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| During
Euro-American settlement, as forests were cleared for
agriculture and lumber, many pioneers were affected
by wildfires. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, entire
towns were destroyed and many lives were lost. Wildfire,
whether caused by lightning or by humans, came to be
seen as an enemy. One writer of the time called the
fight against wildfire "the moral equivalent of
war".
Aggressive fire suppression became
the rule in the early 1900s. In the drier forests
of eastern and southwestern Oregon, even forest managers
who had practiced "light burning" to protect
large trees stopped all use of fire.
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Firefighting did not have much
impact at first. But by the 1950s, as technology improved,
and government agencies devoted more resources to
firefighting, the average amount of land burned by
fires each year was dramatically reduced.
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| Historically,
the Douglas-fir forests west of the Cascades did not
burn very often - perhaps every few hundred years. Because
of the rapid growth of logging, it became mandatory
in 1917 to burn "slash" left after timber
harvesting. Slash
burning removes large accumulations of limbs and
unmerchantable trees in order to reduce the danger of
wildfire. It is still widely practiced, but after 1968
it was no longer mandatory, largely due to concerns
about the negative effects of smoke reaching urbanized
areas. These days, logging slash may also be chipped
on-site. |
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