How Prescribed Burns Can Help Restore Eastern US Forests

The Climate Desk collaboration has a story on Yale Environment 360.

It is an apocalyptic scene that has become familiar in recent years. Black smoke rises from the land, turning the late winter sun into an orange. The smell of burning grass and trees is so strong that it can be smelled on the wind.

The landscape on Maryland's Eastern Shore has been charred black as far as the eye can see, with a few licks of flames still working their way through small trees and fence posts.

This is not a disaster caused by climate change. It is an example of good fire, and Jeff Kirwan is thrilled by it. The fire will allow sunlight to hit the ground, stimulating marsh grasses to grow faster. Kirwan hopes to sequester carbon underground and build soil to keep the marsh above the surging water, as sea level is rising faster here than anywhere on Earth.

Three-square is a type of native marsh grass that the Muskrats like to eat. Muskrats, which feature prominently in Indigenous creation stories in this part of the world, have long been prized here for their meat and fur by Native and non-Native people alike.

Kirwan is a professor at Virginia Tech. He is a member of the Nause Waiwash Band of Indians and he often returns to the shore in the winter to set traps. Kirwan remembers his father showing him how to burn reeds as a child.

Kirwan is not the only one who wants to see more flames. A growing movement of scientists, land management agencies, and Indigenous groups is working to return fire to marshes like this one and to fire-adapted forests and grasslands throughout the United States. In the eastern US, where fires burn less land than in the West, fire has upended the environment. oaks, hickories, and pines are no longer the dominant trees in the forest due to species that support less wildlife. The risk of damaging blazes has been raised because of the overcrowding of trees in the woods.

It is hard to express the extent to which our natural areas have been altered by taking away fire.

The fire promoter faces stiff challenges. Few people are trained to burn. The weather, government regulations, and public hostility to fire are some of the reasons why fire is not allowed on the land. Dramatic images of climate change- fueled megafires in the western US and elsewhere are making it hard to overcome a long-held view of fire as unnatural and threatening.