History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use (2007)

Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 3 T HE H ISTORY AND E VOLUTION OF W ILDLAND F IRE U SE Jan W. van Wagtendonk U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Yosemite Field Station El Portal, CA 95318, USA Tel.: (209) 379-1306; e-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT Wildland ﬁ re use as a concept had its origin when humans ﬁ rst gained the ability to suppress ﬁ res. Some ﬁ res were suppressed and others were allowed to burn based on human values and objectives. Native Americans and Euro-American settlers fought those ﬁ res that threatened their villages and settlements but left others to burn unabated. Even with the advent of a ﬁ re suppression capability in the late 1880s, control efforts were focused on areas of human development while ﬁ res in remote areas were largely ignored. When the Forest Service was established in 1905, ﬁ re suppression became its reason for being, although some foresters questioned the economic logic of suppressing all ﬁ res. Fire suppression was the only ﬁ re policy for all federal land management agencies until the late 1960s when the National Park Service ofﬁ cially recognized ﬁ re as a natural process. Lightning ﬁ res ignited in special management zones in parks were allowed to run their course under prescribed conditions. The Forest Service followed suit in 1974 and changed its policy from ﬁ re control to ﬁ re management, allowing lightning ﬁ res to burn in wilderness areas. The programs in both agencies grew slowly as managers became comfortable with allowing ﬁ res to burn under controlled conditions. Various terms were used to describe these programs including “Let Burn,” “Prescribed Natural Fire,” and now “Wildland Fire Use.” Setbacks such as the Yellowstone ﬁ res in 1988 and the Cerro Grande ﬁ re in 2000 resulted in reviews and updates of federal ﬁ re management policies. The Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Affairs joined the other two agencies by implementing ﬁ re use programs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Today wildland ﬁ re use is a vital link in the ﬁ re and fuels programs of each of the federal land management agencies with nearly 6,000 ﬁ res burning over 1,400,000 ha (3,500,000 ac) annually. The future of restoring ﬁ re to ﬁ re-prone ecosystems will have to rely on increasing the use of wildland ﬁ re. Keywords: ﬁ re management, natural ﬁ re, prescribed ﬁ re, wildland ﬁ re Citation: van Wagtendonk, J.W. 2007. The history and evolution of wildland ﬁ re use. Fire Ecology 3(2): 3-17. INTRODUCTION Fire has been a dynamic ecological force in ﬁ re-prone ecosystems for millennia. Not until humans felt the need to control or use ﬁ re was the role of ﬁ re altered in natural ecosystems. Native Americans were the ﬁ rst humans to inﬂ uence ﬁ re regimes by controlling ﬁ res near their villages and by using ﬁ re to enhance the production of food items and basketry materials (Anderson 2006). Their effect was not pervasive, however, and varied over the landscape (Vale 2002). Remote areas were less likely to be tended than areas near habitation van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 4 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 and, as a result, ﬁ re regimes across large areas remained unaltered by humans. When Europeans arrived in North America, they caused dramatic changes to ﬁ re regimes. Cutting down forests for agriculture, decimating Native American populations with disease, and tilling vast areas of grasslands all caused the role of ﬁ re to change. Logging debris often caught ﬁ re and indiscriminate burning allowed ﬁ res to burn in areas and during times when they would not have naturally burned. Although there was no real ﬁ re protection organization, local ﬁ re districts attempted to extinguish human-caused and lightning-caused ﬁ res near settlements whenever possible. Wildland ﬁ re management did not occur until the late 1800s when federal land was set aside as parks and preserves. 1872-1967: THE FIRE PROTECTION YEARS Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 as the world’s ﬁ rst national park. For the next several years, administration of the park languished until 1886 when the US Army was assigned the responsibility for its protection. Upon its arrival in the park, the Army found numerous ﬁ res burning in developed areas as well as in areas where it was not reasonable to control them (Rothman 2007). The commanding ofﬁ cer decided that human-caused ﬁ res along roads posed the biggest threat and that the Army would concentrate its suppression efforts on the control of those ﬁ res. There were not enough soldiers to ﬁ ght all of the ﬁ res, and thus came the ﬁ rst conscious decision by a manager of federal land to allow some ﬁ res to burn while others were controlled. The policy of ﬁ re suppression was also applied to Sequoia, General Grant, and Yosemite national parks when they were established in 1890, and Army patrols were initiated to guard against ﬁ res, livestock trespass, and illegal logging. In 1916, the National Park Service was established and took over