It sounds counterintuitive, but a new report by the Global Fire Partnership finds that suppressing fires in areas where they naturally occur increases the incidence of burns that are more intense, harder to control and put communities and fire fighters at risk.
“In the United States, we’ve excluded fires from areas where they occur naturally for about a century, allowing vegetation to build up,” Ayn Shlisky, the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Global Fire Initiative, tells nature.org in an interview. “That suppression makes these habitats more susceptible to larger and more intense fires when they do occur.”
To maintain environmental health, the Conservancy burns about 100,000 acres of our own land every year and assists in prescribed burning on over 150,000 acres each year on the lands of our partners. We have more than 100 fire-trained staff in more than 35 states that meet or exceed the U.S. federal fire management standards, and our record of success in implementing safe prescribed burning is one of the nation’s best.
Click here for the full text of Shlisky’s interview, and more on the Conservancy’s prescribed fire efforts.
Click here for more on the Global Fire Partnership Study, “Fire, Ecosystems, and People."
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 1