“A growing movement of scientists, land management agencies, conservation organizations, and indigenous groups is working to return fire to fire-adapted ecosystems, including forests and grasslands, throughout the U.S.,” writes Gabriel Popkin in FERN’s latest story, published with Yale Environment 360.
“For many ecosystems in the eastern United States, fire’s century-long absence has been catastrophic. Forests once dominated by fire-adapted trees like oaks, hickories, and pines have been taken over by species that support far less wildlife. And overcrowded trees growing in woods without regular fire have stifled understory biodiversity, while raising the risk of damaging blazes.
“Fire, these advocates argue, is a critical solution to address a panoply of stark and growing challenges: biodiversity loss, wildfire risk, climate change, human health, and more. Fire promoters, however, face stiff challenges … A long-held view of fire as unnatural and destructive—amplified by dramatic images of climate change-fueled megafires in the western U.S. and elsewhere—is proving hard to shake.
“Advocates say that view is mistaken. Fire, they say, is a creative force that has long produced food for humans and wildlife and helped create and maintain biodiversity in ecosystems around the world, by orchestrating an ecological balance allowing multitudes of species to thrive.”