management from the Army. Fire suppression remained the only ﬁ re policy in the national parks for the next ﬁ ve decades. The Forest Service was established in 1905 and one of its primary missions was the suppression of all ﬁ res on the forest reserves it administered. The extensive ﬁ res of 1910 solidiﬁ ed the Forest Service as the premier ﬁ re control organization (Pyne 2006), and the National Park Service followed its lead. Complete ﬁ re suppression was the objective. Brieﬂ y, between 1916 and 1919, Roy Headley, the Assistant District Forester for California, implemented a program to allow low intensity ﬁ res to spread in remote areas unless they threatened high value timber or improvements. His proposal was based on the costs of suppressing those ﬁ res relative to the values to be protected (Pyne 1982). Once again in 1934, Headley, now the Chief of Fire Control for the Forest Service, and Elers Koch, the Forest Supervisor of the Lolo National Forest, proposed that backcountry areas not receive the same level of ﬁ re control as front country areas. Supporting them were Forest Service wilderness advocates Aldo Leopold and Robert Marshall (Pyne 1982). They were overruled and the policy of extinguishing all ﬁ res by 10:00 AM of the next burning period was implemented. That policy remained in effect until the 1970s. There were also rumblings within the National Park Service about the universal application of ﬁ re suppression to all lands. Eivind Scoyen was the Superintendent at Glacier National Park during the 1930s and had seen the futile efforts to control large ﬁ res in the remote backcountry. In 1950, he was the Superintendent of Sequoia National Park and supported designating the Kaweah Basin in the upper Kern River drainage as a research area that would not be subjected to ﬁ re suppression (Rothman 2007). The Regional Director accepted the principle that ﬁ re should not Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 5 be immediately suppressed in some remote areas of the park system, but made sure that the Director of the National Park Service understood that the Kaweah Basin presented a unique situation that would signal no service- wide policy change (Rothman 2007). Although the only ﬁ re that occurred in the basin during the experimental period was a suppressed campﬁ re, the program was unique because the reason to allow ﬁ res to burn was not just economic, but was also ecological. In 1964, George Briggs, the assistant chief ranger of Yosemite National Park, discovered a ﬁ re at 2,860 m (9,380 ft.) that had burned only 0.04 ha (0.1 ac) in 3 to 4 days (Briggs 1966). Based on this observation, he recommended that all ﬁ res above 2,438 m (8,000 ft) not be suppressed if a reconnaissance and evaluation showed that the ﬁ res would be contained by natural fuel breaks, that there was little fuel, and that little “damage” would result. Although reduced suppression costs were one of the cited reasons for the recommendation, he stressed that allowing ﬁ re to play a natural role was also a beneﬁ t. This recommendation was not acted upon for six years. 1968-1977: THE EXPERIMENTAL YEARS In 1962, the Secretary of the Interior asked a committee to look into wildlife management problems in the national parks. This committee, named after its chair, Dr. Starker Leopold, the son of Aldo Leopold, did not conﬁ ne its report to wildlife, but took the broader ecological view that parks should be managed as ecosystems (Leopold et al. 1963). As a result, the National Park Service changed its policy in 1968 to recognize ﬁ re as an ecological process. Fires were to be allowed to run their courses as long as they could be contained within ﬁ re management units and accomplished approved management objectives.Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks established a natural ﬁ re management zone in 1968 immediately after the policy changed (Bancroft et al. 1984). Leading this effort was George Briggs, who had become the forester at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, and Dr. Bruce Kilgore, a former graduate student of Starker Leopold, who was assigned to the parks as a research biologist. The “Let Burn Zone,” as Kilgore and Briggs (1972) called it, included areas above 3,000 m (9,000 ft) except where fuels were continuous across the park boundary. Two ﬁ res were allowed to burn during the ﬁ rst season, and by 1971, 52 ﬁ res had burned 250 ha (617 ac). The ﬁ rst large ﬁ re was the Bubbs Creek ﬁ re in 1971 that burned 183 ha (452 ac). The following year, the Ball Dome ﬁ re burned 47 ha (115 ac) (Figure 1). The Sequoia and Kings Canyon wildland ﬁ re use program continues to be one of the leading programs in the nation. Saguaro National Monument (now Saguaro National Park) was the next park area to initiate a wildland ﬁ re use program in 1971. Coined “Natural Prescribed Fire,” the program required that all natural ﬁ res be extinguished except those that occurred between July 1 and September 15 and met a set of prescribed conditions (Gunzel 1974). Between 1971 and 1974, 24 out of 46 ﬁ res were allowed to burn over 360 ha (900 ac). Yosemite National Park started its “Natural Fire