wildlands

The results of last month's annual Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge Bird Survey indicate that birds may colonize reforested areas much faster than experts had predicted. This year's surveyors spotted all five of the common native forest birds and four endangered forest birds within sections of the refuge that two short decades ago had been treeless areas dominated by non-native plants and animals.

Then: Southern California burns, 2008 Even for the literal-minded, it was hard not to lump the conflagrations on Wall Street with those in Southern California. The meltdown of 401(k)s with the street signs at Sylmar. The frantic, ever-escalating press conferences and bailouts of any significant credit institution with the desperate deployment of ever-greater masses of engines and helitankers, all equally ineffective.

Megafires appear to be breaking out everywhere, from Provence to Greece, Mongolia and the Russian Far East to New South Wales and San Diego.  But hectare for hectare, the most explosive fire scene on Earth belongs to Iberia, specifically Portugal and Galicia.  In recent years most of northern Portugal has burned over.  The 2006 fires not only surrounded Coimbra, the ancient university town, but burned every pocket of parkland within it. Portugal?  This is a long way from the heartland of wildland fire management.  But the distance is not simply one of geography: the wildfires roaring over the

In 2005 the USGS published a map of large fires (burns over 100 acres) from 1980-2005. It overlays with eerie fidelity the cartography of the public estate, or in the Great Plains with mixed landscapes of extensive grazing and public lands. In brief, America has extensive wildland fires because it has extensive wildlands. What are the options for managing wildland fire? After a century's experience, four strategies suggest themselves. They apply to those lands that are both public and fire-prone.