Prescribed Fire?

My name is Sean Considine and I am a Senior in the School of Forestry at NAU. An interest of mine is prescribed fire in a the Wildland Urban Interface. The Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) is defined by many different people using many different definitons. One of these includes an area where human-built structures meet and interact with wild, undeveloped vegetation filled land. Other times they include expressions which are more specific to wildfire, such as, areas with human-built structures that are prone to wildland fire. Further, the WUI is defined as a rapidly changing natural resource with a unique set of management goals, goods and services. More simply, the WUI is the area where the city meets the forest.  Prescribed fire can be defined as a wildfire intentionally planned and set by people with the intent of clearing out fuel loads, reducing possibility of catastrophic wildfires, imitating and restoring natural ecosystem processes and improving the health of the forests.

The use of prescribed fire in the WUI is a topic which usually receives many differing views, often opposite of each other. While many people feel that the management tool is dangerous, disrupts the air quality and looks unappealing, I believe that this tool is extremely valuable to land managers.  While it is true that on rare cases a prescribed fire can, and has in the past, gotten away from firefighter’s control, a vastly larger majority of fires have gone exactly as planned and infact prevented worse fires from happening. A prime example is in Flagstaff a few years ago, where a lightning strike fire was burning towards town until it came across an area that had seen a prescribed fire and thinning a year or two earlier, upon entering that area, the wildfire processed to die out on its own. Fire managers work very hard at only burning on days with winds that blow away from town, having adequate resources available to ensure safety, and burning areas that are best suited for this technique. In terms of aesthetic quality, yes, it looks unappealing for a short time, but native grasses, forbs and other vegetation are adapted to fire and respond positively to it, therefore a burnt area will only appear burnt for a year or two but eventually any appearance will disappear. In my opinion, safety and a healthy ecosystem are more important that a few black marks on the ground, after all 1 year in the time frame of nature is no time at all….