Our relationship with fire
As forest research shows, the Rocky Mountain region’s natural history reveals a pattern of fire occurrence extending from time immemorial, meaning before human memory, with drastic curtailment in the early 1900s when wildfires began to be suppressed.
The landscapes we see today are very different than pre-1900 as a result of fire suppression. They are much more susceptible to large severe wildfires.
Lightning ignites thousands of wildfires each year. Indigenous people used fire to increase forage for themselves and wildlife. Early European settlers viewed fire as destructive but had limited ability to stop it.
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