Peaks Ranger District Information

Fire! (and Summer in the Peaks District)

Fire season is here again in Arizona! After an amazingly wet winter, fuels have dried out, including a waist-high crop of grass in many desert areas of the state. As I write these words, crews are battling the huge Cave Creek complex of fires in central Arizona—mostly on the Tonto National Forest. These fires and a host of others are surging through the lush—but dry—crop of desert grasses.

Although we in the Flagstaff area aren’t seeing the flames, we are smelling the smoke. For days on end, the Flagstaff area was blanketed with wildfire smoke blowing in from 80 miles away. For many people, this smoke is eerily reminiscent of the smoke from the Rodeo-Chediski Fire of 2002.

The Cave Creek complex smoke carries a valuable lesson for us in Flagstaff. That lesson is this: the smoke from a forest or rangeland fire is a reminder of why we need to tolerate smoke from prescribed fires.

Prescribed fire is the single best tool we have in our kit to actually do something about degraded forest and rangeland conditions. Prescribed burning restores healthy forest conditions by keeping vegetation in balance with ecological conditions. Prescribed burning helps keep bark beetles and tree diseases in check. Prescribed burning helps create and maintain prime wildlife habitat.

The social cost of prescribed burning, though, often comes in the form of smoke. Every burning season, we get phone calls from people who are in favor of our burning, but who hate our smoke. The Forest Service understands the irritating side of smoke, but if we are to burn, we are going to create smoke.

What’s the alternative? Turning off the prescribed fire ‘nozzle’ means the forest fuels ‘hose’ is going to bulge bigger and bigger. As the pressure builds, chances are the hose is going to burst one of these days. We know a burst has occurred when we see a huge pall of smoke on the horizon.

The good news is we can do something about the problem. We must simply remember that occasional and temporary smoke from prescribed burning is part of the natural landscape.