Since the beginning of time, fires have burned in forests and rangelands, playing a vital ecological role in keeping the land healthy. Fire reduces dead vegetation, replenishes nutrients in the soil, stimulates new growth and maintains biological diversity.
As civilization moved deeper into the forest and range, fire came to be seen as an enemy that destroyed lives, property, and natural resources. We began a campaign to exclude fire from our environment, and were mostly successful for many decades.
Over time, it became apparent that our success had many unforeseen consequences. Without fire, our forests and rangelands became overcrowded, vulnerable to attacks by insects and disease, and invaded by plants, bushes and trees not adapted to fire. Heavy buildups of dead vegetation accumulated, putting the forests and rangelands at risk, paradoxically, for the very conditions we sought to exclude?unusually large, catastrophic wildfires.
Today, we know that fire is essential to the health of our forests and rangelands. Since conditions in many areas are conducive to large wildfires, and because so many people now live in or near forests and rangelands, we need fires to burn in a more controlled way than is usually possible when they are caused by naturally-occurring events such as lightning strikes. In order to restore fire to its natural role in forests and rangelands, we ignite prescribed fires in the spring and fall when weather conditions allow for slow, low intensity burning.
Forests and rangelands need fire, and they will burn. By igniting prescribed fires, we can maximize the chance that they will burn on our terms with acceptable effects. Or, we can wait until they burn on their own terms, with no control over the effects. The choice is ours.
