2002

Redwood National and State Parks
Redwood Uses Prescribed Fire to Manage
Cultural Landscapes

At Redwood National and State Parks, prescribed fire is used to manage cultural and historical landscapes. Situated at the extreme northwestern end of California’s Coast Range, the parks were created to protect and preserve the areas old-growth coast redwood and mixed conifer forests, and the cultural footprints on the landscape. There are also many human stories to tell.

Redwood National and State Parks contain over 4,300 acres of naturally occurring prairie (grassland) balds and oak woodlands in an area known as the Bald Hills, that were maintained by American Indians prior to Euro-American settlement. Central to the guiding philosophy of the parks’ Bald Hills Vegetation Management Plan (1992) and Fire Management Plan (1995), is the concept that natural and human-set fires, along with other naturally occurring phenomena, have led to the plant communities we have in the parks today. Human-set fires along the coast and in the interior Bald Hills kept these areas open for thousands of years, and ultimately drew American settlers who were looking for open farming and ranchlands.

Four American Indian cultures with ties to parklands — the Yurok, Tolowa, Chilula, and Hupa peoples — represent a diverse indigenous presence. They continue to maintain traditional arts, ceremonies, subsistence methods, and distinct languages. The archeological record, extending back several thousand years on parklands, includes sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These resources are particularly important because of their direct association with the contemporary American Indian community, which continues to rely on these resources for spiritual, cultural, physical, and economic sustenance. Park landscapes also represent more than 150 years of land use by non-Indian people, including exploration, mining, settlement, fishing, ranching, and logging. This includes the Lyons Ranches Rural Historic District in the Bald Hills, covering 100 years of sheep ranching over three generations in one family, and their ties to the Indian community.

In the Bald Hills and coastal prairies, these cultural landscapes come together, yet are threatened by the same thing — the removal of natural and human-set fire from the landscape. Periodic wildfire and fires set intentionally by local tribes once burned away encroaching Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce and other trees not well adapted to fire in the open prairies. Regular burning in oak woodlands helped eliminate competing trees from the understory, keeping tanoak groves — a major food source and staple — healthy and productive. Even early settlers and ranchers continued “broadcast” burning to keep prairies open for their herds, and to keep springs and creeks from drying due to choking brush, until it was outlawed in the early 1900s. As a result, these biologically and culturally rich landscapes are in danger of being lost to encroachment.

Since 1992, the Prescribed Fire Program at Redwood National and State Parks has successfully put fire back in the prairies and oak woodlands at the landscape level. Currently, there are 28 prairie and oak woodland burn units in the parks totaling about 4300 acres. The prescribed fire season extends from mid-August to mid-November. During this time, the Vegetation Branch of the Resource Management and Science Division usually targets up to a thousand acres or more for burning, with the intention of burning all of the units on a three to five year rotation. This time frame best approximates human-set fires by both American Indians and early settlers in the region, and accomplishes several park management objectives. These include: control and elimination of exotic plant species; eliminating encroaching Douglas-fir in prairies and oak woodlands; restoring native plant species diversity; and maintaining or improving native plant to exotic plant species ratios. In addition, a fire effects monitoring crew is used to assess the effectiveness of prescribed burning in meeting stated objectives.

In the 2002 prescribed fire season park staff originally planned to burn 738 acres in nine units. Due to an unusually dry spring, summer, and fall, only five units totaling 330 acres were burned. Leonel Arguello, Vegetation Branch Chief of the Resource Management and Science Division, said “flames carried into areas that have never seen fire since the inception of the program” and, several units “burned exceedingly well to the edges of the fireline. Overall, given the many hurdles we faced, I believe we had a very successful burn season.” A stated long-term goal of the program is to, “use fire as a process to restore the prairie, oak woodland, and coniferous forest to the state that existed just prior to Euro-American contact and influence.” While achieving this goal may be difficult, Redwood National and State Parks has had great success at restoring fire to help manage and maintain the prairies and oak woodlands in a state similar to that which existed just prior to contact and influence. Using prescribed fire in this way Redwood National and State Parks is preserving cultural landscapes and viewsheds, while maintaining healthy, biologically diverse ecosystems.

Redwood National and State Parks
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