Historical and Current Fire Management Practices in Two Wilderness Areas in the Southwestern United States: The Saguaro Wilderness Area and the Gila-Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex
Hunter ME, Iniguez JM, Farris CA. 2014. Historical and Current Fire Management Practices in Two Wilderness Areas in the Southwestern United States: The Saguaro Wilderness Area and the Gila-Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex. US Department of Agriculture. Fort Collins, CO
Fire suppression has been the dominant fire management strategy in the West over the last century. However, managers of the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex in New Mexico and the Saguaro Wilderness Area in Arizona have allowed fire to play a more natural role for decades. This report summarizes the effects of these fire management practices on key resources, and documents common challenges in implementing these practices and lessons for how to address them. Fire patterns have changed with adoption of new policy and practices, as shown by updating historical fire atlases. These two wilderness areas provide examples of how fires can effectively be used to restore landscape-scale forest structure and increase resiliency to wildfire. However, successfully restoring landscapes will require patience (decades) and an understanding that fire will inevitably result in some undesired effects. Current fire managers face a set of increasingly difficult conditions: heavy fuel loads, warming temperature and prolonging drought. It is no longer a question of whether a given tract of forest will burn or not; rather, the decision managers must now make is, when and how forests will burn, knowing full well that suppressing fires now only postpones the inevitable. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the public and future generations to make greater use of fire as a restoration tool to create more resilient and resistant forest ecosystems
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hunter, Molly; Iniguez, Jose; Farris, Calvin
- Date of Issue
- 2014-08
- Publisher
- US Department of Agriculture
- Units
- SAGU
- Keywords
- Aldo Leopold Wilderness, Gila Wilderness, managed wildfire, prescribed fire, Saguaro Wilderness, Southwest