Growing urban population, public view of forest fires as universally destructive, are increasing challenges associated with prescribed burns, says South Carolina DNR official, attributes demise of longleaf pine forests to decrease in woods-burning

Wendy Lisney

COLUMBIA, South Carolina , March 6, 2014 (press release) – The use of prescribed fire as a land management tool has deep and ancient roots in South Carolina’s heritage. However, conducting prescribed burns is becoming increasingly challenging due to a variety of factors, according to a state wildlife biologist and forester.

Johnny Stowe, S.C. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) chair of the South Carolina Prescribed Fire Council and a certified wildlife biologist and forester, said properly conducted prescribed burns (also called “controlled burns”) have multiple benefits. Stowe is also a landowner who burns his own land. Prescribed fires help restore and maintain vital habitat for wildlife, including bobwhite quail and other grassland birds, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, gopher tortoises, and red-cockaded woodpeckers. Besides the many wildlife species that require fire-dependent habitat, many plants thrive only in regularly burned forests. The demise of the longleaf pine forest and associated grasslands, which once made South Carolina one of the best quail hunting states, is tightly correlated to the decrease of woods-burning. Also, plants like the insectivorous pitcher plants, sundews, and Venus’ fly trap—as well as many other plant species, some of them rare—require frequent fire.

“Fire-maintained lands also have a special unique beauty,” Stowe said. “The open, park-like vistas of properly burned lands appeal to many of us.”

Stowe can be reached via e-mail at StoweJ@dnr.sc.gov or by calling (803) 419-9374 in Columbia. For more information on prescribed burning assistance, call your local S.C. Forestry Commission office or visit the South Carolina Prescribed Fire Council.

Prescribed fire enhances public safety, according to Stowe, by reducing or even eliminating fuel loads, thereby making wildfire on that area impossible or unlikely for some time afterwards. And wildfires are usually less destructive on areas that have been prescribed burned. Wildfires often either lose intensity or go out when they reach areas that have been prescribed burned.

Prescribed fire is also, along with hunting and agriculture, an essential part of the heritage and character of the South. Every culture that has ever lived in the South has had an ancient tradition of woods burning. The Indians transformed the Southern landscape for thousands of years with fire, and the Africans and Europeans brought with them from the Old World the time-tested practice of using fire to mold the land to their needs.

Sadly, one of the main threats to prescribed burning is the legacy of Smokey Bear. “Smokey is one of the best-known icons in the United States,” Stowe said, “and while part of Smokey’s message always has been, is, and always will be wise—that no one should carelessly or maliciously use fire under any circumstances—Smokey’s legacy is that several generations of Americans view forest fires as universally destructive.”

Another key threat to the Southern tradition of prescribed burning as a land management tool is South Carolina’s increasingly urban population. Many South Carolinians now come from backgrounds that did not expose them to rural land management activities such as burning, hunting and agricultural operations, according to Stowe. Often these folks do not appreciate the multiple benefits to society that these practices provide, nor the long-standing role that they play in the state’s natural and cultural history. Noted conservationist Aldo Leopold correctly observed that one of the dangers of not living on a farm is that you may get the idea that heat comes from the furnace and food from the supermarket.

Stowe says that one of the many public benefits of the DNR’s Heritage Preserves and Wildlife Management Areas is that they provide folks with a chance to see on-the-ground land management—how it works and why it is vital to protecting the state’s natural landscapes.

"The DNR is fortunate to have the privilege of managing the land that belongs to the citizens of South Carolina," said Stowe.

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