inevitable in this lodgepole ecosystem and actually necessary to revitalize this forest.
The problem with wildfire is when it threatens lives and property. Protecting people's homes and communities must be the primary focus of efforts to prevent and fight fires, not the remote forests where fire poses no risk and is necessary and beneficial. Fire science has shown that the two factors most responsible for losses during wildfires are the flammability of the home and the amount of fuel immediately adjacent to the home, with the most important location for fuel work‹such as removing overhanging branches, shrubs and pine needles‹within 40 yards of homes. Fuel reduction measures such as thinning and prescribed burns should thus be focused in the "Community Protection Zone" around communities and homes.
In the backcountry, decades of fire suppression, grazing, and logging have changed forests, causing some fires to burn hotter. Fire suppression has deprived many forest ecosystems of the frequent, low-intensity fires that keep them healthy and able to withstand periodic larger fires. Commercial logging often results in piles of tinder littering the ground after the least flammable part of the tree‹the trunk‹is removed, and branches and pine needles on the newly exposed forest floor are further dried by the sun and wind, creating a highly flammable carpet. The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project and the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, both government sponsored, concluded that commercial logging was a major reason for increased intensity and severity of wildfire; areas that were thinned, clearcut or salvage logged experienced fires that spread faster and were hotter and more severe than in unlogged, unroaded watersheds. In contrast, wilderness and roadless areas, where human disturbance has been minimal, are often some of our most healthy natural forests because these natural disturbance cycles have been allowed to work across the landscape.
To learn more about the role of wildland fire and appropriate fuel reduction measures, go to: 1) "Fire and Fuels: Does Thinning Stop Wildfires?" and 2) "Dead Trees and Healthy Forests: Is Fire Always Bad?"