Fire in the Ozarks
Spoiler Alert! This ends with a great movie.
Where there are forests there are fires. For thousands of years, humans have created forest fires by accident or on purpose, shaping the Missouri landscape. While lightening sparks an occasional wildfire, human activity today causes about 99% of fires. Native Americans, we now know, used fires to their advantage. In 1750, Father Vivier described the effect of this burning:
… wherein trees are almost as thinly scattered as in our public promenades. This is partly due to the fact that the savages set fire to the prairies toward the end of autumn, when the grass is dry; the fire spreads everywhere and destroys most of the young trees.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, traveling through the Ozarks in 1819, described a landscape of prairies, oak savannas and oak-pine forests shaped by fire. He didn’t know that Native Americans had used fire as a tool for promoting hunting. Lacking ways of controlling the burn, Native Americans would allow a wildfire to spread for miles, widely suppressing the growth of trees. The result was large areas of grasslands and savannas, providing food for bison, elk and deer, and openings in the forest for sun-loving fruits and berries.
Studies of dendrochronology have shown a link between population density and the frequency and intensity of fire over the last four-hundred years. While sparsely populated areas had fires every ten to thirty years on average, more populated lands recorded fires every one to five years. As groups of Native Americans were driven westward and the population of fire-using Euro-American settlers expanded, fire frequency actually increased in some areas.
They began seasonal burning of the cut over woods to encourage fresh grass for grazing, as well as ridding the land of ticks and snakes. This practice suppressed the regrowth of timber and woody plants, further depleting the leaf litter and organic matter that formerly covered the forest floor, intercepting and holding rainfall. Attempts to grow crops on old forest land resulted in more rapid runoff and erosion. With a loss of shallow groundwater recharge, many of the perennial springs dried up, providing yet another challenge to the subsistence of the settlers.
It wasn’t until the first quarter of the twentieth century that the government stepped in to manage and protect Missouri’s degraded forests. In 1925, the Missouri Legislature appropriated $10,000 to create a Department of Forestry, but the governor promptly vetoed the bill. The idea of protecting forests as public land might have died except for the creation of the Missouri Forestry Association, a coalition of private citizens and wood-using industries. This organization raised funds from public subscription and hired a forester for fire prevention education. He drove around in a Model-T nicknamed the “Showboat,” hauling a trailer with a generator and motion picture projector, showing the film, Trees of Righteousness, all around Missouri. In the days before widespread electrification, the mere presence of a movie in the woods brought out large curious crowds. The 1925 silent film is combined in three reels of 20 minutes each and you can see it on Youtube at this link.
The federal government
intervened in the protection and management of forest lands in 1911 with the
passage of the Weeks Act. This allowed the government to purchase land to set
aside in National Forests in order to protect watersheds and wildlife habitat
and provide for sustainable wood production. The Mark Twain National Forest was
created, now encompassing over one million acres in the state. Modest
investments in firefighting equipment and fire towers promoted early detection
and suppression of wildfires. With the
creation of the Missouri Department of Conservation in 1937, a state agency
also began to work toward better management of Missouri’s forests.
A sizeable part of the Bull Creek watershed is in the Mark Twain National Forest, especially in the headwater areas. Private landowners still hold onto much of the cleared bottomland with its more fertile soils. In Linn Township, where our property is located, 70% of the land is owned by the Forest Service.
Enhanced fire control measures in the 1960s, along with robust reforestation programs promoted by the Conservation Department, led to a significant regrowth of the state’s forests. The accessibility of publicly-owned forest land has created great opportunities for hunting, hiking, camping and in some designated areas, off-road vehicle recreation. To some extent, the availability of these activities has led to an increase in the human population of Linn Township.
We have also re-discovered the value of fire as a management tool for maintaining high-quality prairies, glades and even woodlands. Prescribed burns (a controlled fire with a defined purpose) can foster improved wildlife habitat, plant diversity, and even timber production. Controlled burns are even used for reestablishing oak woodlands as part of TSI (Timber Stand Improvement), removing shrub undergrowth to allow sunlight to reach the forest floor and nourish the new young oaks.
I would highly recommend turning off the sound and watching Trees of Righteousness at this Youtube link.
