Forester Cites Importance of Fires

by Kevin Strauss

For almost a hundred years, forestry officials have tried to keep fires out of our woods. But according to Jeff Forester, in his book "The Forest for the Trees: how humans shaped the north woods," it seems that fire is a good and probably necessary part of the northwoods ecosystem. In his book, Forester chronicles over 150 years of human impact on the conifer and mixed woods around Winton, Minnesota. His most surprising revelation came late in the book project, when he realized that what we termed the "natural" white and red pine stands of northern Minnesota had probably been fire managed by native peoples for hundreds of years. What's more, it was the use of controlled or wild fires that made the northwoods ecosystem into what it was when Europeans arrived in the 1700 and 1800's.

"The white pine is a cultural artifact of tribal fires, just like the prairies on the Great Plains," said Forester.
Since we often think of "natural" ecosystems as unaffected by humans, this realization came as a surprise to Forester. But the evidence is hard to ignore. Bud Heinselman did a study in the 1960's comparing core samples from ponds with fire scars in old-growth trees in the Superior National Forest. From that data, he estimated that in pre-European settlement times, 10,000 acres of the forest burned each year and every acre of what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness burned, on average, once every 30 years. By comparison, now, only about 1,000 acres burn per year despite the fuel loads being higher than in previous history.

"Voyageurs tell about having to resole their moccasins because they had to portage through a forest fire that day," said Forester. "But these were low fires with 2'-3' flame lengths."

Forester terms this stage of forest management the "tribal" period, when the Ojibwe and the Dakota before them, set fires in the forest to increase blueberry yields, cultivate crops or to create grassy meadows as forage for prey animals like moose, caribou and elk. These low fires were "safe" fires. They cleared underbrush and they didn't reach the crowns of the trees or result in the firestorms that came from devastating fires in Hinkley and Cloquet after the logging era.

As more and more Europeans moved into the area in the in the late 1800's, and the pineries out east were nothing but stumps, the "pioneer" stage began with logging and homesteading in the northwoods. Then came "industrial" logging and the clearcutting of the forest. That was followed by the "conservation" phase as a result of the ravages left on the land by industrial logging companies and massive wildfires, followed by the "wilderness" phase in which land was protected not a a financial resource or commodity, but for its own sake. Now, Forester contends, we are coming full circle and are recognizing the importance of fire in the ecosystem to clear underbrush, destroy plant diseases and increase forest diversity.

"If we want to restore the northwoods to their 'natural state,' we have to institute a burn regime," said Forester. While this view is at odds with the historical "Prevent Forest Fires" call of Smoky Bear, it is a view that is gaining support with forest researchers and some land managers.

According to Forester, smaller, controlled fires, on the order of 10,000 acres per year, would decrease forest fuel loads while at the same time kill gooseberry plants and other carriers of white pine blister rust. These small fires would keep fuel loads from building to the point of more cataclysmic fires like what happened in Hinkley and Cloquet after the industrial logging era.

Forester sees many of our forest management issues playing out after the 1999 blowdown in the BWCAW.
"The timber industry says that we should log (the blowdown), but when we log, small trees come in that are more susceptible to drought, wind and fire," said Forester.

Given the history of human impacts on the forest, Forester sees some lessons that managers could use now.
1. To decrease fire danger, we should be increasing controlled and natural forest burning.
2. We should be managing forests to increase biological diversity across species and age classes in the range of historic natural variability. That way if a fire or disease comes though, the diverse forest will be able to withstand the damage and not erupt into a firestorm. We should be managing for options rather than outputs
4. We can't have old growth white pine forests if we don't have fire.
After looking at so many years of forest management history, Forester found it easy to point out the mistakes of the past, but what bothers him is what mistakes we might be making or planning to make now.

"How is our hubris impacting our choices now? We thought that stopping fires would protect the forest, but white pine forests need fire to survive," said Forester.

In addition to working on another book, Forester is the Executive Director of the Minnesota Seasonal Recreational Property Owners Association.

The Ely Timberjay