WEBVTT - What's the deal with controlled burns? 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.880 This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace. 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:06.640 Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery of 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.119 professional blogger, an online store, it's all possible with the 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:14.200 Squarespace website. Go to squarespace dot com and set your 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:19.040 website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:27.720 House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.040 I'm Josh Park. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.760 over there, and there's some coffee. Let's see a few posters. Uh, 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:41.160 there's a Beasley brand storage thing. You're getting. You're getting 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:43.920 some of that Beasley catch come in your way? Maybe 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.800 what was that all about? I hope it's Beasley, it 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.040 could also be Bisley. I don't know. You know, I 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:52.160 got a listener mail from someone who went to get 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.480 a Bond side tree in Boston after they were inspired 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.880 after our episode, and the dude she's like, have you've 0:00:59.880 --> 0:01:02.200 been busy? Think? I was like, this week we've been 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:04.600 like people want Bonds eye trees. The phone has been 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.760 off the hook. No way. Yeah, we could be getting 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:10.840 some of that bonds ie scratch. We definitely should be. 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.240 We're getting nothing. Japan should be giving us money. Man, 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.200 what's their monetary unit again? Is it still the end? 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:22.559 The Japanese yen? We we need many in coming our way. Yeah, 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.679 soon many yet, and they're gonna try to flash some 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.840 numbers that you know you'll be like, wow, that's a lot. 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:30.639 Just remember it's about a hundred yend to one dollars. 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.240 I'll just ten. I'll let you negotiate that one. I 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.360 think it's ten now, Yeah, I remember, uh. And the 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.120 other night I turned on the television and Karate Kid 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:46.560 was on that just moments before the Wonderful Bonds I seen. Yeah, 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:48.840 I thought you took a picture of your television and 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:52.280 I put it on Instagram, our instagram s, y s 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:56.040 K podcast. Yeah, we're trying to take more pictures that 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:00.600 what you do share ourselves. Yeah. Uh, but this isn't 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.200 about one. No, I've got one more shout out though. Um. 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.040 There's a dude named Aaron Sits who remember when we 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.960 had our horror fiction contest years back, and we said 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.359 that anybody who was a part of it, if they 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.160 ever published anything, we give him a shout out in perpetuity. 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.960 In perpetuity, and Aaron Sites published something. He published a 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.920 short story collection called The Andrew Jackson Stories, UM. And 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.880 he says that it was published by Lockjaw magazine. And 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.280 he said they're about Andrew Jackson about as much as 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.600 Richard Broad against trout fishing in America's about trout fishing. 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.160 That means nothing to me. Well, it wasn't really about 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:39.480 trout fishing. Um. But the the it's a slim little book. 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.000 He sent it to us. I haven't read it yet, 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.280 but he swears up and down that it's awesome. So 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.160 we're gonna go ahead and take his word for it. 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.000 But congratulations Aaron Sites And if you want to go 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.000 get your hands on Andrew Jackson's Stories, go look it up, 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.880 go to the Lockjaw magazine side I would imagine. So 0:02:56.080 --> 0:03:01.120 that's done, and now we can talk about Controlled Burn. Yes, 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.919 good band name, Control Burn, Yeah, depending on like maybe 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.440 if it was like a soft rock group. Yeah, yeah, 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.320 they're like a eighties wedding band, Controlled Burn. Good evening 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:16.440 we were Controlled Burn. And this is by E. L 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:23.600 O right or Loggins and Messina. Yeah, I'm not dissing 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:25.800 l O. By the way, I love No Llo was great. 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:33.320 Did you see Kenny Loggins on documentary now Parter yeah, 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:35.400 which episode is that? It was the two part one 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.119 about them? What were the what? What did uh? What 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.320 was their thing? Oh? They were a band? They were Um, 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.280 oh that's right, that was the band. Yeah yeah, yeah, 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:46.320 it was like the greatest band name ever. It was 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.200 I want to say California Chrome, but that was that Racehorse. 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.560 I don't remember what they were called. Was it Controlled Burn? No? 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:56.440 But that that was a good one. That two parter. 