While wildfire is a natural — and necessary — part of a healthy ecosystem, the more severe mega-fires of recent years are becoming increasingly common and destructive, fueled in part by climate change, as well as by fire suppression…
— from an article by Kylie Mohr in High Country News, November 19, 2021.
Deer have been browsing in our front and back yards this year, all during the late summer and fall. I’m sure many Pagosa residents are having the same experience.
Based on the title of their research grant — “Role of Soil Microbiome Resilience in Ecosystem Recovery Following Severe Wildfire” — the team of scientists led by Dr. Rebecca Barnes and Dr. Mike Wilkins will be studying the effects of severe wildfire on microbes living in the soil, here in Colorado. We understand that life is a web, and that the mix of bacteria and fungi and algae living in forest and grassland soils define, to some degree, the success of the trees and shrubs and forbs and other vegetation… which in turn defines the success of the deer population… which in turn defines, to some degree, the success of the mountain lion population…
All of which define, to some degree, the number of Texans visiting Pagosa during hunting season.
Ecology, as a scientific pursuit, could reasonably be defined as the study of death and rebirth. Some life forms must die, in order to provide sustenance for other life forms.
We’ve been bombarded, here at the Daily Post, with political press releases from elected Colorado representatives concerned about massively destructive wildfires during a period of slowly increasing temperatures and reduced precipitation.
For the most part, these concerns have been expressed by members of the Democratic Party — in particular, perhaps, by Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse, who has been representing the 2nd Congressional District: the Boulder area, Fort Collins, and many of Denver’s northwestern suburbs. Colorado’s two US Senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have likewise pushed for increased federal investments in firefighting technology, citing ‘climate change’ as a key danger to Colorado and the American West.
The Democrat-led infrastructure bill, the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed with considerable Republican support in the U.S. Senate… and less Republican support in the House. Projections show that the bill will add to the already-massive federal deficit.
From a November 15 article by Sara Wilson, shared here in the Daily Post:
There’s also money to directly respond to extreme climate events. For example, Colorado should receive $35 million over the next five years to protect specifically against wildfires, as well as be eligible for competitive federal funding for weatherization.
“$35 million over the next five years”, for the entire state of Colorado? So, about $7 million per year, on average. To put that into perspective, the draft Archuleta County budget for 2022 projects $45 million in expenditures.
For a bit more perspective, Colorado’s 2020 wildfire season — which included 25 major fires — resulted in 665,000 burned acres, the largest one-year total ever in the state. At least $226 million was spent on fire suppression that year, much of it in vain. Four of the five largest wildfires in Colorado history took place in 2020. The cause of those gigantic 2020 fires — lightning? careless human behavior? — remains unknown.
Kylie Mohr’s High Country News article, quoted above, mentions two possible causes for our increasingly serious wildfires.
1. A changing climate.
2. ‘Fire suppression’.
Here’s an 11-minute video about the remarkable recovery that took place over a three-year period, following a devastating forest fire in Victoria, Australia, in 2009. The video begins with some depressing scenes, but ends on a completely different note.
If you have been able to watch the video, you saw that the fire killed individual trees and plants, but did not kill the forest. Quite the contrary. In fact, the fire allowed certain species of plants and animals to sprout and thrive in ways they had not previously.
Wildfire is both destructive and rejuvenating, for forests.And it might appear that humans have known about the positive value of forest fire, for eons.
But we forgot.
From a 2020 story published by CapRadio, based in Sacramento, California:
To explain fire suppression, we have to go back to the year 1910 when 3 million acres burned in the Great Fire across states like Montana and Idaho. There’s no official cause, but a Forest Service explainer said that year was “the driest year in anyone’s memory. Snows melted early and the spring rains never came.”
It also suggests that the fires were started by coal-powered trains spewing hot-red cinder into bone-dry forests as well as homesteaders and campers setting fires on accident. Eighty-six people died in what is called the Big Blowup, which burned millions of trees meant to be logged and changed forest management to the current day.
“As a result the Forest Service put together a policy that all fires should be suppressed as quickly as possible,” said Susie Kocher, a UC system forestry advisor in the Tahoe Region. “It was at a time when the Forest Service had just formed in 1905. And it seemed to match their mission, which was preserving forests for the American people.”
She says shortly after the fire, the Forest Service started the ’10 a.m. policy’, requiring fires be put out by 10am the next day.
This policy is no longer in practice.
As the CapRadio story explains, the forests in California burned regularly, before the arrival of European colonists. It’s estimated that about 4.5 million acres burned each year, both from lightning strikes and from fires purposely kindled by California’s Native Americans, who understood the value of forest fire. Prior to colonization, California’s indigenous people had more than 8,000 years of history of cultural burning that protected them and the land. That practice disappeared when the indigenous people were torn from their land, said Ecological Historian Jared Dahl Aldern.
“You were removing the people who had a seasonal and multi-year rhythm and relationship with fire,” he said. “That cycle was completely broken.”
Ron Goode, tribal chairman of the North Fork Mono, says there were around 300,000 Native Americans, historically, who lived across California, and they burned 2% of California annually as a form of protection, food supply and for the health of the ecosystem.
“The land was constantly on fire,” Goode said. “Removal of Native Americans from the land [has resulted in] what we have today.”
According to the website, Cal Fire, about 3.1 million acres of California forests burned last year. That’s considerably less, it seems, than what scientists believe burned annually, prior to the arrival of European colonists.