Benefits of Fires

[dieselroe]

 

Hey everybody, Just want to get some opinion going for everyone to read about on the benefits of fires. I know its tough to swallow, but fire is natural and if anything its tough to avoid as we homestead just about everywhere in the world. My condolences to anyone experiencing any loses.

 

I believe there has been some great hunting in the burn areas of yesteryear and think it educational to talk about the effects of fire. Minerals that were extracted from the ground by plants and then eaten by animals are redistributed by the chemical process which occours as biological material is burned. This means a few things, more minerals for antler growth, better growth for plants, and room for new vegetation. The Units effected by the fire are my favorites, so I certainly can say I was a little disapointed at first, Heck I was shooting at trukey in 27 just a few months prior to the fire. But we should talk about the positive effects now that its said and done.

 

Oh yeah, my favorite thing may be that I can glass in an area that before I couldn't even walk through. That was a thick, thick forest.

 

Burn areas are now producing some very nice animals.

 

Pleaese feel free to post any scientific data, benefits, or negatives, so all can understand this better.

 

Thanks!

[.270]

natural fires are just as important as weather. the countryside needs them for a lot of reasons. but when you've suppressed fires for a hunnerd years, you can't just decide to not put them out anymore. if you're gonna manage something, you have to manage it all, not just the easy parts. and manmade fire, especially the intentional ones like we saw in the southeast part of the state lit off by illegals and the wallow fire, lit of by idiots, ain't needed. we toured the wallow fire last week. at least they saved the arrow tree. some places are really greening up nicely. others are getting flooded to the point of devastation. some of the canyons coming off escudilla look like log yards at the bottom from all the dead logs washing off the mountain. hannagan creek has been gutted from the run off and lack of vegitation to slow it down. pretty rough to look at a lot of it. Lark.

[BeardownAZ]

We(people in general) allowed politics to dictate wrongly how the forest should be managed and dealt with even though most of us here probably have more sense than those that allowed it to come to this. So when these idiots started these fires, mother nature took over and cleaned house, even to our horror and heartbreak, her way. But it will be back even though alot of us wont get to see it again the way we liked it. I just try to look at what good can come from it eventually. Hopefully my kids will get to see alittle bit of it that way it was intended.

[Coach]

There's no doubt we'll see ugly scarring from this fire for years. We'll also see deer and elk herds taking advantage of the new growth. It's a strange paradox - what forest looks best to us, is not always the best for its inhabitants, and what looks like a catastrophe to us, might be the perfect opportunity for resilient life to thrive.

 

Sometimes, it's just a matter of swapping out the lenses we look at life through, to see another perspective. All good things come with a price, and all bad things carry with them an opportunity. It's up to us to find both.

[dieselroe]

As populations grow, its inevitable that we will be turning more and more of the earth’s surface into concrete and cities, and towns. This is one of the reasons we put so emphasis on these fires as being devastating. Deforestation from a global perspective makes fire a bad thing because there is less forest each day. But no matter how a fire starts (even humans area a natural part of this world) fires burn because they can and its part of the geological processes that make earth what it is. For instance, there used to be an ocean here in this part of the country but we don't fret about the ocean being gone. We're more thankful for the sediment and other benefits that helped produce the place we NOW live in. This is my favorite hunting area and I just want to talk about the benefits that will come from this. It’s already gone, time to see how we can best manage the burn area now.

 

Ryan

[Red Rabbit]

Some things I rarely heard mentioned about the supposed "good" of an intense fire is the soil erosion and how the many many years it takes for the soil to form, the proliferation of invasive weeds, and the seemingly impassible tangle of deadfall on the floor in a few years after the fire.

[WISH I was on the MOUNTAIN]

I still can't get over all of that good country burned up there. I was talking to an avid fly fisherman friend of mine who was saying that even the fish population on the streams and rivers up there, especially black river, is getting hit hard by all of that nasty burn/fire retardant run off. But I do agree that those burned areas will produce some large antlers in the future. I hope we can pass some legislation here in the future that will actually protect our forests. I would have liked to see a DC-10 sent out IMMEDIATELY to stop the fire in it's tracks, wilderness area or no, instead of letting it burn all that forest and peoples' homes!

[dieselroe]

Great reports about the hunting so far in the burned area. Lots of rain so the ground has sprouted up really nice.

[ForkHorn]

Lark is right. Fires would be a completely natural and great thing for our forests. They act as a forest cleanser. However, in the past 100 years or so we have gone from 40-60 ponderosa pines per acre to 400+ due to fire suppression. That means when fires do occur they burn super hot and scar everything.

 

Our forests used to burn naturally every few years. It was part of the cycle.