Controlled burns could aid ridge
Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial
January 4, 2004

Deliberately setting fires to ensure the health of a forest sure seems like a strange tactic, but it can work. A local partnership of environmental groups, landowners and government officials are about to make that point to the public.

And this is all to the good of protecting the splendid Shawangunk Ridge in Ulster County. That's because small, carefully controlled fires effectively eliminate buildup of flammable materials, such as dead trees and branches. One of the unintended consequences of fire suppression has been the accumulation of too much fuel -- underbrush, fallen logs and dead timbers -- that could lead to much bigger fires.

Prescribed fires can get rid of this fuel and, in the process, restore nutrients to the soil.

People tend to associate these strategies with the great logging tracts out West. In fact, controlled burns have been used in New York, including the Mohonk Preserve on several occasions, and in Massachusetts. There, the Nature Conservancy burned about 650 acres, and similar fires are planned for a conservancy preserve in Dutchess County this year and points in the Taconic-Berkshire mountains.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has set stringent requirements for such burns. Fire teams must take into account weather conditions, and they must make sure their crews are properly trained.

Strategy gets results.

Those requirements are essential. While prescribed fires can be a sound way to manage the forests, such burns have gotten out of control on occasion.

The government learned a lot from those mistakes, including a fire near Los Alamos, N.M., in 2000. Park officials there shouldn't have started the burn during dry and windy conditions, nor without enough firefighters on hand in case of trouble.

By and large, controlled burns have been highly successful. Federal land-management agencies have set more than 30,000 prescribed fires, successfully reducing fuel loads on about 8 million acres. Only a few fires spread beyond their designated boundaries, and even these rarely resulted in any significant damage.

The local partnership is getting training and some money from the Forest Service's National Fire Plan and hopes to begin burning at Sam's Point Preserve, in the Shawangunks, in about two years. It would be a very small burn, about half an acre of land in a low-level area. That land is managed by the Nature Conservancy. This project could be a model for other points along the ridge.

The idea has merit. But the partnership will have to work in earnest to build the public's trust before going forward with this important strategy to protect the forest.