Management” program in 1972. The natural ﬁ re zone was restricted to areas above 2,440 m (8,000 ft), and 3 ﬁ res burned less than 0.2 ha (0.5 ac) the ﬁ rst year (van Wagtendonk 1978). The following year the zone was doubled in size to 188,450 ha (465,670 ac) and included areas down to 1,220 m (4,000 ft). The ﬁ rst test of the program came in 1974 when the Starr King ﬁ re burned over 1,500 ha (3,700 ac) and had to be controlled on one side to preclude smoke from drifting into Yosemite Valley. Although considerable smoke entered van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 6 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 Figure 1. The Ball Dome ﬁ re in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks is typical of many ﬁ res that have burned as part of the wildland ﬁ re use program in the Sierra Nevada national parks. It burned to 47 ha (115 ac) in 1972. Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 7 the Valley, there was little public controversy (van Wagtendonk 1978). At the same time that the Starr King ﬁ re was burning in Yosemite, Grand Teton National Park was contending with the equally large Waterfall Canyon ﬁ re, which was pouring smoke into Jackson, Wyoming. Considerable public outcry occurred when the smoke obscured the mountains, and some accused the park of having a “scorched earth” policy (Kilgore 1975). The ﬁ re burned into October when late autumn snows extinguished it. The impetus for wildland ﬁ re use in the Forest Service came from ﬁ re and wilderness managers in the northern Rocky Mountains. As early as 1969, a wilderness workshop was held in Missoula, Montana, to discuss, among other topics, allowing ﬁ re to play a more natural role in wilderness areas. This workshop was followed by a wilderness ﬁ re management study in 1970 that led to the establishment of the White Cap Fire Management Area in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness on the Bitterroot National Forest in Idaho (Mutch 1974). The ﬁ rst ﬁ re in the White Cap ignited in 1972 on the same day that the Chief of the Forest Service signed off on the plan. The following year the Fritz Creek Fire burned over 650 ha (1,600 ac) (Figure 2). The Gila Wilderness in New Mexico was the next Forest Service area to initiate a wildland ﬁ re use program. The ﬁ rst ﬁ re in the Gila managed under the new program occurred in 1975, and in 1978, the Langstroth ﬁ re burned 1,295 ha (3,200 ac). The Gila and Selway- Bitterroot programs would grow to become the premier Forest Service wildland ﬁ re use programs. Information gained from these experiments was instrumental in changing Forest Service ﬁ re policy from ﬁ re control to ﬁ re management (DeBruin 1974). In 1978, the Forest Service abandoned the 10:00 AM policy Figure 2. The Fritz Creek ﬁ re in 1973 was the ﬁ rst large ﬁ re to occur in the White Cap Fire Management Area of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness on the Bitterroot National Forest. van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 8 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 in favor of a new policy that encouraged the use of wildland ﬁ re by prescription. 1978-1989: THE RE-EVALUATION YEARS Three events between 1978 and 1988 precipitated a major ﬁ re policy review in 1989: the Ouzel ﬁ re in Rocky Mountain National Park, the ﬁ res in and around Yellowstone National Park, and the Canyon Creek ﬁ re in the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The ﬁ re management plan for Rocky Mountain National Park was originally written in 1973 and revised in 1974 and 1975 (Rothman 2007). The 1977 plan deﬁ ned a “Prescribed Natural Fire” zone generally above 3,048 m (10,000 ft) where risks were considered low and ﬁ res would be monitored and allowed to burn; a moderate risk zone where ﬁ res would be allowed to burn only under a set indexed condition; and a high risk zone where all ﬁ res would be suppressed immediately. The Ouzel ﬁ re was ignited by lightning on August 19, 1978, in the low risk zone, and was monitored for more than a month before high winds caused it to threaten a community outside the park’s boundary. After the ﬁ re was controlled in October, a board of review was convened to investigate the circumstances surrounding the event. The board concluded that the ﬁ re plan was not properly implemented, did not adequately incorporate ecological information about the park, and did not have enough emphasis on external considerations such as adjoining development (Laven 1979). In addition, insufﬁ cient ﬁ re-ﬁ ghting resources were available to suppress the ﬁ re when it exceeded its prescription (Rothman 2007). The Rocky Mountain National Park program was suspended pending revision of the plan. Ten years later, the ﬁ res of 1988 caused considerable controversy when 562,310 ha (1,389,500 ac) burned in the greater Yellowstone area. Based on a plan written in 1972, Yellowstone National Park allowed several lightning ﬁ res to burn in a remote corner of the park in late June. At the same time, Forest Service managers of the Absaroka- Beartooth Wilderness just north of Yellowstone were monitoring the Storm Creek ﬁ re. By the end of July, unusually