The use of prescribed fire as a land-management tool has deep and ancient roots in South Carolina's heritage, but conducting prescribed burns is becoming increasingly challenging because of a variety of factors, according to Johnny Stowe, S.C. Department of Natural Resources representative to the South Carolina Prescribed Fire Council.
Properly conducted prescribed burns (also called "controlled burns") have multiple benefits, said Stowe, S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist, forester and heritage preserve manager. Stowe is also a landowner who burns his own land.
Prescribed fires help restore and maintain vital habitat for wildlife, including bobwhite quail and other grassland birds, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, gopher tortoises, and red-cockaded woodpeckers. Besides the many wildlife species that require fire-dependent habitat, many plants thrive only in regularly burned forests.
The demise of the longleaf pine forest and associated grasslands, which once made South Carolina one of the best quail hunting states, is tightly correlated to the decrease of woods-burning. Also, plants like the insectivorous pitcher plants, sundews, and Venus' fly trap-as well as many other plant species, some of them rare-require fire.
"Fire-maintained lands also have a special unique beauty," Stowe said. "The open, park-like vistas of properly burned lands appeal to many of us." While it may seem paradoxical, prescribed fire also enhances public safety, Stowe said. Prescribed fires reduce or even eliminate fuel loads, thereby making wildfire on that area impossible or unlikely for some time afterwards. And wildfires are less destructive on areas that have been prescribed burned. Wildfires often either lose intensity or go out when they reach areas that have been prescribed burned.
It is much better to deal with a predictable amount and direction of smoke at a known time under prescribed conditions in a planned fire that reduces forest fuels, than to deal with a wildfire on that same land, a wildfire that may burn under dangerous weather conditions such as in a drought and in low humidity and high winds.
Prescribed fire is also, along with hunting and agriculture, an essential part of the heritage and character of the South. Every culture that has ever lived in the South has had an ancient tradition of woods burning. The Indians transformed the Southern landscape for thousands of years with fire, and the Africans and Europeans brought with them from the Old World the time-tested practice of using fire to mold the land to their needs.
Sadly, according to Stowe, one of the main threats to prescribed burning is the legacy of Smokey Bear. "Smokey is one of the best-known icons in the United States," Stowe said, "and while part of Smokey's message always has been, is, and always will be wise-that no one should carelessly or maliciously use fire under any circumstances-Smokey's legacy is that several generations of Americans view forest fires as universally destructive."
Another key threat to the Southern tradition of prescribed burning as a land management tool, according to Stowe, is South Carolina's increasingly urban population. Many South Carolinians now come from backgrounds that did not expose them to rural land management activities such as burning, hunting and agricultural operations. Often these folks do not appreciate the multiple benefits to society that these practices provide, nor the long-standing role that they play in the state's natural and cultural history. Noted conservationist Aldo Leopold correctly observed that one of the dangers of not living on a farm is that you may get the idea that heat comes from the furnace and food from the supermarket.
Land fragmentation, or an urbanizing landscape, goes hand-in-hand with our urbanizing society. Many fire-maintained tracts that once were rural and isolated now abut heavily traveled roads, and commercial and residential "development." Smoke on roads and other sensitive areas are perhaps the biggest hurdles that prescribed burners face.
Also linked to our urbanizing society is the fact that land managers themselves are less likely to come from rural backgrounds, where they formerly gained experience in the judicious use of fire. As veteran land managers retire, the ones taking their place often have less on-the-ground woods-skills than their predecessors. When that trend is coupled with the necessity of burning in a decreasingly rural landscape populated by a high percentage of urban folks, conducting prescribed fires often becomes, or is perceived to be, inordinately difficult.