Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

How many times have you heard the above saying? I know it's been drilled into my head over and over again. Fire is bad!

The title statement is important, as countless fires are caused by human carelessness. However, naturally occurring fires are a necessary and integral part of the forest ecosystem.

The forests within the Bow corridor would burn, if left alone, about every eighty years. This process of recycling is required by many fire-adapted species. In fact some, like the lodgepole pine, rarely reproduce in the absence of fire.

With cones tightly sealed with a hard wax, they usually will not open unless temperatures reach approximately 50°C. Since our record is around 34°C, these cones are going to need a fire to open them up. As a result, all the trees in a lodgepole pine forest often look the same size. In actual fact, they were born (so to speak) on the same day.

These trees have taken their adaptation to fire one step further. As sunlight hits their needles the plant converts this light to chlorophyll which is used as food. Any branches that don't receive enough sunlight promptly die. This ensures that the tree doesn't devote energy to a branch that isn't producing food.

These dead branches have the added effect of being very flammable and thus attract fire. As the area burns, the cones will open and quickly germinate in the carbon rich soil of a burn site. In this way, through death, a new generation of pines will appear.

Another fire adapted group of trees include the poplars and aspens. Closely related, they have taken to cloning to survive fires. If you've ever had a poplar in your yard, you'll be familiar with suckers, or new shoots, that pop up all over your lawn. The poplars send out horizontal roots just below the surface which will periodically send up a new shoot. This makes a single tree look like a whole stand. In autumn, all the suckers of one tree turn at the same time, thus betraying their common root system. When a fire moves through the stand, the trees are killed, or so it appears. The trees may be destroyed but the root system will often survive. Before you know it, suckers start appearing and a new stand begins.

Many forest companies will tell you that they should be allowed to move in and cut over mature forests to prevent future fires. They'll try to convince you that cutting is an effective substitute for regular fires. The only flaw with this logic is that they're talking about harvesting and removing already scarce nutrients from the soil. Fires, on the other hand, recycle those nutrients back into the soil, thus making them available for the next generation. In no way are the two interchangeable!

Fire is both a natural and necessary force in the Rockies. By preventing it, we set ourselves up for the massive Yellowstone type fires as fuel continues to build up over the years.

Natural fires are usually not a devastating occurrence. They allow the forest a fresh start and promote new growth.

The forest does not have a value system. It's adapted over thousands of years; long before man moved into the picture. Fire has always been an integral part of the natural order, and whether or not there happens to be a community nearby does not figure into this order.

I'm not saying these fires shouldn't be controlled. If it was my home in danger, I'd be the first to call in fire crews. I just want to bring across the point that fire in and of itself is not bad. It's just sometimes inconvenient to man.

What about all the other animals. We've all seen the movie "Bambi" and the horrible fire that swept through the quiet forest. What few realized is that this fire was excessively fierce--of a magnitude that would only be expected in an area that hadn't burned for hundreds of years.

Most animals are quick enough to stay ahead of fires. And when the fire burns itself out, there's usually an abundance of exposed seeds. Grouse and squirrels scurry back to take advantage of these easy pickins', and those they miss, will quickly germinate in the carbon rich soils.

Since these soils are very conducive to new growth, the area quickly begins to bloom again. The lodgepole cones will have opened and the aspen will send up new suckers. fireweed and other wildflowers will quickly cover up the blackened earth. Soon new trees and shrubs are replacing the blackened stumps and a whole new generation has begun.

Deer and elk spend much of their time along the margins. This provides the double benefit of forest cover for protection and a healthy food supply as new growth moves into the burn site.

A study in northern Montana found that of the shrubs important to grizzlies, almost all were more prevalent on old burn sites as compared to old growth areas. They found that most shrubs, resprouted from underground stems, much like the aspen sending up new suckers.

They also found that increasing fire suppression since the 1920's has led to the encroachment of conifers into shrubfields. This resulted in less food for the bears and in the long run, less bears.

Banff has recently begun experimenting with controlled burns. This was for a number of reasons, only one of which is the improvement of wildlife habitat.

One of the reasons elk, deer and bear are so popular along the highways is that much of their food has disappeared over the years as fires have been kept at bay. The highways provide some of the only open areas available to them.