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Nature Conservancy staff manage a controlled burn at their Sideling Hill Creek Preserve, western Maryland, in 2021. The Nature Conservancy
This story was first published by Yale Environment 360This is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
It’s An apocalyptic futureScene that has become all-too familiar in recent years. The land is transformed into an orange-colored haze by the thick black smoke that rises from the ground. The wind picks up the unpleasant smell of burning grasses and trees, as dead trunks and dry stalks crackle and pop.
By sunset on this cold February day, the flat, low-lying landscape on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has been charred black as far as the eye can see, with a few licks of flames still working their way through small trees and fence posts.
But this is not a climate change-fueled catastrophe. Quite the opposite: It’s an example of what ecologists call “good fire.” And Jeff Kirwan, whose 178-acre property we’re standing on, is thrilled by the flames ripping through his land. By clearing last year’s detritus, the fire will let sunlight hit the ground, stimulating marsh grasses to grow faster in the weeks ahead. Kirwan hopes their roots will store carbon underground and help to build soil to keep the marsh dry. The sea level is rising faster than anywhere else in the Chesapeake Bay Region.
A type of native marsh grass called three square will be encouraged by the fire, which will also encourage muskrats to eat its roots. Native and non-Native peoples have long valued the meat and fur of muskrats in this region.
Kirwan, an Emeritus Professor of Forestry at Virginia Tech, is one among those Native people. He is a member of the Nause Waiwash Band Indians, which is based in Cambridge. He often returns to the shore to set muskrat traps in winter. He also recalls his father setting fire to marshes when he was a child. “He said, ‘This is something we learned from our Indian ancestors that we continue to do today,’” Kirwan recalls.
Kirwan is far fromYou are not the only one looking for more flames. Scientists, land management agencies and conservation organizations, as well as Indigenous groups, are working together to restore fire to marshes such as this one, and to fire-adapted forests, grasslands, and forests throughout the United States. In the eastern U.S., where wildfires burn far less land than in the West, fire’s century-long absence has upended ecosystems. The forest ecosystems that were once dominated by fire-adapted trees such as oaks, hickories and pines are now dominated by species that support much less wildlife. Overcrowded trees that grow in woods without regular fire have reduced the biodiversity of the understory and increased the risk for blazes.
“It’s really hard to express the extent to which our natural areas have been drastically altered by taking away fire,” says Deborah Landau, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy who helped plan the burn on Kirwan’s property.
But fire promoters face tough challenges. Today, very few people are qualified and trained to burn. Everything from weather to government regulations, to public hostility to fire conspires against keeping fire out of the land. A long-held view of fire as unnatural and threatening—amplified by dramatic images of climate change-fueled megafires in the western U.S. and elsewhere—is proving hard to overcome.
Advocates argue that this view is wrong. They believe that prescribed fire is the best way to address a multitude of urgent and growing problems, including biodiversity loss, wildfire risk and climate change, as well as threats to human health and human health. According to ecologists fire has been a creative force for many years, providing food for both humans and wildlife. It has also helped to maintain a balance that allows many species to thrive. “Fire,” says Landau, “is as natural as rain.”
Nearly every square foot of North America was once touched by flames. Some blazes were ignited by lightning strikes. Scientists now believe that most blazes were started by humans. The fire masters were skilled, sophisticated fire-stewards who used it to promote food-bearing plants and clear travel routes, create farming plots, control pests, diseases, and more. From the oak woodlands of California to the undulating prairies of the Midwest to the vast pine savannas of the South — name the ecosystem, it was probably shaped by fire.
As Native people were forced to leave, and forests and other landscapes were integrated into global market, fire became a destructive force that could wipe away valuable resources like timber. The suppression of Native culture also led to fire suppression.
“The Forest Service dismissed [Native peoples’ use of fire],” says Arizona State University fire historian Stephen Pyne. “That really goes back to a very strong, European elite suspicion about fire.”
Although fire suppression and exclusion helped to reduce wildfires, it did not stop them from causing more problems. These problems are now most severe in the western US, where drought stricken forests have turned into densely packed tinderboxes.
The continent’s eastern half is also suffering from a lack fire. This may be in subtler ways, but it is still very serious. Research shows that the eastern U.S. saw fire at least once every three decades. Without fire, valuable ecosystems are at risk. One of these ecosystems is the longleaf savanna. This was once an important habitat for the now-endangered redcockaded woodpecker. It nests only in holes within mature pine trees and supports a wide range of understory plants. To encourage cones to open their seeds and encourage other species to leave the area, trees and plants must be regularly replanted. From pre-European times until the 1970s, the ecosystem of longleaf pins shrank from approximately 90 million acres down to 3.4 million.
