The Rancher is on our local fire department and a casualty of his love for fire is that I too have learned a lot about fire. This time of year we talk A LOT about fires, where the hot spots are, how fast they are moving, destruction they cause, and all sorts of enlightening insights about firefighting that I never knew. There is always one thing that we come to-
Fire is really complicated and really simple.
The complicated part is… obviously… complicated… and not what I want to get into here.
The simple part is this. Fire needs three things- oxygen, fuel, and an ignition. Obviously, there is no way that in a wildfire we could ever contain or control the fire’s access to oxygen. In some ways we can or can TRY to have control over the source of ignition. We can try to be smart about camping with fires, sparks from shooting or exploding targets, controlled burning and fireworks. But sometimes people aren’t smart or despite their best efforts, things get out of control and fires happen. Even if we could put a stop to all fires started intentionally or unintentionally by people, there will still always be a chance of a natural fire starting. In our area, most wildfires are started by lightning.
We are forced to admit that we can’t completely control the ignition source.
Fortunately it’s a different story when it comes to fuel. Fuel in the path of a wildfire, grasses, brush trees, cannot be COMPLETELY taken out of the picture, but it can be significantly reduced. Actually, it’s the best option when it comes to being able to prevent or control a wildfire.
Now begs the question, if we want to try to limit the fuel in the path of the possible wildfire, how would we go about it? Honestly, I think we already know a handful of good and useful practices that have proven themselves in the past that we really need to take hold of. My first answer is grazing. Graze the fuels, grasses and weeds and brush and whatever else we can, to keep them at a manageable size. Cattle, sheep and goats have proven that their grazing rangelands can decrease potential fire fuels and slow the spread of wildfire. Grasses are the fastest and easiest means for a fire to spread.
Grazing the wild lands and ranges is actually a pretty terrific win-win. The cattle have good feed on the range. It’s true, it’s a great win for our ranchers. But the other winners of this deal are practically EVERYONE else. Because reducing fuels, reduces a chance of fire or at least helps keep fires smaller and easier to put out, and doing that keeps our skies clearer, air cleaner, and wild lands safe and beautiful for EVERYONE and ANYONE to use.
Doesn’t that sound like a win-win? And isn’t that a good thing? Even, a GREAT thing?!
Recently I watched a fire on our own rangeland. On a hot, dry August day with dry lightning in the forecast, it was no surprise that a wildfire started. This area of the range was rocky, spotted with cedar trees, and had been pretty well grazed by our cattle.
As I watched the progress of the fire, I was sort of in awe of its power. The fire was terrible and, honestly, incredible to see how it moved. It was just like watching water from a ditch move across the ground. It never was deterred. It never slowed. It never hesitated. Anywhere there was a path for it to go, it went. The areas with taller, thicker grasses were the places that it burned with greater vigor. But in those places that the grasses were grazed, it slowed, giving the firefighters more time to gain control.
My experience isn’t the only one out there that demonstrates the benefits of grazing when it comes to wildfires. Over the last few years, California has been devastated by rangeland fires. In May of 2019 there was a wildfire near Los Angeles that threatened Ronald Regan Presidential Library. As a means to protect the library, they contracted with a local goat rancher to come in and graze down the area to reduce the fuels. The fire came in raging but slowed to a crawl once they came up on the grazed area. In fact, the firefighters said that slowing the fires was key to giving them enough time to get ahead of the fire and save the library.
There is a lot of push back for grazing. A lot of people feel that grazing is disruptive to the course of nature both because farm and ranch animals don’t belong on wild lands and because it is trying to control nature rather than allowing it to takes it own course and should be left alone. True, grazing can seem somewhat invasive. And that can be considered a real bummer. But we have seen that the fallout of wildfires is more destructive than any grazing herd could ever cause, not only to the land but to communities and families near and far. Something even more terrible comes when we don’t take proactive measures like grazing. Mother Nature’s answer to fires is to let it go. Let it go until it either runs out of fuel (which means that it has burned EVERYTHING in its path up) or it has come upon a natural fire break.
This may have been ok hundreds and hundreds of years ago but this isn’t a suitable option anymore. As cities, businesses, and interests have changed and developed our communities, businesses and homes have spread across the country and many are now in the paths of wild fires. Not stopping fires and not preventing them allows too much devastation. A totally hands off approach to taking care of our wild lands may seem like a good option to keeping nature natural, but we have a greater responsibility to provide a safe place for people to live, work, play and raise their families. In fact NOT getting rid of the fuels that we can seems like we are setting ourselves up for disaster. Is it too bold to say that it seems irresponsible or even reckless to let those kinds of things go without being maintained?
Fire is really complicated and really simple. The simple part is that we have means to reduce the devastating effects that come as a result their unrelenting power. Grazing can play a big part in protecting the beautiful country we are all blessed to live in. While there is so much we CAN’T do to prevent fires, there are some things we can do. Let’s do them.
