Re-Examining “Wilderness” in the Era of Megafires

            We’re a week out from the autumnal equinox. Fall is nigh! We’re nowhere near finished with wildfire season, but I’m grateful we’ve had fewer unhealthy air quality days this year than last.

            The end of summer always feels bittersweet. Leisure slows to a trickle, the sun dips lower in the sky. And yet now we can look forward to slightly cooler temperatures creeping in.

            The weekend of August 20th-21st I enjoyed a weekend of hiking in Lassen Volcanic National Park. I’d visited twice before, but this was the first time I’d seen the place since the Dixie Fire tore through the entirety of the western side. The carnage was visceral.

            Call me a tree-hugger. I take no offense. Trees offer us shade, water retention and regulation, soil stabilization, carbon sequestration, habitat for many bird and mammal species, roots, shoots, nuts, and seeds to eat, as well as various materials and fibers with which to build and craft. And they’re beautiful! And they’re good for the soul. Forests are complex systems that use a network of roots and underground fungi (a symbiotic mycorrhizal network) to share nutrients and transmit chemical messages regarding stressors like drought, pests, and wildfires between trees (https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/exploring-the-underground-network-of-trees-the-nervous-system-of-the-forest/).

Just like humans, trees live longer, healthier lives in interconnected forests than in isolated urban plots. Even the neurons in our human brains are dendritic, shaped like trees. We do not give trees and forests nearly enough credit for all of the benefits they provide for us, just by the very nature of their existence, our co-adapted biological dependence upon them, and the fantastic structural similarities we share in our Creation.

Imagine my horror seeing the most severe burns, charred blackened trunks, spindly like burnt matchsticks still tall, imposing window-makers. A tree immediately off the trail to Upper and Lower Twin Lakes was bleeding bright red sap from the heartwood, scarlet fresh like human blood gushing from an artery, dripping down the charcoal. I grew up in New England, maple syrup country, so I understand the protective pest-fighting properties of sap. But I honestly had no idea sap could be bright red. It was disturbing. I thought perhaps the sap had soaked up some red flame retardant, but I learned through a cursory internet search that sap from the heartwood is naturally stained red with tannins. So many dead trees, burned to a crisp, still bleeding nearly a year after death. My heart was so heavy seeing that my hiking pace slowed by half.

I was a National Park Ranger for five seasons, so a key portion of the Wilderness Act was drilled into my ethos performing land stewardship as I had understood it in my early twenties. “A wilderness […] is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean […] land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions” (https://wilderness.net/learn-about-wilderness/key-laws/wilderness-act/default.php).

Now, I agree that no one should possess private property right on top of the most beautiful landscape features in the entire country (and arguably the world) but I’m starting to question the hard boundary constructed between Wilderness and Humanity. Mechanically thinning and prescribed burning our forests at large is the best course of action to preserve these fire-adapted landscapes for future generations without total devastating loss in high severity wildfires exacerbated by a century of overgrowth and a glaring reality of aridification.

We have several ways to move forward.

We can adopt a culture of fire-hardening and remove as much overgrowth as possible.

We can petition the government to reconsider wilderness management such that fuels reduction becomes a top priority, possibly requiring numerous addendums to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that allow for new management strategies as climate change alters all ecosystems.

And we can choose teamwork and kindness, refusing to resort to violence in a world already ravaged by loss and destruction.

Don’t add to the mass death. Add to the nurturing of all remaining life.