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.760 Great show. I love that show. Uh, there's a new 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:06.080 season coming out right, Uh they should Okay, so um 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.520 again we're talking about Control Burning, not a band, an 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.640 actual thing. Yeah. And this ties into our Wildfires episode yeah, 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:19.080 which we did um years back. Yeah. Um, but Chuck, 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:24.440 I always loved the opportunity to talk about Oh here 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.880 we go and here's what now? Alright, so um, it 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.520 wasn't until about fourteen on one. The book by the way, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.560 if you're new to the show, Josh's long uh stated 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:39.320 favorite book so long, and you've talked about it a lot, 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.600 at least fifty sixty times. And I would have read 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:44.000 it by now if you hadn't have talked about it 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:45.760 so much. You don't even need to now you know 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.800 the whole book so fourteen one. One of the premises 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.520 of it is that they're like, our understanding of UM, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:57.240 Native America in North and Mezzo and South America prior 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:01.320 to Columbus coming over is like just totally wrong. There 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:05.280 were way more people, they were way more advanced then UM. 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:09.039 Anthropology and archaeology has long given them credit for the Internet. 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:14.760 Pretty much they did, UM. But it wasn't until like 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.839 the early two thousands that this idea of the noble 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:22.839 savage who treaded lightly on the on the ecosystem, on 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:27.560 the environment started to crumble, right and UM. We started 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.640 to realize that a lot of the features, what what 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.919 the early explorers thought were natural features of North and 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:41.520 South in Mesoamerica were um actually really well managed ecosystems, 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.880 right um. And one of the ways that Native Americans 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:50.080 used or managed ecosystems was through fire. But again there 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:52.520 was this idea that Native Americans just had no idea 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.440 what they were doing with anything. So whenever archaeologists up 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.479 until about two thousand, two thousand one or two, the 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.240 late nineties maybe and it time they came across evidence 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.000 of like a fire and it seemed like the Native 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.240 Americans had said it they just assumed that either the 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.520 Native Americans had said it to amuse themselves because they're 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.280 big dummies, or because a campfire got out of control 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.640 because they're big dummies. But this is what they came 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.840 up with their like, oh, well, they clearly wanted to 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.400 set some fires for fun. They couldn't have possibly had 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.560 any any point to it. But then more and more 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.560 investigation has shown like, no, actually, not only did they 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:31.120 know what they were doing. Like, if you step back 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.599 and look at North America, the whole continent was a 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:38.279 managed set of ecosystems, and one of the ways they 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.880 did it was through fire. The other thing that interested 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.839 me too was depending on the the explorers and the 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:49.320 Europeans and the settlers that came over to to North America. Um, 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:52.120 some of them came and that was not anything new 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.240 to them. It turns out that using fire to manage 0:06:55.279 --> 0:07:00.080 ecosystems is almost universal. Basically, yeah, I mean so of 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.560 the reasons they might have done it. Of course, these days, 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:04.440 one of the main reasons we do it is to 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.279 prevent forest fires from spreading, which we'll get to. But 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.760 back then, uh, they would use it to improve the 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:18.320 foraging conditions for free ranging cattle. Uh, increased visibility, access. 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.400 There were all kinds of great reasons to burn things 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.840 in a controlled way. Yeah. Supposedly the early explorers didn't 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.320 really think about it, but the historians went back and 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.000 looked at it. That the explorers who used to say, like, 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.760 you can't you can't get through the forests in North America. 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.080 We're talking about swamp land like lands that wouldn't burn. Ye, 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.600 but you could drive like a car through a forest 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:45.200 in like Ohio or something like that. Although there's swamps 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:48.240 in Ohio, a non swampy part of Ohio because of 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.240 the use of fire. The swamps in Ohio, Yeah, there were. 