dry conditions coupled with high winds convinced managers of both agencies to suppress all ﬁ res that were currently burning as well as all new starts (Schullery 1989). Human-caused ﬁ res from outside of the park added to the problem. In fact, the North Fork ﬁ re, which threatened Old Faithful Village, was started by a woodcutter’s cigarette on the adjacent Targhee National Forest. Ninety-ﬁ ve percent of the area that burned was burned by nine major ﬁ res. Six of those ﬁ res were ignited outside the park, and four of them were human caused (Schullery 1989). Accusations of irresponsible management were common and the National Park Service was left with a serious public relations problem (Rothman 2007). At the same time that Yellowstone was burning, the Canyon Creek ﬁ re was being allowed to burn in the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the Lewis and Clark National Forest. It escaped the wilderness and burned over 100,000 ha (250,000 ac). The town of Augusta, Montana, was threatened and private property was damaged before it was suppressed. The media coverage of the ﬁ re was local as most attention was focused on Yellowstone. The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior convened a ﬁ re policy review team to evaluate the National Park Service and Forest Service wilderness ﬁ re policies. The team reafﬁ rmed the fundamental importance of ﬁ re’s natural role but recommended that ﬁ re management plans be strengthened by establishing clear decision criteria and accountability, and that interagency cooperation be improved (Rothman 2007). Until new ﬁ re management plans were prepared, the Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 9 Secretaries suspended all prescribed natural ﬁ re programs in parks and wilderness areas. 1989-1999: THE MATURING YEARS Wildland ﬁ re use programs restarted slowly after the 1989 review. The programs at Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon national parks, as well as several national forest wilderness areas, came back on line in 1990, but progress was slow to recover in other areas. A complete review and update of the federal wildland ﬁ re management policy and program was conducted, and wildland ﬁ re use was reafﬁ rmed as a legitimate program (USDA and USDI 1989). After the review, the Forest Service and National Park Service programs began to grow as the number of ﬁ res and area burned increased. Yosemite National Park had revised its ﬁ re management plan to meet the requirements of the policy review before the start of the1989 ﬁ re season, but the moratorium on prescribed natural ﬁ re programs precluded implementation that year. In 1990, the program was reinitiated, and 20 ﬁ res were allowed to burn out within the prescribed natural ﬁ re zone. In early August, a lightning storm ignited two ﬁ res within seconds of each other outside of the zone. Although immediate suppression actions were taken on the two ﬁ res, they burned a total of 10,464 ha (25,857 ac). All subsequent ﬁ res for the remainder of the year were suppressed. Succeeding years saw the program reach maturity as lightning ﬁ res burned together into a jigsaw pattern and either went out or reburned with reduced intensity (Figure 3) (Collins et al. 2007). Glacier National Park was also experiencing some controversy with the Howling ﬁ re in 1994 (Rothman 2007). This ﬁ re remained small for over six weeks before it burned 906 ha (2,238 ac). Local Forest Service managers and the media called for its suppression, but the superintendent stood ﬁ rm and the ﬁ re was extinguished by rain and snow in early October. More controversial was the South Canyon ﬁ re, ignited by lightning in a ﬁ re exclusion zone on the Grand Junction District of the Bureau of Land Management in Colorado on July 2, 1994. Suppression action was taken on the wildﬁ re within two days of its start, but a blow-up two days later killed 14 ﬁ re ﬁ ghters. An interagency team was formed and issued their report in August. They cited several direct and contributory causes of the fatalities including ﬁ re behavior, personnel proﬁ les, and incident management procedures (Rosenkrance et al. 1994). The South Canyon incident led to the ﬁ rst comprehensive review and update of federal wildland ﬁ re policy in decades. The report reiterated that the ﬁ rst priority of all federal wildland ﬁ re programs was ﬁ reﬁ ghter and public safety (Philpot et al. 1995). With regard to prescribed ﬁ res and prescribed natural ﬁ res, the report stated that, “Wildland ﬁ re will be used to protect, maintain, and enhance resources and, as nearly as possible, be allowed to function in its natural ecological role.” Recommended actions for the federal agencies for the reintroduction of ﬁ re included: 1) jointly developing ecosystem condition criteria for reintroducing ﬁ re, 2) jointly implementing ecosystem-based ﬁ re management programs, and 3) conducting a collaborative ﬁ re research program. In 1998, the agencies convened a task group to write an implementation procedures reference guide for moving policies into actions. This guide used the term “wildland ﬁ re use” to describe what had previously been prescribed natural ﬁ res. By the end of the decade, the 1995 policy reinvigorated “wildland ﬁ re use” programs and gave managers the support they needed to enable the programs to continue to grow and mature. During the four years between 1996 and 1999, the Forest Service had an average of 122 ﬁ res and 23,000 ha (56,900 ac) burned per van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 10 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 Figure 3. Fires in the Illilouette Creek Basin in Yosemite National Park before and after the wildland ﬁ re use program was initiated in Yosemite National Park. Between 1930 and 1972, ﬁ res appear as black dots. Fires in successive seven-year periods appear as orange (1973-1979), yellow (1980- 1986), green (1987-1993), aqua (1994-2000), and light blue (2001-2007). Signiﬁ cant reburning occurred in the latter years as indicated in the transparent images between 1994 and 2007. Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 11 year, while the National Park Service averaged 98 ﬁ res and 8,540 ha (21,100 ac). 2000-2006: THE YEARS AFTER CERRO GRANDE A prescribed ﬁ re set by ﬁ re managers on the Bandelier National Monument in 2000 was declared a wildﬁ re and escaped onto the adjacent Santa Fe National Forest. The ﬁ re burned into the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the town of Los Alamos. Over 19,400 ha (48,000 ac) were burned and 255 homes destroyed before it was extinguished. Public outcry was immediate and the National Park Service held an investigation that placed blame on improper implementation of the prescribed burn and on inadequate contingency resources to successfully suppress the ﬁ re (Rothman 2007). The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior reconvened the interagency federal wildland ﬁ re policy review working group to review the status of the implementation of the 1995 policy and to address speciﬁ c issues raised by the Cerro Grande investigation teams. The group found that the policy was generally sound and continued to provide a solid foundation for wildland ﬁ re management activities (Douglas et al. 2001). The group recommended several changes to the 1995 policy to clarify purpose and intent and to address issues not fully covered in 1995. The statement for the use of wildland ﬁ re remained the same as in 1995, except the following sentence was added: “Use of ﬁ re will be based on approved Fire Management Plans and will follow speciﬁ c prescriptions contained in operational plans.” Finally, the working group found that the multiple terms used to describe wildland ﬁ res were confusing, but was silent on the terminology they preferred. The 2001 policy recommendations prompted an interagency team to revise the wildland ﬁ re use implementation guide based on the 1995 policy (USDA and USDI 2005). The new document provides direction, guidance, and assistance for the planning and implementation of wildland ﬁ re use for each of the ﬁ ve federal wildland ﬁ re agencies. In order to be consistent with terminology, the Wildland Fire Coordinating Group (2006) ofﬁ cially sanctiﬁ ed the term “wildland ﬁ re use.” Progress implementing wildland ﬁ re use programs varies among the ﬁ ve agencies. Wildland ﬁ re use statistics have been very difﬁ cult to obtain because each agency reports them differently (Parsons 2000). Recently, the National Interagency Fire Center compiled wildland ﬁ re statistics going back to 1998 (www.nifc.gov/stats/wildlandfirestats.html). Table 1 shows the number of wildland ﬁ re use ﬁ res that have occurred and the area burned for each agency in all states including Alaska from 1998 through 2006. The Forest Service has continued to build its wildland ﬁ re use program and now leads the other agencies in number of ﬁ res and area burned. Since 1998, there have been 1,854 ﬁ res that have burned 384,538 ha (950,211 ac) on Forest Service land, 66 % of the total for all agencies (Table 1). Fires are starting to reburn previously burned areas, and interlocking patterns of burned, reburned, and unburned areas are emerging. In addition to the pioneering programs on the Selway-Bitterroot and Gila wilderness areas, other areas were beginning to show the effects of previous ﬁ res (Rollins et al. 2000). For example, in 2000, the McDonald II ﬁ re in the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the Flathead National Forest in Montana was projected to be 20,200 ha to 40,400 ha (50,000 ac to 100,000 ac); however, it ran into 1988 and 1996 ﬁ res and burned only 2,260 ha (5,580 ac). Also in 2000, the Hash Rock ﬁ re burned almost all of the Mill Creek Wilderness on the Ochoco National Forest in Oregon before it was suppressed. When the wildﬁ re reached the 1996 Mill Creek ﬁ re, which had been van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 12 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 managed under the wildland ﬁ re use program, it went out. Similarly, in 2003, the Lost Packer Meadow ﬁ re in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness on the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho left areas burned in 1990 and 1996 ﬁ res untouched (Figure 4). Although the National Park Service