Fire and Water

An interesting essay on fire and fire-fighting policies:

Today’s fires do not burn as those of the past did; they have to accommodate more than a century of human-wrought changes. Nor is it obvious that they will yield the expected outcomes in biological goods and services. After all, with the climate changing, the past is no longer an adequate guide. The sudden reliance on large fires in the public domain is comparable to economic shock therapy in Eastern Europe. Fire is not ecological pixie dust that can by itself magically transform the degraded into the wondrous. It can only act on whatever is present. We are long past the time when every burned acre must be labeled “destroyed”; we are not yet to the point of recognizing that not every acre burned is “enhanced.” Turning fire management over to fire likely belongs in the realm of faith-based ecology.