Les Jones

Science > Controlled Burns

There's been a lot of talk for decades about controlled burns as a forestry management technique. The theory is that small, more frequent fires burn away brush and forest litter so that they don't accumulate. That helps prevent large, infrequent fires which tend to burn hotter and spread farther.

One of my forestry professors in college was a proponent of controlled burns. He noted that Native Americans used fire to clear land for settlements, and to encourage the growth of small trees that were easier to cut with simple tools.

It's also true that many forest types are the result of natural fires. Many tree species can survive small blazes, and will tend to eventually flourish in areas with periodic fires. Some pine species in particular have cones that don't open unless burned by fire. In the Smokies, Table Mountain pine (Pinus pungens) is an example of a serotinous species.

"Controlled burn" sounds good in theory, but in practice can be more of a wish than a plan. That proved to be the case in 2000 when a prescribed burn caused the Los Alamos forest fire. Luckily, no one was killed, but more than 50,000 acres burned, most of the town's residents were evacuated, and over 200 homes were destroyed.

A 1999 controlled burn in California likewise raged out of control.

The latest incident came just last month. Australian forestry officials set a prescribed fire and accidentally killed Australia's biggest tree. Link.

Using fire as a management tool may make sense as science, but it's problematic as policy. With the mistakes made in the past, politicians and bureaucrats are going to be increasingly reluctant to sign off on controlled burns.