Fire in the East is slowly increasing as more land managers—both public agencies and private owners—start to burn again. In Florida and some other Southeastern States, landowners are responsible for burning millions of acres every year. However, the East still receives far fewer fires than it did in the past.
“There are literally millions of acres that need to be burned per year,” says Jesse Wimberley, coordinator for the Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association in North Carolina. “It’s going to be a huge cultural shift.”
Oak-hickory and chestnut forests are a foundation for biodiversity in the eastern U.S. They are well-suited to fire. When such forests don’t burn, less fire-tolerant trees like red maple, beech, and sweetgum often take over. Their flat leaves form damp mats which can suppress flames. And their seeds feed far less wildlife that the fat-and protein-rich acorns and hickorynuts.
It’s not just treesThese are the animals that are most affected by flames. Eighty percent of a forest’s diversity is in its understory, and many species have evolved to grow in open, sunny patches, both in forests and in native grasslands and prairies that stretch through the midsection of the U.S. Wild blueberries, huckleberries, and many other native food-bearing plants grow better after a fire.
The transformation unleashed by fire suppression “is a very serious ecological event,” says Marc Abrams, an ecologist at Pennsylvania State University who brought attention to the issue in a highly cited 2008 paper. “Forests are undergoing a sea change unlike what’s happened for thousands and thousands of years.”
Landau describes it as an ecological crisis. Rare Eastern species such as table mountain pine, whose cones need fire to open, and Canby’s dropwort, a delicate white-flowered wetland plant, could disappear from places that don’t burn, Landau fears. She and others have conducted studies that showed that there are fewer birds and bats in forests that aren’t regularly burned. Perhaps this is because the trees are too dense for flying creatures to navigate.
And yet, it’s not just about biodiversity. Despite the fact that the West has been spared the destruction of the megafires, the East has been able to escape the West’s megafires. However, there are wildfires, as the recent fire in northern Florida demonstrated. Climate models predict more severe droughts that could dry soils and stress trees like maple, which has a shallow root structure that is adapted to wet soil. Ecologists fear that climate change could render Eastern forests — increasingly dominated by densely growing, drought-intolerant trees — far more vulnerable to future wildfires, potentially bringing California-style blazes to places like the Mid-Atlantic. Ecologists believe that prescribed burns could reduce this risk by helping to thin forests and restoring more resilient trees such as oaks and pines.
Before a controlled burn at Maryland’s Plum Creek Preserve in January 2020.
The Nature Conservancy
After a controlled burn at Maryland’s Plum Creek Preserve in January 2020.
The Nature Conservancy
The lack of fire could even be a threat to public health. Recent research suggests that prescribed fire can dramatically lower an area’s population of disease-spreading ticks, including those that carry Lyme disease, which has spread rapidly in the era of fire suppression.
Citing botanist Cecil Frost, who has studied the impact of fire suppression on plant communities, Forest Service ecologist Beth Buchanan puts it this way: “Fire suppression is one of the unrecognized ecological catastrophes of the 20th century…it’s a huge deal.”
It may seem counterintuitive to say that fire, which is known for burning trees, can be good news for plants. But trees like oak and pine don’t just tolerate moderate levels of fire; they thrive on it. Oaks’ tough, rumpled leaves and pines’ terpene-filled needles ignite easily and draw flames across the forest floor. Their thick bark resists ground-hugging flames, which can eat through thin shrubs and grasses, and their seedlings thrive within the sunny clearings that fires create. Many fire-adapted understory plants have deep underground roots that can hide away from flames, absorb nutrients in ash, and send up new shoots once the flames have died down.
Promoting such plants is why Landau and some 20 other Nature Conservancy and Maryland Department of Forestry employees gathered last month about an hour’s drive from Kirwan’s marsh to torch some of their own forests.
On this cold early spring morning, the team hoped to turn a 100-acre pine-oak forest with dense underbrush into a more open forest including hickories, blueberries, and a greater proportion of fire-adapted pines — a mix that grew here before Europeans transformed the landscape. Landau has been amazed by the growth of rare species in areas nearby where they have burned before. The re-emerging diversity “shows we’re doing something right,” she says.