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:56.840 They filled them in and built to ledo over it. So, uh, 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.600 you were talking about the um when Europeans came upon 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.040 the scene. Um, it's really interesting. I read this article 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:08.720 called the Historical Foundations of Prescribed Burning for Wildlife colon 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:13.240 a Southeastern Perspective Beautiful by A. Sydney Johnson and Philippe Hale, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:15.880 and it was I think it was an academic paper 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.440 or something, but it started dawn on me when they 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.800 were talking about the founding of America. Why we ended 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.440 up like we ended up. Um, it just kind of 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.520 all came together for me. I love reading stuff like 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.720 that that connects dots that weren't connected before, and this 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.280 was a simple dot I should have connected before. But basically, 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.800 in the northeast of the United States, it was largely 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.360 settled by people from the southern lowlands of England, people 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.680 that lived in cities and people that had not for 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.120 the most part, lived on farms and didn't have a 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:52.319 lot of experience with agriculture, and certainly not with prescribed burning, 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.880 which is another name for a controlled burn. Uh. And 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:00.000 then in the south, particularly the southeast, we were more 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:04.200 populated by people from rural areas of the UK and 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.679 Scotland and Ireland and western England. They had a lot 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.200 of experience with farming. And then I started to think, oh, 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.760 wait a minute, that all just makes total sense. That's 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.960 why the Northeast became industrialized. Why the South we're a 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:21.840 bunch of yokels. They were agrarian, and uh, it just 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.120 sort of it was very obvious thing, but it just 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.640 sort of like coalesced in my mind. Yeah. I knew 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:31.880 that part already, the industrialization aspects of it. But one 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.559 of the things that coalest for me was wondering how 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.960 much of the Civil War was driven by by rivalries 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:43.720 that go back to England and Scotland and Ireland rather 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:47.040 than you know, the just the context of North America 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.840 in the US. Absolutely, because I think for the most part, 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.439 once people came over here, they did things like they 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:59.080 did them were there, which makes sense. Like Scarlett O'Hara's 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:06.240 father had Irish brogue. Remember, No, Yeah, her dad he had. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.520 I'm pretty sure he didn't. I'm losing my mind. R. Well, 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:11.599 it's been a while since i've seen that movie. H 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.400 I'm pretty sure I believe it. But it makes sense. 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.800 And like you said, maybe the attitudes came along with that. 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.240 Maybe that carried over into how people felt about each 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.040 other pre Civil War. Yeah, I'll bet it. But the 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.480 point of all this is that up north there was 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:33.360 fire suppression that was the key driver, right, Like they 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.880 would they would try to keep fires from breaking out 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.160 under any circumstances. Yeah, and don't get confused, because a 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.520 suppressing fire is a controlled burn. Fire. Suppression is putting 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.520 out fires. So maybe we should just say up north, 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.920 they didn't think that starting fires on purpose was smart. Yeah, 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.400 they were like and down south they said no, no, no, 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:55.079 this is We've been doing it in England for years. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:57.400 They were like fire, Yeah, fire is a good way 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.840 to manage things. Yeah, and that's how the sation was divided, 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.280 at least at first, and then the Civil War happened, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:09.640 and interestingly, UM the Yankees came down and said, hey, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.640 this old plantation, UM will make a really great hunting preserve, 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.840 and I'm going to buy it now that I own 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.520 this enormous tract of land in the South, I'm a 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.640 Yankee and we don't believe in fire, so I'm gonna 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.120 make sure no fire ever breaks out here, even though 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:33.079 everybody's been using UM fire techniques for generations. Yeah. And interestingly, 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:38.080 to the fire techniques that the founders in the South 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.800 used where the same kind that the Native Americans in 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:44.720 the area used, so like they're on the same page, 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.559 thousands of miles apart, and basically came and kind of 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:50.680 started doing the same thing or kept doing the same 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.400 thing that Native Americans were doing. And what makes that 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.800 even more interesting is that UM It's using fire is 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:02.840 not universal to ecosystems like you. There's different techniques or 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:05.280 not using it at all, depending on the type of 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.760 ecosystem you're dealing with. Well, yeah, because in the in 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.400 the UH Southern Lowlands, apparently the forests were like fire 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.000 sensitive hardwoods and spruce tree. So it's sort of depended 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.160 on what kind of forest you had, right, I guess 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:25.120 there's weren't as flammable, right, or inflammable, which is a 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.520 word I think we should just get rid of entirely. Inflammable. Yeah, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.400 it means the same thing, is flammable, but it sounds 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:35.800 like it means the opposite. It's just a stupid word. Really, Yeah, inflammable, 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:38.679 I've never heard of it. Well, that's great, that's all 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.640 the more reason to get rid of it. That's crazy. 