The Wildfire Reader: A Century of Failed Forest Policy

Contrary to Smokey T. Bear, fire is an integral part of healthy ecosystems. The biggest problem with wildland fire is suppression, not burning. After a century of aggressive fire suppression and the myth of Smokey T. Bear, we now see clearly that fire is integral just as soils, sun, wind, water, insects, snow, ice and other natural processes. Put an increment borerer into a tree and you can read the fire history of an ecosystem back up to 3,000 years. Core into soils, meadows and adjacent streams and you can often retrace almost 10,000 years of fire history in the sediments, buried logs and stumps. Learn the behavior of wildland fire in the presence of sun, upslope wind, rain, snow, clouds, humidity, katabtic winds and air temperature and you begin to catch a glimpse of how we have artificially imposed politics, wishful thinking and pseudoscience on wildland ecosystems. Media and politicians speak of "catastrophic" and "charred" ecosystems, but fail to speak of the catastrophe of sprawling urban development imposed upon fire-maintained vegetation and soils. We live in wood houses with wood shake roofs and wonder why our houses burn when the surrounding air super heats. We have made many mistakes with fire. The first mistake is labeling wildland ecosystems uninhabited "wilderness". As Kat Andersen reminds us in "Before The Wilderness," this was never wilderness, people have always lived here AND used fire as a tool to maintain healthy ecosystems for more than 10,000 years. It was the European invasion that labeled fire as "bad" and Disney and Bambi who drove the message home. It is only through the dedicated work of scientists and wildland managers in places like Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone Natl Parks since 1970 that we have begun to understand the basic role of fire. The Leopold Commission in the early 1950s clearly identified the potential for large fires from all the biomass that was and continues to build up. There is still a large residue who label fire as "bad," and don't understand the role of fire in healthy, resilant, durable ecosystems. Air Quality districts now impose their mandates on when to burn. This book is a must for the public, resource managers and urban residents.