Current Fire Policy's Impact on Fire Control and Suppression In the South

Among the federal mandates that relate to fire management, wilderness management, ecosystem management and endangered species management create special challenges throughout the Southeast.  Rapid fire return intervals, rapid vegetation growth rates and the high proportion of private land ownership are also factors that influence federal mandates governing resource management.

Red Cockaded Woodpecker Eating Woodborer Larva

On federal land, wilderness designation is predicated in part upon the prevalence of natural processes in the area.  Managers are not to manipulate natural processes, such as fire, in Wilderness Areas. As fragmentation and urbanization on lands surrounding a fire-dependent Wilderness Area reduce the chance that a fire will naturally ignite or spread into it, the pristine area begins to degrade in the absence of fire. As is true elsewhere, when fuel loads increase, eventual wildfire events may result in extreme fire behavior causing further, atypical ecosystem degradation.  Again, rapid vegetation growth leading to rapid fuel buildup indicates ongoing problems for fire managers.

In the South, management of federally listed endangered species is often tied directly to effective fire management.  For listed species such as the red-cockaded woodpecker and the Florida grasshopper sparrow, which depend upon habitat shaped by fire every 1-3 years, almost any postponement of burning activities on private or public land can be devastating to a localized population.  The high levels of landscape fragmentation and private land ownership characteristic of the eastern US make the conservation of fire-adapted species a complex discipline that often requires private landowner involvement, as well as interagency cooperation.

The ecosystem management policies adopted by most federal agencies in the 1990s brought restoration and maintenance of natural processes such as fire to the fore of land management planning. To the extent that recurring fire is needed to sustain southern ecosystems, prescribed burning programs were reinforced by ecosystem management policy.  Where prescribed burning programs were already advanced, as in areas managed for game and timber, the ecosystem management mandate supports a balanced perspective on fire control and use.