was the initial leader in allowing lightning ﬁ res to burn under prescribed conditions, the agency has become increasingly restricted in its approach to wildland ﬁ re use. Smoke, threatened and endangered species, and the high costs associated with managing wildland ﬁ re use have been major concerns. The small size of many parks and their proximity to urban areas exacerbates these problems. From 1998 through 2006, 694 ﬁ res have restored ﬁ re to 150,514 ha (371,927 ac) (Table 1). Some programs, such the ones at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Yosemite National YearBureau of Indian Affairs Bureau of Land Management Forest Service ﬁ res ha ac ﬁ res ha ac ﬁ res ha ac 1998 4 3 8 25 0 0 255 19,600 48,432 1999 2 0 1 43 542 1,339 195 13,715 33,891 2000 0 0 0 0 0 0 60 15,333 37,889 2001 3 0 0 56 4,165 10,293 143 25,318 62,562 2002 0 0 0 26 3,706 9,158 269 16,177 39,974 2003 10 17 42 32 669 1,652 193 105,555 260,831 2004 0 0 0 45 2,912 7,195 196 13,532 33,437 2005 1 1,489 3,680 78 1,045 2,582 279 116,954 288,999 2006 1 42 105 12 1,225 3,026 264 58,354 144,196 Total 21 1,552 3,836 317 14,263 35,245 1,854 384,538 950,211 Average 2 172 426 35 1,585 3,916 206 42,726 105,579 YearFish and Wildlife Service National Park Service Total ﬁ res ha ac ﬁ res ha ac ﬁ res ha ac 1998 0 0 0 73 5,059 12,501 357 24,662 60,941 1999 0 0 0 94 16,365 40,439 334 30,623 75,670 2000 0 0 0 22 622 1,538 82 15,956 39,427 2001 1 19 48 70 8,394 20,743 273 37,897 93,646 2002 0 0 0 111 3,291 8,131 406 23,174 57,263 2003 1 17,321 42,800 106 10,363 25,608 342 133,924 330,933 2004 3 119 295 65 32,946 81,410 309 49,508 122,337 2005 2 11,018 27,225 74 66,427 164,145 434 196,933 486,631 2006 2 124 307 79 7,046 17,412 358 66,792 165,046 Total 9 28,601 70,675 694 150,514 371,927 2,895 579,469 1,431,894 Average 1 3,178 7,853 77 16,724 41,325 322 115,894 286,379 Table 1. Number of wildland ﬁ re use ﬁ res and area burned by those ﬁ res for the ﬁ ve land management agencies, 1998-2006. Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 13 Figure 4. In 2000, the Lost Packer Meadow ﬁ re burned around ﬁ res that burned in 1990 and 1996, forming a pattern of burned and unburned areas. Park, still lead the way for other parks and agencies. The Fish and Wildlife Service established a formal ﬁ re management program in 1978; however, only nine ﬁ res have been allowed to burn under prescribed conditions since 2001, mostly in Alaska (Table 1). The area burned each year has varied with large areas burning when conditions are favorable in the refuges in Alaska. During intervening years, a small number of ﬁ res burned a reduced amount of area. In 1981, the Bureau of Land Management issued its ﬁ rst ﬁ re management policy for designated wilderness areas. Between 1998 and 2006, a total of 317 ﬁ res have been classiﬁ ed as wildland ﬁ re use ﬁ res and have burned 14,263 ha (35,245 ac) (Table 1). Most of these ﬁ res were in Alaska, but there are 4,860,000 ha (12,000,000 ac) in the lower 48 states that will be approved for wildland ﬁ re use in the near future. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was an early leader in the use of ﬁ re in western ecosystems, but has been slow to implement wildland ﬁ re use. Although many ﬁ re management plans authorize wildland ﬁ re use, only a few tribes are prepared to implement the program. Since 1998, there have been 21 ﬁ res that have restored ﬁ re to 1,552 ha (3,836 ac) (Table 1). As the van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 14 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 program gains acceptance, these numbers are expected to grow. FUTURE YEARS Many challenges face wildland ﬁ re use programs in the future. Among them are the wilderness-urban interface, air quality, wildlife habitat effects, invasive species, and cultural resources. New policies, implementation guides, and terminology will also affect the program. Opportunities will also arise, particularly with the use of management ignitions in wilderness and the application of wildland ﬁ re use to non-wilderness areas. The wildland urban interface has become the wilderness urban interface as increasingly more homes are built adjacent to wilderness areas. In Tucson, new houses are being built on the boundary of the Pusch Ridge and Saguaro wilderness areas, and in Montana, continuous forests connect the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness with ranchettes in the Bitterroot Valley. Many wilderness areas contain wildland ﬁ re use zones, but their proximity to human developments that need to be protected from ﬁ re confounds the opportunities for ﬁ re to play a natural role in these areas. Homeowners will need to become more active in creating ﬁ re-safe environments (Cohen 2000). Air quality poses one of the biggest challenges for managers of wildland ﬁ re use programs. Fires that burn for weeks or even months cast palls of smoke in inhabited areas and can cause air quality standards to be violated. Active measures to manage smoke will have to be taken. For example, Yosemite National Park has extinguished many candidate lightning ﬁ res in the wildland ﬁ re use zone because another ﬁ re was already