At 9:30 a.m., after team members had donned bright yellow fire-resistant “banana suits,” the burn boss handed out assignments: Some would ignite; others would rake debris to make a fire break; still others would staff fire engines loaded with tanks of water to douse any blaze threatening to escape the perimeter. A number of people started to pour diesel-gasoline mixture from torches at upwind forest edges. The flames quickly reached the woods. Two others then launched a drone laden with small plastic balls containing potassium permanganate, to lighten the forest interior. Every member of the group carried a radio with them, and they relayed weather observations and commands.
Mid-afternoon, it was apparent that the team had lit fire to the land, setting it ablaze exactly where and when they wanted. The mature pines’ lower trunks were singed black, and the ground beneath them was charred and cleared of most of the tangled brush that had been there at the start of the day. Watching the team was like watching skilled artists at work—night and day from the chaotic infernos that usually make headlines.
“When you’re watching a successful controlled burn, it can be really boring,” says Landau. “That can really reduce the fear factor.”
The U.S. Forest Service, created in large part to suppress fires, has begun to acknowledge that this policy was, in many instances, a deadly mistake — and a costly one. The agency has had to spend most of its budget on fighting fires in recent years. The service has increased its prescribed burn program to restore natural balance and eliminate trees that could be fueling massive fires. Weekly announcements about burns in the Appalachians are published in press releases.
That’s a good step, but more is needed, says service ecologist Greg Nowacki. According to his research, no East national forest unit has been burned often enough to reproduce its pre-European fire interval. Many receive less than 10% of their historical fire.
“The Forest Service is not burning nearly as much as it should if you want to restore these oak-pine systems,” Nowacki says.
There are many factors that can prevent more flames from reaching the ground. Fire is controlled in the majority of the United States by a complicated bureaucracy. Their top priority is to prevent loss of property and life, not manage ecosystems. Fires on public land must typically be overseen by qualified burn bosses, who require up to a decade’s worth of training and certifications. Fire can be expensive: Large, complex burns can easily cost thousands of dollars. Landau also notes that other tools for managing ecosystems such as mechanical thinning and herbicide can also be costly and can cause environmental damage.
Weather is another challenge. High winds, dry, hot, or dry air, excess soil moisture, and snow all can cause a planned fire to fail. Several times, while reporting this story I was tempted to go to burns only for it to be cancelled due to an unanticipated weather change.
The Covid-19 epidemic has also caused fire to be severely curtailed. Pandemic restrictions came into effect as the 2020 Eastern fire seasons was just beginning. Researchers who analyzed satellite data for the southeast U.S. discovered that fires had declined by more than 20% between March 2020 and December 2020. This was in contrast to previous years. According to Ben Poulter, a NASA researcher who coauthored the paper, the Covid-driven fire deficit could take years to make up because most land management agencies are already stretched.
Lack of knowledge is another impediment. Few people are qualified to burn in many areas where fire exclusion has been a norm for decades. When Kirwan bought his property in 2001, for example, he didn’t know how to burn it. He has been lobbying the U.S. in recent years. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the nearby Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and the state of Maryland to burn his marsh, as they had done in the past, but “they never seemed to be able to get around to it,” he says.
Kirwan completed a three-day training in 2014 to become a certified burn management. However, he realized that he would still need professional assistance to safely burn his land. “I would be hesitant to ever burn my marsh by myself,” he says. “Fire can easily spread over to people’s houses.”
The breakthrough came when Gabe Cahalan, a Nature Conservancy fire manager, contacted Kirwan in 2020 to learn more about the region’s fire history. That set in motion planning for the late February fire, which encompassed some 1,700 acres covering both state-owned land and Kirwan’s property.
The burn was a complex, all-day affair. Marsh Masters, a tank-like vehicle used by the burn crew, drove through the mucky soil in tanks to tamp and wet grasses to make a fire break. This would ignite the dry marshgrasses. Even with those precautions, things didn’t go entirely as planned. Flames leapt from the marsh into a nearby ghost forest of dead pine trees, which the crew hadn’t planned to burn, forcing the Fish and Wildlife Service to deploy a fire engine to replenish the crew’s water tanks.
Kirwan states that if the marsh grows faster and healthier than before, it will be worth the trouble and expense.
“This marsh is doing a lot of good for a lot of people,” Kirwan says. “When you think about all the ecosystem services a marshland provides, it’s a bargain.”
