Is traditional management a panacea for problems associated with large blazes, as implied? Furthermore, we should question the notion that high severity blazes are somehow “unnatural” and ecologically “destructive” (Hutto et al. The question is not whether Indian burning occurred, but rather to what extent it influenced the landscape as a whole and precluded the occurrence of large mixed to high severity blazes or what some people term “mega” fires. Most “evidence” for the widespread influence of indigenous burning is based on oral tradition which is notoriously subject to variation of interpretation and misinterpretation.ĭID INDIGENOUS BURNING PRECLUDE LARGE BLAZES? No evidence is offered to support these claims.” For example, Mann (2005 361) provides a map that shows essentially the entire pre-Columbian NACP, including the lightning-riddled Gulf Coast and Florida peninsula, as ‘dominated by anthropogenic fire’ or with ‘widespread forest clearing for agriculture’. ![]() 2014 assert: “Despite ample evidence that lightning fire was a primary ecological driver in the NACP, the myth persists that most fires before the arrival of Europeans were set by Native Americans. In short, we believe that the case for landscape-level fire use by American Indians has been dramatically overstated and overextrapolated.” We believe that it is time to deflate the rapidly spreading myth that American Indians altered all landscapes by means of fire. A myth of human manipulation everywhere in pre-Columbus America is replacing the equally erroneous myth of a totally pristine wilderness. It is common now to read or hear statements to the effect that American Indians fired landscapes everywhere and all the time, so there is no such thing as a “natural” ecosystem. Now, there seems to be an opposite trend…. 2005 noted: “For many years, the importance of fire use by American Indians in altering North American ecosystems was underappreciated or ignored.
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