To the editor:
“We need rain” was the repeated theme of smalltalk in every shop I entered. It occurred to me that the overused phrase was odd — no one told me “We need fire,” even though forests need both fire and rain to thrive.
We suppress fires when lightning strikes or campfires burn out of control, but fire exclusion is unhealthy in a forest. Exclusion leads to crowded trees and fuel buildup, which in turn leads to unnatural wildfires — fires of high frequency and severity. These fires burn the treetops and soils underneath trees, scarring the resiliency of the land. To be sure, super-hot flames turn trees to ruins and convert the soil to moonscapes. To prevent abnormal fires “fuel suppression” would be as important to forest management as “fire suppression”.
Prescribed fire, dubbed “Rx treatments”, remedy the risks of devastation by super-intense fires. Gatlinburg, Tennessee, “Gateway to the Smokies,” burned in 2016 because residents didn’t heed the need for fire. Mariposa, California, “Gateway to Yosemite,” burned in 2022, because continual fire suppression had left Mariposa’s forests overstocked with trees, each one of which was a bio-pump that sucked the soil dry, making the trees vulnerable to bark beetles that killed them. Trees died by the hundreds — whole acres of forest were dead — fuel for the furious infernos of flames.
“It can’t happen here,” I’ve been told, “This is Indiana,” as if our wood won’t burn! Yet history tells another tale. Indiana’s biggest wildfire to date, the 1952 Dutch Ridge Fire, burned 5,000 acres in Monroe and Lawrence counties. The US Forest service, through tree ring research, estimated that Indiana’s forests had burned regularly in a prehistoric cycle of approximately five to seven years. The truth be told, fire suppression invites bigger fires. We only postpone the inevitable with fire suppression.
Brown County is a “matchstick community” because of its glorious trees, too numerous to keep from runaway flames. When the climate goes wrong, it’s a small step from tree-scape to char-scape.
The effects to come are comprehensible. Moonscapes yield floodwaters, just as tree-less glades and pavement hardscapes do. Mind you, low-intensity fires burn off excess fuel and balance tree densities, leaving behind the elder trees, standing and green. More importantly, low-intensity fires leave the soil’s seed banks intact. During natural, low intensity wildfires, mice will burrow below the duff, come out again after the flames recede and poop. Their poop shields the much-needed mycorrhizal spores that help to regenerate the land. High-intensity fires are “sterlilizing fire.”
The US Forest Service has undertaken research into biochar (pyro-carbons), a vanishing component of soils in both field and forest. Nutrient-rich biochars hold water for growing trees and wildflowers. Indiana has lost its fire-dependent orchid species that fire suppression has made extinct.
A glimmer of the future is grimmer with unfettered fire suppression. Total fire suppression co-wrecks the forest ecology, when fire is nature’s ecological correction. We cannot bannish fire forever. It’s a sure thing that fire will come, and when it comes, Nashville may be gnashing its teeth in response — unless the overdue need for fire is met with a staggered array of prescription burns.
Bud Hoekstra
Bloomington
