Prescribed Fire History

The use of fire in the forests of the United States has come full cycle. Early settlers found Indians using fire in virgin pine stands and adopted the practice themselves to provide better access, improve hunting, and to get rid of brush and timber so they could farm. Annual burning to "freshen up" southern range also became a custom. This practice, plus destructive wildfires after logging, left millions of acres of forestland in the south devoid of trees.

The increasing wildfire problem coupled with the need for a fire-free interval of several years to allow the pines to become reestablished led many foresters to advocate the exclusion of all fire from the woods. Others, however, pointed out that fire might have a place in the management of longleaf pine. Fire has been used by wildlife biologists and foresters to improve wildlife habitat and to reduce hazardous fuels since the turn of the century. The misconceptions and controversy surrounding the deliberate use of fire to achieve resource management objectives have slowly been replaced by facts. As knowledge accumulated and equipment developed, the use of prescribed fire grew.

	Land Scape Circa 1900-1930

Present Use

Fuels Management

Today prescribed fire is applied to roughly 5 to 8 million acres in the South each year - about half of which are burned to achieve various forest management objectives. Most of the remainder is for range and agricultural purposes. Prescribed burning is a desirable and economically sound practice on most southern pine sites. In many cases, prescribed burning is the only practical choice. Few, if any, alternative treatments have been developed that can compete with fire from the standpoint of effectiveness and cost. Chemical applications generally cost more than 10 times as much per acre as prescribed fire. Mechanical treatments such as disking, chopping, or raking are at least 20 times more expensive. Each of these alternatives also has associated environmental costs, such as destruction of habitat and soil erosion.

Stand Management

The information contained herein will be most useful in the lower Piedmont and Coastal Plain. Prescribed burning in these areas has been perfected by several generations of resource managers. Although the potential of prescribed fire in the upper Piedmont and mountains of the South has been demonstrated, it would be more costly and few guidelines exist. If you are interested in the emerging use of fire in the mountains, a good source of information and help is your local State or Federal forestry office.

For a thorough  history of prescribed fire history in North America see Stephen Pyne’s book Fire in America : A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Book).

Questions:  Prescribed Fire History

2.  A fire exclusion policy was welcomed by all natural resource managers.

3.  Today prescribed fire is applied in the Southeastern US to roughly