Be careful what you wish for: the legacy of Smokey Bear

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org F 60 years, Smokey Bear has successfully championed fire suppression in the United States, but his success has come at considerable cost. Indeed, it could be likened to the British victory over American rebels at Bunker Hill in 1775, about which it was said, “A few more such victories would surely spell ruin for the victors”. We examine the historical roots and consequences of US wildfire suppression policy. In addition, we critically assess current efforts to ameliorate the effects of a century of wildfire suppression. Finally, we offer an alternative approach to wildfire management that places less emphasis on suppression. Decades of aggressive wildfire suppression have caused a number of profound ecological changes in some of the nation’s forests. First, the composition of some forests is shifting toward less fire-tolerant species (Arno and Allison-Bunnell 2002). For example, in the western US, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var glauca) and grand fir (Abies grandis) are encroaching upon stands previously dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa; Agee 1993). Second, fire exclusion has allowed the density of many stands to increase (Figure 1), particularly in forest types that have historically experienced frequent, low-intensity fires. Third, the suitability of forests as habitat for a wide variety of wildlife species has been altered, as a result of changes in canopy cover and the composition and productivity of understory communities. Ecological restoration treatments in northern Arizona, for example, doubled the diversity of the butterfly community and increased the total abundance of butterflies by threeto fivefold (Waltz and Covington 2004). In addition to direct ecological effects, wildfire suppression results in a buildup of forest fuel, which in turn contributes to more extreme fire patterns. More intense fires can change the species composition of a stand (Hessburg and Agee 2003) and destroy seed banks (Busse et al. 2005) in some forest types. Increased fuel levels, along with drought conditions and warmer temperatures in much of the western US (Westerling et al. 2006), have also resulted in an increase in wildfire suppression costs (Calkin et al. 2005). Federal wildfire suppression expenditures in the US exceeded $1 billion for the first time in 2000 and did so again in both 2002 and 2003. These record-high costs were accompanied by record levels of area burned (Figure 2).