burning in the same airshed. Land management agencies must work with the Environmental Protection Agency and local air pollution control boards to inform them about the importance of wildland ﬁ re use programs for meeting land management objectives.As ecosystems have evolved with ﬁ re, so too have the plants and animals. Human activities have altered many of the relationships between ﬁ re and plants and animals. Fire exclusion could lead to the extirpation of ﬁ re-adapted species, and habitat fragmentation coupled with fuel accumulation can leave plants and animals vulnerable to ﬁ re. Care will be needed to accomplish the complementary goals of restoring ﬁ re as a natural ecological process and maintaining plant and animal species that depend on habitats created by ﬁ re. Many non-native invasive plants are adapted to ﬁ re. Plant invasions into wildland ecosystem present a particularly vexing problem for ﬁ re managers. Fire often exacerbates plant invasions that can lead to changes in ﬁ re regimes. Examples include the invasion of cheat grass (Bromus tectorum) in the Great Basin, melaleuca (Melaleuca quinquenervia) in the Everglades, spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa ) in the Rocky Mountains, and yellow star thistle (Centaurea solstitialis) in California. On the other hand, ﬁ re can also be an important tool for managing plant invasions. Managers of wildland ﬁ re use programs should consider the potential interactions of invasive plants with fuels, ﬁ re behavior, and ﬁ re regimes to ensure that their ﬁ re management goals and objectives can be met in the presence of these non-native plants. At the very least, land managers should monitor for invasive plants following ﬁ res and take mitigating measures as appropriate. Much of the remaining evidence of past cultures consists of resources that are either combustible or are altered by ﬁ re. Obviously, ﬁ re can consume combustible resources, but less obvious are the effects on non-combustible artifacts such as obsidian tools, pictographs, and petrogylphs. Information is lost by altering hydrations rates within obsidian, which allow the date of manufacture to be estimated. Images either painted on or carved into rock faces can also be obscured or destroyed by ﬁ re. Surveys need to be done in wildland ﬁ re Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 15 use zones to develop pre-ﬁ re plans to protect cultural resources. While constraints often preclude the use of wildland ﬁ re, management-ignited prescribed ﬁ res can be used to complement naturally occurring ﬁ res. This has been common practice in National Park Service wilderness areas, but is just becoming accepted in Forest Service wilderness. By controlling the timing and location of prescribed ﬁ res, managers can avoid threatened and endangered species, invasive species, cultural resources, smoke sensitive areas, and adjacent development. Care must be taken, however, to try to mimic the natural ﬁ re regime as closely as possible. It is also important to note that wildland ﬁ re use is not always possible or desirable. A well-informed ﬁ re management plan must carefully considers all the factors present in an area (ﬁ re history, invasive plants, threatened and endangered species, human developments, cultural sites, etc.) before designating that area as a wildland ﬁ re use zone. Additional opportunities apply to Forest Service areas that are not in wilderness. The Northern Rocky Mountain Region expanded the wildland ﬁ re use program beyond designated wilderness in 2007, and other regions are sure to follow. Part of the rationale for this expansion is economic, because suppression costs keep rising. The history of wildland ﬁ re use has shown that the program is often held hostage to the whims of policy and procedures. Even today, as enlightened as the public and decision makers might be, a shift in policy could doom the program. Currently, the concept of “Appropriate Management Response” (AMR) is in vogue. Appropriate Management Response is deﬁ ned as any speciﬁ c action suitable to meet ﬁ re management unit objectives (National Wildﬁ re Coordinating Group 2006). Typically, the AMR ranges across a spectrum of tactical options from monitoring to intensive management actions. Monitoring would be the appropriate management action for most ﬁ res in the wildland ﬁ re use zone. Regardless of the terminology used, the ecological rationale for allowing wildland ﬁ res to burn under prescribed conditions, coupled with an economic incentive, will insure the continuation of the program in the future. LITERATURE CITED Anderson, M.K. 2006. The use of ﬁ re by Native Americans in California. Pages 417-430 in: N.G. Sugihara, J.W. van Wagtendonk, J. Fites-Kaufman, K.E. Shaffer, and A.E. Thode, editors. Fire in California’s ecosystems. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA. Bancroft, L., T. Nichols, D. Parsons, D. Graber, B. Evison, and J.W. van Wagtendonk. 1984. Evolution of the natural ﬁ re management program at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Pages 174-180 in: J. Lotan, B.M. Kilgore, W.C. Fischer, and R.W. Mutch, technical coordinators. Proceedings of the symposium and workshop on wilderness ﬁ re. