From: jardine@rogerswave.ca (Markus Eymann)

Subject: Feedback on Current Features

Re: Whyfiles feature on the beneficial effects of forest fires, in particular, controlled burns.

This is an important and neglected topic and I was happy to see so much well organized information on it. However, I noticed a conspicuous gap in the information. There is nothing about the practices of North American natives relating to controlled burns as an ecosystem management tool. It is well known that plains Indians burned grass lands to keep the land productive so that it could support large populations of buffalo.

There are many other less well known examples including; burning of berry bushes that live between trees in West Coast rainforests to ensure berry production, burning of shrubs used in basket making to encourage growth of thin straight branches useable for basket weaving, burning of west coast hemlock forest to encourage succession by cedar (used for everything from textiles to canoes), burning of eastern U.S. deciduous forests to keep large stands of oak and hickory free of weed species. No doubt there are many other examples, I feel that research of this information could save modern prescribed burners a lot of trouble re-inventing the wheel. Much of this information has been gathered by the Society for Ecological Restoration particularly by Dennis Martinez.