A Positive Effects of Forest Fires

In North America, Native Americans used fire to herd deer and bison and to keep forests from spreading onto the grasslands. These man-made fires and fires ignited by lightning usually burned only underbrush and a few small trees and promoted new plant growth. This young, healthy growth attracted animals. Forest fires also thin forests, causing less competition among plant and animal species. This reduced competition makes the surviving species healthier because they have an abundant supply of nutrients. Burnt out stumps are important for cavity-nesting birds. Tree trunks that fall into steams provide a habitat for fish and aquatic insects, and debris and ash release nutrients into the water. Burned trees that fall to the ground release nutrients into the soil. Forest fires can also kill soil pathogens and change soil properties to allow the absorption of more water. Some species, like the Giant Sequoia tree, need forest fires to reproduce. The Giant Sequoia tree opens its cones and release seeds only in the extreme heat produced by fire. Also, the seeds need the bare soil and lack of competition that results from a fire to grow. Author George Wuethner writes, “Fires can regarded in the same manner as predators. Just as wolves maintain the fitness of a deer herd, fire helps to maintain the fitness of the forest ecosystem”.

B Negative Effects of Forest Fires

Forest fires that grow to large proportions can have devastating effects on both the environment and human health. The forest fires that raged throughout Southeast Asia last year are a testament to forest fires’ damaging effects. Journalist Louise Williams writes, “The early explorers of Borneo found a tropical canopy so dense that from a distance the tops of the trees looked like smooth fields of grass. It was said an orangutan could travel from the south to the north of the vast island without descending from the treetops. The forest lay like a moist band round the equator. These were the cool, clean lungs of Asia”. Now, tens of thousands of acres of rain-forest are ablaze. The location of these series of forest fires are particularly damaging to the environment. The fires are raging though peat forests, the most fragile part of the tropical ecosystem. The peat forests produce large amounts of oxygen for the entire world to breathe. The peat forests also counteract global warming by using up carbon. Faizal Parish, executive director of Wetlands International in Malaya, believes that the damage done to the Asian peat forests may result in a five percent increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Experts in Britain believe that the fires that destroyed about seven point four million acres of forest released more greenhouse gases than all the cars in Europe in an entire year. Indonesia’s environmental minister issued a statement that said that it will take more than fire hundred years for the burned forests to recover. However, there have been no plans to reduce the timber exportation in Asia, and the logging industry is the main cause of the fires.

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