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-182. Briggs, G.S. 1966. A report on backcountry conditions and resources, with management recommendations, 1964-1965, Yosemite National Park. National Park Service unpublished report, Yosemite National Park, California, USA. Cohen, J.D. 2000. Preventing disaster: home ignitability in the wildland-urban interface. Journal of Forestry 98(3): 15-21. Collins, B.M., N.M. Kelly, J.W. van Wagtendonk, and S.L. Stephens. 2007. Spatial patterns of large natural ﬁ res in Sierra Nevada wilderness areas. Landscape Ecology 22: 545-557. van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 16 Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 DeBruin, H.W. 1974. From ﬁ re control to ﬁ re management: a major policy change in the Forest Service. Proceedings of the 14 th Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference. 14: 11-17. Douglas, J., T.J. Mills, D. Artly, D. Ashe, A. Bartuska, R.L. Black, S. Coloff, J. Cruz, M. Edrington, J. Edwardson, R.T. Gale, S.W. Goodman, L. Hamilton, R. Landis, B. Powell, S. Robinson, R.J. Schuster, P.K. Stahlschmidt, J. Stires, and J. van Wagtendonk. 2001. Review and update of the 1995 federal wildland ﬁ re management policy. U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA. Gunzel, L.L. 1974. National policy change: natural prescribed ﬁ re. Fire Management 35(3): 4- 8. Kilgore, B.M. 1975. Restoring ﬁ re to national park wilderness. American Forests 81(3): 16-19, 57-59. Kilgore, B.M., and G.S. Briggs. 1972. Restoring ﬁ re to high elevation forests in California. Journal of Forestry 70: 266-271. Laven, R.D. 1979. Natural ﬁ re management in Rocky Mountain National Park: a case study of the Ouzel ﬁ re. Pages 37-41 in: R.M. Linn., editor. Proceedings of the second conference on science in the National Parks. National Park Service Transactions and Proceedings Series 6. Leopold, A.S., S.A. Cain, C.M. Cottam, I.N. Gabrielson, and T.L. Kimbal. 1963. Wildlife management in the national parks. Pages 1-8 in: Transactions 28 th North American wildlife and natural resources conference. Wildlife Management Institute, Washington, DC, USA. Mutch, R.W. 1974. I thought all forest ﬁ res were black! Western Wildlands 1(1): 16-21. National Wildﬁ re Coordinating Group. 2006. Glossary of wildland ﬁ re terminology. National Wildﬁ re Coordinating Group, Incident Operations Standards Working Team. PMS-205. Parsons, D.J. 2000. The challenge of restoring natural ﬁ re to wilderness. Pages 276-282 in: D.N. Cole, S.F. McCool, W.T. Borrie, and J. O’Loughlin, compilers. Wilderness science in a time of change. Volume 5: Wilderness ecosystems, threats, and management. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5. Philpot, C., C. Schechter, A. Bartuska, K. Beartusk, D. Bosworth, S. Coloff, J. Douglas, M. Edrington, R. Gale, M. J. Lavin, L.K. Rosenkrance, R. Streeter, and J. van Wagtendonk. 1995. Federal wildland ﬁ re management policy and program review. U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA. Pyne, S.J. 1982. Fire in America: a cultural history of wildland and rural ﬁ re. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Pyne, S.J. 2006. Year of the ﬁ res: the story of the great ﬁ res of 1910. Viking, New York, New York, USA. Rollins, M, T. Swetnam, and P. Morgan. 2000. Twentieth-century ﬁ re patterns in the Selway- Bitterroot Wilderness Area, Idaho/Montana, and the Gila/Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex, New Mexico. Pages 283-287 in: D.N. Cole, S.F. McCool, W.T. Borrie, and J. O’Loughlin, compilers. Wilderness science in a time of change. Volume 5: Wilderness ecosystems, threats, and management. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5. Rosenkrance, L.K., M.A. Reimers, R.A. Johnson, J.B. Webb, J.H. Graber, M. Clarkson, P. Werth, S.J. Husari, D. Mangan, and T. Putman. 1994. Report of the South Canyon ﬁ re accident investigation team. Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, Washington, DC, USA. Rothman, H.K. 2007. Blazing heritage: a history of wildland ﬁ re in the National Parks. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA. Fire Ecology Special Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007van Wagtendonk: History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use Page 17 Schullery, P. 1989. The ﬁ res and ﬁ re policy. Bioscience 39(10): 686-694. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior. 1989. Final report of the ﬁ re policy review team. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC, USA. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior. 2005. Wildland ﬁ re use implementation procedures reference guide. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC, USA. Vale, T.R. 2002. Fire, peoples, and the natural landscape. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. van Wagtendonk, J.W. 1978. Wilderness ﬁ re management in Yosemite National Park. Pages 324- 335 in: E.A. Schoﬁ eld, editor. EARTHCARE: global protection of natural areas. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use (2007)

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