Thoughts on fire from Pete Devine


Wildland fire is something that YI has dealt with many times over years, fortunately without truly dire consequences. As naturalists, of course, it’s something we accept/embrace/deal with like snow, night, cloudy days, sweat and that we can’t fly like birds or swim like fish. It’s how the world is, let’s study that and appreciate what we gain. I’m sure that this big picture approach has helped mountain people here adjust to the stresses better than folks who may have been mislead that all fire is evil.

Every YI student learns something about fire ecology during their week here. We have an evening program on fire. We teach kids that (below 8000', anyway) the Sierra has a ‘fire forest’, analogous to a ‘rain forest’, but developed by, dependent on and characterized by regular fires. Everyone’s comfortable with the rainforest label – let’s get used to the fireforest concept, too.

As you’ve discovered there are plentiful resources for teaching about wildland fire, much of it from USFS. It’s worth having this stuff in an outdoor school resource library. Programs might look at getting representatives from their local land management agencies to come do a staff training on the subjects of fire ecology, fire management, fallout from this season’s fires, etc. Ask agency people, especially resource managers in charge of rehabilitation/restoration about how your staff or students can contribute to the land.

There is great potential for valuable service learning/environmental stewardship work dealing with fire. Kids can be put to work with a few tools for an hour, and

YI has looked into assisting the NPS with data gathering on fire weather, fuel conditions, and fire effects monitoring, but we haven’t come up with lessons/projects that are both workable for our students (mostly middle school) and useful to NPS. It is worth it for programs to look into long-term data gathering/resource monitoring projects; there is federal money out there that can support this kind of partnership on fire management.

We have done some useful work with students removing fuel from around buildings adjoining the forest, and maintaining handlines around the “wildland-urban interface” of our Crane Flat campus, and some prescribed burn boundaries. Some gloves and rakes are all you need; we get the rakes from NPS fire crew.

After fires, exotic plants can get established in disturbed areas. We’ve had good success with students pulling mullein, bull thistle, etc. as part of weed management/habitat restoration efforts under NPS oversight. Placing waterbars, to control erosion is also something kids can do. Everyone wins, on many levels.

Maybe we need more on this at the Malibu conference… (note: we already have at least one workshop on fire ecology planned and are looking for more! If you have some ideas, projects, lessons, restoration or research projects to share, consider presenting a workshop at the Statewide Conference - and get 50% off conference registration fees if you sign up by 2/14/04! Call for Presenters)


Pete Devine
Education Manager - Stewardship
Yosemite Institute
PO Box 487
Yosemite CA 95389
209/379-9511, extension 15
fax: 209/379-9510
www.yni.org