The Birdwatcher Hill Fire - letting small fires burn -- Spearfish Lake Tales

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Subject: The Birdwatcher Hill Fire - letting small fires burn

Author:
Shadowhawk

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Date Posted: 04:13:22 12/14/15 Mon

Chapter 7:

Fighting forest fires is a specialized business, with no small number of conflicting philosophies and interests involved. Generally speaking, the DNR�s policy was to let small fires of natural causes burn themselves out to lessen the fuel loading in the woods and allow natural succession to take place. Fire is, after all, one of the forces of nature, and it�s part of the way that forests renew themselves. Andy didn�t particularly agree with that policy, for he knew very well that small fires, if left uncontrolled, have a way of turning into big ones. He admitted regularly that the �let it burn� philosophy was at least partly driven by fire-fighting budgets that had been getting tighter and tighter each year, since other things seemed to have a larger demand on the limited amount of state dollars available. That meant that he only had limited of resources to throw at a fire.

Actually, according to the article in Scientific American that I have read, fighting every small forest fire makes for accumulation of fuel (for fuel loading, as it was said), and for gigantic fires that get out of control.

Though controlled burn of small fires would be a better idea, if resources allows...

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[> Subject: Re: The Birdwatcher Hill Fire - letting small fires burn

Author:
Jon
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Date Posted: 23:54:27 12/17/15 Thu

>Fighting forest fires is a specialized business, with
>no small number of conflicting philosophies and
>interests involved.

FWIW, "The Daily Reporter" out of Milwaukee had a story about Wisconsin DNR will decommission fire watcher towers:

DNR fires up plans to decommission old lookout towers (UPDATE)
By: Alex Zank, alex.zank@dailyreporter.com December 17, 2015 2:11 pm

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced plans Wednesday to discontinue using the fire lookout towers it has scattered throughout the state after finding that they cost more than they're worth.