My first experience fighting a wildfire came in 1962; the same year naturalist Rachael Carson published Silent Spring, the book that jolted me and other Americans into awareness of ecological relationships and how important they are to life on earth. The following summer, as a trainee ranger in Sequoia-Kings Canyon national parks brought me a bit of insight about “fire ecology.” First, as a raw recruit in the days before Nomex, I was sent with a few other Park Service folks to hold the ridgetop fire line on one of Professor Harold Biswell’s pioneering “controlled burns” to improve brush covered ranchland just west of the park boundary. Also, in the park I noticed how all the giant sequoias had char on their trunks, from long-ago fires. Then I heard a naturalist explain that it would be hard to find an uncharred sequoia, because these great trees owed their existence to frequent surface fires. I heard talk about putting fire back in this big-tree forest.

The following summer, working in Olympic National Park brought me a little more insight about fire ecology. I learned that the gigantic coastal Douglas-firs in the rain forest had arisen after ancient fires, without which there would be only dense stands of smaller hemlock. Higher in the mountains I hiked through some old forests that were astoundingly dark at mid-day, and consequently had very little understory vegetation. Then, crossing into an old burn, I encountered a luxuriant assemblage of young trees and tall flowering shrubs.

In 1965 I enrolled as a graduate student and began to study forests in the Northern Rockies. At first, like many others I gathered that big stand-replacing fires had always been the norm. However, a few years later my new job as a forest ecologist had me examining all types of old, undisturbed forests in Montana. To my surprise about 70 percent of these mature forests had fire scars on living trees, indicating they had survived lower intensity fires in past centuries. Even a large proportion of the lodgepole pine forests had experienced these sub-lethal fires. Clearly, the role of fire was more varied and complex than I had thought.

During the last half-century, scientific knowledge of the importance of fire in maintaining forest ecosystems has mushroomed, and spread in some measure even to the outdoors-conscious public. However, most Americans including firefighters have a mixed bag of perceptions about wildland fire. Fear, loathing, and denial–refusal to deal with the inevitability of fire–often carries more weight than recognition of fire as an intrinsic part of the ecosystem. The former attitude has deep historical roots, and was expressed by the US Geological Survey scientist who made a detailed survey of the Bitterroot Forest Reserve in the 1890s: “The after effects of fires in this region are various, but are always evil, without a single redeeming feature.

Based on my experience studying fire, and observation of fire control efforts and public perceptions of wildland fire, I believe that an understanding of fire ecology would benefit the public (especially residents of the Urban-Wildland Interface), and help forest managers, fire managers, and firefighters in their work. This would also benefit forest ecosystems. I’ll explain why.