Yellowstone Controlled Burning at Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Controlled Burning at Yellowstone National Park: A burning debate

Controlled burning is a fairly routine part of park maintenance at Yellowstone National Park. Controlled burning has been used as a tool of wildlife conservation in the past, as a way of promoting a greater diversity and abundance of plants and animals in conservation parks such as Yellowstone. Controlled burning is seen as a way of being 'more' rather than less close or similar to nature and how nature regulates species diversity. "Most wildlife biologists (at least in the west) love to see small, controlled fires burning in areas of potential wildlife habitat -especially where a mosaic type burn can occur that leaves gaps in the burn of unburned fuel. These gaps provide the cover for wildlife that can still enjoy the benefits of the burn (new growth, nutrient release, etc.). Wildlife thrives on new growth after a controlled burn" (Albright 2000). Burning, responsibly controlled by fire officials, can make for a better environment for new plant and animal species.

However, the way that such practices are put into place at Yellowstone has been particularly controversial. During the 1980s, especially after a 1988 forest fire raged out of control at Yellowstone Park, many people opposed the controlled burn policy, particularly representatives of the forest and timber industry. "A let-burn policy is indeed defensible in a properly managed forest. But defenders of this hands-off approach refuse to acknowledge that Yellowstone was not a managed forest. Park officials, backed by the environmental community, did not permit dead and dying timber to be removed from Yellowstone. Rather than allow 150-year-old trees infested by dwarf mistletoe and mountain pine beetle to be periodically removed by harvest or by prescribed, controlled burns, Yellowstone managers mistakenly allowed dead wood to accumulate and the fire hazard to escalate," noted the President of the National Forest Products Association in 1988. Environmentalists were accused of having too much of a hands-off policy in terms of burning Yellowstone, and engaging in insufficient pruning, tree removal, and direction of how the burning was managed.

Of course, the forest industry had a profound economic interest in making such allegations. But in recent years, the increase in global temperatures of the past decades and frequent Western droughts has made the policy even more controversial. Why add fuel to the flames, one might ask, when the dangers of how unpredictable wind and weather patterns make forest fires, even so-called controlled forest fires, so difficult to manage? Controlled burns can rapidly devolve into uncontrolled burns. "What really created our problem is three different major wind shifts," said the fire crews after an unexpected shift in winds caused an April 2008 fire to rage out of control, leading to the forced evacuation of 40 to 50 homes in the area near the park (Shay & Johnson 2008). Although no one was injured, the lack of precipitation that made containment of the fire difficult to control caused local officials to criticize the choice of time and place of the burning. April tends to be an especially dry and windy month at Yellowstone -- so why instigate a controlled fire policy during this month?

Fire officials said the positive effects of the burning were not enough to justify the risk: "it is not a good year for burning, even when that is the traditional way to knock down last year's weeds and grasses....This whole country is dry...If you don't have to burn it, don't burn it" said the fire marshal from the area (Shay & Johnson 2008). Fire damage at Yellowstone such as the damage that occurred in 1988 and 2008 has come at a tremendous cost: "Since 1984, the annual average number of fires that burn 1,000 acres or more has increased from 25 to 80...and the total average number of acres burned by each of these fires has increased from 164,000 to 765,000. Naturally, the costs of controlling such fires also have escalated exponentially -- from $134 million in 1986 to $335 million in 1994 -- which does not include the higher costs of preparedness, not to mention health consequences, environmental impact and property damage" (Paige 1998). Fire is not only damaging to life and property but also to water quality and air quality, which can hurt the wildlife the practice is attempting to preserve. If controlled burning spirals into an uncontrolled fire, it can damage rather than aid the general ecosystem of flora and fauna.

However, the reason for the severity of such recent fires, as occurred in 2008, some allege, is the lack of small, controlled burnings, not an excess of them. "Smaller, more frequent fires consume the dead wood and underbrush that otherwise accumulate to dangerous levels, resulting in more catastrophic fires when they occur" (Paige 1998). In other words, by not allowing small fires to burn, cheaply and safely during the 1980s and 1990s, as was urged by many environmentalists, the current unsafe conditions that often result from controlled burnings were spawned. In "1995 the Forest Service estimated that about one-third, or 39 million acres, of the lands it manages in the interior West were at risk of large, uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires," because of "over-fueled forest floors" that had not been subject to controlled burns with enough frequency (Paige 1998).