The Forest Service is conducting prescribed burning in the mountains just southeast of my house. It’s a bit jarring to stand on my back deck and see huge arms of smoke reaching into the sky from the forests so near me. Such burns are a forest management tool intended to:
- Reduce hazardous fuels, protecting human
communities from extreme fires.
- Minimize the spread of pest insects and
disease.
- Remove unwanted species that threaten species
native to an ecosystem.
- Provide forage for game.
- Improve habitat for threatened and endangered
species.
- Recycle nutrients back to the soil.
- Promote the growth of trees, wildflowers, and
other plants.
All good stuff, to be sure, but I still watch
warily, thinking about some of my friends and how their “prescribed burns”
ended up torching fences, adjacent fields, and a random shed now and then.
Smoke in the Mountains
—Mitchell Hegman
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