Fire Ecology, Why We Need More Fire with James Agee, PhD — WildFed Podcast #146

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Dr. James Agee knows fire and is one of the nation's leading minds, voices, and advocates for its ecological use on the landscape.

He’s an emeritus professor of forest ecology at the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington, Seattle. Before that, he was a forest ecologist and research biologist for the National Park Service in Seattle and San Francisco. Agee received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973. He is the author of more than 100 technical reports and professional papers in forest and fire ecology, and he’s got extensive experience with fire research and management in the Pacific Coast states.

Today Dr. Agee makes a cogent argument for why — despite the incredible wildfires we’ve experienced in recent years — we are actually suffering from an under-sufficiency of fire on the North American landscape. Though these wildfires have taken many lives and caused unprecedented damage to people's homes, work, and health, they’re caused, in part, by many decades of intentional fire suppression. While fire suppression, at first glance, seems like an obvious choice, counter-intuitively, it's actually out of synch with North American ecology, which developed in tandem with both wildfire and intentionally set and managed fires used by the continent’s indigenous population for everything from warfare, to forest management to improving harvest and hunting grounds. The evidence is written into the life history of fire-adapted plants native to North America, and the evidence of these managed fires is a part of our ethnographic and archeological record.

But, the Eurocentric mind, set loose upon this continent had other designs, and wild or intentionally set fire wasn’t part of that. So, for decades, fires were suppressed even as fuel, once routinely burned off in large-scale fires, or gathered for use in campfires, has been allowed to accumulate. The result has been changes to the landscape that have diminished ecological productivity while at the same time becoming a recipe for disaster-level fires once they exceed our ability to suppress them.

Experts like James Agee see fire as integral to a healthy, well-managed landscape, though — unfortunately — the public, policymakers, and the circumstances created by our modern culture of land ownership and use are slow to accept or allow this time-proven method.

When we think about what really makes human beings different from other animals, we inevitably arrive at the domestication of fire. Ironic then, that we are destroying our own ecosystems, in part, by depriving them of it.

Yet, this is the very situation we find ourselves in. And it’s a topic we'd like to continue exploring here on this podcast. And who better to lead us into this conversation than Dr. James Agee. Someone who’s spent their career studying fire ecology.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/146