Fire Management (1940s to Present)
“Fire management” refers to the current prevailing approach to land management in which prescribed fire is used to restore and maintain healthy ecosystems. The era of fire management replaced the fire suppression era in the 1940s and continues through the present, but the reintroduction of prescribed fire did not occur evenly or simultaneously across the South.
In the 1930s, Herbert Stoddard and other advocates of fire management encouraged the use of prescribed fire to create healthy, productive environments. After several decades of fire suppression, land managers, scientists, and policy makers began noticing the forests and fields changing in undesirable ways. Problematic levels of forest fuels were accumulating in some of the places where prescribed burning had been discontinued, the integrity of the environment was declining, and the threat of catastrophic wildfires was increasing. Fire exclusion also caused an abundance of undesirable plant species. In some parts of the Piedmont, for example, where fires have been absent because of fire exclusion policies or land use patterns, the early- and mid-succession forests of pine and pine-hardwood mixtures convert to late-succession forests of mixed hardwoods such as maples (Acer spp.) and gum (Liquidambar spp.) (Buckner 2000). The turkey oak woodlands (Quercus laevis) that are found in some parts of the Florida sandhills, are a creation of fire history in which logging in the early 1900s was followed by fire exclusion for several decades in the 20th century, and then a prescribed burning regime was established (Myers and White 1987).
Several scientific publications appeared in the 1930s supporting the re-introduction of prescribed burning, or the use of fire to manage the land. The benefits of “Indian fires” to longleaf pine forests were documented in “The Forest That Fire Made” by S.W. Greene” (1931) and “Is the Longleaf Type a Climax?” by H.H. Chapman (1932) (Stewart 2002). Herbert Stoddard published a number of important early articles about the role the of prescribed burning in southern landscapes including “The Use and Abuse of Fire on Southern Quail Preserves,” published in 1931; “Use of Prescribed Fire in Southeastern Upland Game Management,” published in the Journal of Forestry in 1935; and “Relation of Burning to Timber and Wildlife” in the Proceedings of the North American Wildlife Conference in 1936. Since the 1930s, the South has produced more fire research than any other region of the United States. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database at the Tall Timbers Research Station contains bibliographic information for much of the research on southern fire science.
Prescribed fire was re-introduced to different parts of the southern Coastal Plains at different points in history. The first official prescribed fire on federal property since the fire suppression era was in 1943 in the Osceola National Forest on Florida’s Coastal Plain (Stanturf and others 2002). Prescribed fires became increasingly common after World War II. In Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp prescribed burning, which was discontinued in the 1930s, was re-introduced in the 1970s. Fire was excluded from many public lands on the Florida sandhills, such as the Welaka Reserve, for more than 50 years between 1935 and the 1980s (Myers and White 1987) when public land managers began setting prescribed fires during the dormant season (winter).
Prescribed burning was discontinued in the 1940s in parts of the Piedmont region and re-introduced in the 1970s. Nowadays, land managers on the Piedmont are using periodic, low intensity fires to restore pine stands similar to the ones that existed when Native Americans managed the territory.
Land managers began re-introducing prescribed burning to public lands in the Southern Appalachians in the 1980s. In the Southern Appalachians, low intensity surface fires are most appropriate for particular combinations of vegetation, topography, and aspect while high intensity crown fires are appropriate for other combinations (e.g., Table Mountain Pine-Pitch Pine forests).
Scientific researchers in federal, state, and private agencies are determining appropriate fire regimes by experimenting with prescribed burning in a variety of ecosystems. Similar to Indian burning practices, appropriate fire frequencies and intensities will vary depending on numerous factors. Following Indian practices, the best season to burn depends on the land managers’ goals, but tends to when plants are dormant during the fall and late winter or early spring.
Land managers across the South are addressing the problems created by fire exclusion policies with aggressive programs that use fire and other techniques such as thinning and herbicides to manage fuel levels. Federal, state, and private landowners in the South currently burn approximately 8 million acres per year for ecological restoration, hazard reduction, improvement of wildlife habitat, and range management (Stanturf and others 2002). But, burning practices vary among private landowners, county and state governments, and federal agencies including the USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
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