Most forest fires are good -- and all-natural
It's unstoppable fires powered by too much fuel on the ground because of government fire-suppression policy that destroys the West's forests. The jack pine and most pines like and need fire.
This amazing description about how the jack pine, like many pine trees, relies on fire to propagate itself, and do other shockingly clever things is from 'Pine Pollen: Ancient Medicine for a New Millennium' -- a book by Stephen Harrod Buhner, an herbalist, naturalist, environmentalist, author and interdisciplinary smart guy who died on Dec. 8, 2022:
The jack pine — like many pines — has learned how to endure fire ; but more than this , it has learned how to depend on fire for its propagation. Its relationship with fire is so old and deep that it has also learned how to help generate fires wherever it grows. The tree sheds needles that are high in resin and low in water , needles that burn hot and quick. The trees are also self - pruning; they drop limbs as they grow, in part so that fires cannot “ ladder ” up the trunk into the higher branches but also to build up an additional pile of “ litter ” around the base of the tree in order to provide fuel for fires.
There is emerging evidence that pine needles also help generate the fires that pines need to keep competing species out of their territory and, in the instance of the jack pine, help propagate its seeds. As wind passes through pine needles the trees build up a tremendous static electric charge, much as we do when we rub our feet over a carpet over and over again . Once the static charge is high enough, lightning strikes are initiated that, in many instances, begin a fire in the needle and limb litter that has built up on the forest floor.
Most trees cannot easily survive forest fires, but pines have adapted spectacularly in order to do so. In most pines, the bark is layered and constructed in a series of largish flakes. You can think of it as something like a pile of children’s blocks. Place three in a row with a space between each, then lay another block on top of the space, balanced on the edges of the blocks underneath; then add another, similarly, on top of those two. This leaves air spaces in the bark that help cool the tree when fires burn around its trunk. As the outer bark catches fire, the air spaces cool the interior of the tree.
As the fire progresses that piece of outer bark soon flakes off, dropping to the ground. Other similar layers are underneath, all of which help prevent fire from getting deep into the heart of the tree. Once a fire burns hot in such a forest, many of the other trees are killed off, but the pines generally survive. A hot fire burns back all the leaf litter, and often much of the organic material in the soil, leaving a bare mineral earth behind. Pines grow well in this kind of soil, and the bright sunlight that comes in a forest where competing trees have burned off stimulates a lot of new growth.
Many pines are similar in their responses to fire and burned soil, but when it comes to the cones and seeds, jack pines are in a category by themselves.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Pine Pollen: Ancient Medicine for a New Millennium
Also excellent is this reminder that blaming the cause of the West’s sick, dying and burning forests on climate change, as so much of the media do automatically, is simplistic:
Next time you drive through the interior West, look at the density of the forests - you’ll notice that the forests are overgrown. Look at the amount of beetle kill. Look at the numbers of structures built against or in these environments. And think about how all of these things are working together to completely offset the way these forests are evolved to function. And, if you’re not familiar with the past here, go find some pictures of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, California, or even Arizona’s mountains circa the 1800s – you’ll notice that not a single one of those images looks like what it looks like today. Maybe then you’ll find some modicum of reason in my suggestion that the forests of the West are dying because of a symphony of other variables with greater effect than climate change alone.