Fire – both natural and anthropogenic – is an inevitable and often
essential component of ecosystem processes and landscape management in
many parts of the world. The deliberate and accidental use of fire
defines us as a species and has helped shape our evolutionary path.
Today, the prescribed use of landscape fire is not without controversy
and while debates rage in many densely populated fire‐prone regional
settings, we are also coming to appreciate the global significance of
interactions between fire regimes in fire‐prone biomes (eg boreal,
Mediterranean, and modified tropical forests; savanna woodlands and
grasslands) and the Earth–climate system.
Long‐standing debates beset the complex world of prescribed
fire management: what is the natural or historical fire regime (ie the
combination of frequency, seasonality, intensity, and type of fire) for a
region or ecosystem, and what relevance, if any, may that have for
contemporary land uses? How do we reconcile often competing management
demands for ensuring public safety with maintaining ecosystem services
and cultural and biodiversity values? How do we operationally deliver
effective fire management in increasingly densely populated, fragmented
landscapes and increasingly risk‐averse, regulated, and litigious
societal settings? How do we know if such practices are delivering
against multiple desired objectives? Is there any capacity to be
adaptive, especially with changing land‐use, climatic, and biotic (eg
invasive flammable plants) conditions?
The seven papers in this online special issue of Frontiers
explore this complex management environment in two parts. First, we
look at the development and challenges associated with prescribed
burning as practiced in fire‐prone southern Europe (Fernandes et al.), North America (Ryan et al.),
southwestern Australia (Burrows and McCaw), and South Africa (van
Wilgen). The latter two papers, in particular, also address fire
management in spectacularly biodiverse systems. Contemporary prescribed
burning practices in all four regions have evolved, only since the
mid‐20th century, from northern European‐influenced fire suppression
policies, providing a legacy of enhanced fuel accumulation and increased
density of woody vegetation that has amplified the fire hazard in
fire‐prone systems. Today, despite inter‐ and intraregional differences,
common challenges to the wider application of prescribed burning relate
more to societal risk aversion and misunderstanding, a lack of
supportive policies, and inadequate funding (especially for adaptive
management systems) than to a deficiency in fundamental and applied
fire‐ecology knowledge. To summarize the findings of these respective
papers, it seems that the status of prescribed burning is still in its
infancy in southern Europe, technically well‐informed but lacking
broader community acceptance in North America, well‐advanced and mostly
publicly supported in southwestern Australia, and technically
well‐informed but operationally ineffective in South Africa's biodiverse
shrublands. Common to all is the need to inform and engage with local
and regional communities, especially given that prescribed fire
management ultimately involves numerous (often unpalatable) trade‐offs
and decisions.
The second part of the issue presents three case studies
illustrating innovative prescribed burning approaches to a few seemingly
intransigent management problems – conspicuously, two of those studies
draw heavily on traditional knowledge systems. The first (Nigh and
Diemont) challenges the stereotypical view that all swidden (or
“slash‐and‐burn”, “shifting cultivation”) agricultural or agroforestry
practices result in highly degraded ecosystems. No one can deny that
unregulated burning associated with much contemporary agricultural or
forest plantation practice in tropical and subtropical systems is
unsustainable, but it is important to remember that many societies have
developed highly sustainable practices over many generations. This paper
examines the Maya milpa agroforestry system that, in one form or
another, was once widespread throughout Mesoamerica. The second paper
(Russell‐Smith et al.) describes the application of traditional
Aboriginal burning practices in north Australian savannas to the
successful implementation of a commercial “savanna burning” carbon
emissions mitigation program that also provides local employment and
biodi‐versity benefits. Savanna fires contribute as much as 10% of
annual total global carbon emissions and, although intentional burning
is officially prohibited in most countries containing savanna systems,
fire is a requisite management tool in many local livelihood
applications. The third paper (Twidwell et al.) describes an
important, and still developing, fire management initiative in the US
Great Plains, specifically the formation of community‐based prescribed
burning cooperatives that are charged with reclaiming grasslands from
invading shrubs. The program resonates with other community‐based fire
management initiatives around the world, with the aim of empowering and
giving responsibility back to local communities.
We are not suggesting that these seven examples adequately
cover the field of prescribed burning – far from it – but we trust that
they provide an informed overview of the complex challenges associated
with contemporary prescribed fire management.
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