Thinking Like a Forest
Old growth forest, Dark Divide Roadless Area, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington Cascades. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
In his classic book of essays, Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold described his changing view of wolves. Initially, like many men of his era, Leopold shot wolves whenever he could. However, over time, Leopold came to see that wolves played a critical role in the ecosystem, and he urged us to think on a different timescale and to recognize that the wolf kept the deer herds in check against overpopulation and kept them healthy by removing the weak and otherwise vulnerable animals.
As he admitted, “I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.”
He concluded his essay with this insight:
“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time.”
A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Maybe this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”
The same mantra can now be applied to our understanding of the relationship between wildfires and forests. I read or hear far too often that a large blaze, characterized as “catastrophic,” has “destroyed,” “devastated,” or “ruined” the forest. Or I hear people lamenting that chaparral and grasses have replaced trees in the landscape.
It is natural to bemoan changes in the landscape. Seeing once tall green trees reduced to charred boles and blackened stumps can illicit feelings of loss. However, many tree species can live for hundreds of years, even thousands in some cases. A major wildfire, once in a few hundred years, is not the end of the forest, but a new beginning.
As in Leopold’s essay, adopting a different timescale and recognizing the critical role of wildfire in forest renewal and the beauty of the burnt forest can lead one to view such blazes as an essential element that maintains the entire ecosystem.
Many species, including trees, insects, fungi, flowers, fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals, depend on occasional episodic wildfires to sustain their lifeways. Trees like sequoia, lodgepole pine, pitch pine, Monterey pine, and Bishop pine, among others, have serotinous cones that open upon heating, showering the landscape with seeds. Other species like ponderosa pine, Jeffrey pine, and Douglas fir have self-pruning to remove lower branches that might ignite, combined with thick bark to sustain themselves in wildfires. Redwood, live oak, sycamore, gambel oak, and other trees have epicormic buds or suckers that send forth new branches and stems after a fire.
After a major wildfire, bees and butterflies often increase in numbers and species diversity. Certain birds are primarily found in high-severity burns or are at least more abundant in such sites. Trout in rivers frequently respond to major blazes with additional growth and abundance. Large mammals such as elk, moose, and bears find more browse and other foods in recently burned areas.
Wildfire is like the wolf Leopold described, that keeps the forest ecosystem functioning. Trying to control or suppress wildfire is analogous to killing the wolves that keep the forest ecosystem functioning.
Without being too anthropocentric, one can say that many species live in mortal fear of green forests more than the occasional large wildfire.
When we propose “active forest management” or legislate logging and prescribed burning like the Fix Our Forests Act and other forest manipulation measures under the guise that we are “fixing” or “saving” the forest, we fail to see the landscape from the forest’s perspective.
Like Leopold’s admonishment, we need to start thinking like a forest, and on a time scale of forests. Only then can we appreciate the magic that wildfire can work in transforming the landscape and sustaining the forest ecosystem.
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