2024Vol41No3NBUJournal

FIRE AND FUELS MANAGEMENT FOR WILDLIFE AND PEOPLE

By Kellie Dobrescu, Forester & Conservationist

What if putting out every fire actually made things worse? Fire can be the problem, but it can also be the solution.

Fire and fuels management for wildlife and people is about balancing the use of fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, while also protecting human communities and infrastructure. It involves reducing the amount of flammable material like juniper monocultures, dead wood and overgrown vegetation in forests and grasslands to decrease the intensity and spread of wildfires.

Benefits to Wildlife: - Restores natural fire regimes which many ecosystems and species depend on. - Creates diverse habitats with a mix of open spaces and dense cover. - Promotes regeneration of fire-adapted plants and food sources. - Controls invasive species by re-establishing native perennial plants. Benefits to People: - Reduces wildfire risk near homes and towns (especially in the wildland-urban interface). - Improves firefighter safety by lowering fire intensity. - Maintains air quality by preventing large, uncontrolled wildfires. - Preserves water resources by reducing erosion and protecting watersheds.

Decades of aggressive fire suppression has resulted in many ecosystems becoming overgrown and hazardous. Pair this with factors such as woodland expansion, prolonged drought and invasive annuals, it’s a continuous feedback loop. Fire and fuels management manages the vegetation that continues to feed this loop and the large wildfires that can have devastating impacts. Due to humans expanding into habitats and living in the wildland-urban interface, we will never get away from the need to put out wildfires. That means if we continue to stop them, we must make up for it by doing more prescribed burns and mechanical thinning. Effective fire and fuels management considers local ecological needs through habitat improvement projects, and community protection through wildland-urban interface treatments.

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