2009 Fire Ecology Institute for Educators

A Reflection of Things Discovered and Rediscovered

Fire Ecology Institute provided its participants with many new experiences that make a lot of sense out of old knowledge. All of the participants had prior experiences in wild fires, whether actively or passively. As for me, my experiences have all been as a bystander watching the events as a distant viewer. I had taught a little about wild fires based on conversations that I had had with wild land fire fighter friends. I now can teach with a little deeper understanding and with some better examples of why and how we fight wild fires.

The natural cycle of fires for an ecological area is called its “fire regime”. The fire regime for many ecological areas, especially forests, has been suppressed for many years causing catastrophic wildfires in many regions throughout the United States within the last decade and a half. The preferred method of managing the natural regime is now mitigating the fire hazards of an area by thinning and control burns.

Control burns have been a source of control for wildfires for several centuries. The Native Americans used fire for many reasons. One of the reasons was for hunting. They would set a fir to herd the animals into a certain area where they would be waiting, increasing their likelihood of harvesting food. Another reason was for sustaining the fertility of the soil. No matter the reason, the result was the same, a healthier ecosystem for the natural life of the area.

When these fires were completely suppressed, the ecosystems became overpopulated. As with any population of animals, overpopulation causes a weakened species. We learned that many decades ago, that is why we started having wildlife management laws come into affect. By limiting and encouraging specified amounts of hunting of game animals in certain regions, we have been able to maintain a healthier population of game animals.

We learned this with aquatic ecosystems many decades ago as well, when the farmers were using too much fertilizer on their crops. The excess fertilizer would work its way into the streams, ponds, lakes and oceans. The fertilizer would cause an overgrowth of algae and other plant life, eventually choking out the sunlight from penetrating the water and causing the other organisms to die off in the pond. This process is called eutrophication.

We had two very powerful lessons that we had learned, yet we failed for many years to apply that knowledge to the forest ecosystems. Now that we are starting to see the connection, we are having trouble getting people to understand and accept the need for fire mitigation. Even with the proof that we can provide, people see fire as a damaging agent rather than a much needed ally. We can save many species, including humans, through proper mitigation and controlled burns.

I purposely put off writing this reflection until such a time that I felt was good. I knew that I would be traveling through the mountains the last weekend of June. I traveled through the Hayman Fire area and into the mountains around Leadville. We went on a fishing trip with my parents, my mother-in-law, and some close friends of the family. As usual we talked about the creeping brown areas of the forests in that area.
I told my mother-in-law that it was a natural progression. She asked, “Beetles are a natural progression of a forest?” I said yes, but not normally to this extent. Since we suppressed natural forest fires for so long, we have allowed the trees to grow to an unhealthy state, much the way that we have always limited the number of cows per acre, there is a limit to the number of trees per acre a specific type of forest can maintain healthily. Fire is a natural way of maintaining that number of species.” She looked at me with surprise and I could tell instantly that she had never looked at it in that way before. The almost identical conversation happened with tow others on that trip. My kids and their friends asked several questions later, but my 14 year old is the one that brought to my attention the comparison to aquatic ecosystems. He said that they studied a pond just west of his school for the last two months of school and how it is eutrophied. He taught me.

The Fire Ecology Institute has re-opened my eyes to an area that I had closed off due to non-exposure. During the institute, the speakers brought my attention to the history and future of fire. Once my eyes were opened, I could see the mistakes of our past and the natural progression of education. We, as a species, have a hard time adapting to change. We like to live in our own little world blind to things that do not have a direct affect on us. Once something starts encroaching on our territory we react without proper planning many times. Once we start getting comfortable, we neglect the lessons we have learned and the cycle starts over again. We need to step out of our comfort zones and into the fire, so-to-speak. We have to listen to the things, human, animal, plant and all other factors, around us and use the knowledge that we have to react in a way that is best for all in the long run.