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:47.520 Inflammable means flammable. What's the point, man? What a dumb language. 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:52.760 So um, the point of the whole thing is that 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:58.400 fire is a natural feature of a living, thriving ecosystem. 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.480 It's it's something humans terrified of, but on the on 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:06.479 the environmental level, on the ecological level, it's a necessary 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:11.480 component to keep any or most ecosystems healthy. Right, And 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.520 some groups of people understood this. The people who ended 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.480 up running the show after the Civil War did not 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.120 believe this, and it actually has had a very large 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.520 impact throughout the twentieth century in the United States, which 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:28.080 were just now overcoming. We can actually thank one guy 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:32.640 for changing the attitude toward fires and using them for 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.120 um wildfire management. And we'll talk about him right after this. 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.560 All right, So you tease the name drop it did 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.800 right before the break uh in Well, there was there 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.600 was this one particular northern landowner that came down south 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:09.240 and brought up a bunch of plantations. Name was Henry 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:14.880 Bedell and he hated fire. Uh. Fire had burned his 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:19.120 favorite horse maybe you never know, Um, so he hated fire. 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.200 He was appalled at the idea of burning land. And uh, 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:24.160 but other people, you know, like we're saying, in the South, 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.400 so now it's a good thing. So in uh they 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.760 commissioned the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey, which was 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.960 precursor to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and uh it 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.560 was headed up at the time by guy named Herbert L. Stoddard, 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.560 who was the name that you teased. And Stoddard actually 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.600 the thing that kicked it off the most was that 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.280 these guys who um, who bought these huge plantations and 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:50.720 turn thement and preserves, they like to hunt quail, and um, 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.520 they right, and they noticed that the Bob white quail 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.480 population was declining every year and they had no idea why. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.280 So they brought Stoddard it in and Stoddard became a 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.840 Bob White quail expert. Well he already was. Oh, he 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:07.680 was already that's why they brought him in. Yeah, he 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.520 was the He wrote a book about it, and um, 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.600 this guy was awesome. He he helped found the literally 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:17.440 helped found a profession of wild life management. Right, the 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.200 whole field is like basically this guy. Yep, he wrote 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.960 like some legendary books that are still used today. Uh. 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.800 He was like literally the first critic of industrialized agriculture. 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:30.400 He's just this sort of champion and a Georgian, a 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.440 transplant to Georgia. Yeah, yeah, I think he things from Chicago, 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:36.840 but did a lot of work here for sure. Yeah. 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.400 So he Um, he starts looking into the quail situation 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.760 down here and he's like, well, you need to burn him. 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.880 There's your problem. You guys have a woody undergrowth problem. 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:51.160 And I looked into this and Bob white quail requires 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.600 some of the most complex habitats you've ever heard of. Right, 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.720 So they thrive in areas where you've got what's called 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:04.480 woody cover, which are dense shrubbery that's like mostly woody. 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:09.160 That they can use is what's called umkovie headquarters. It's 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.040 like little escaped patches, and they need them all over 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:14.480 the place. But in addition to this, they also need 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.640 food sources, so they need like crops of a certain variety, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:19.920 and then they also need some grassy areas. And they 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.400 need all this stuff in certain proportions. And if you 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.960 have the proportions right, which apparently they did, the quail 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.160 populations thrive. But if you have too much of one thing, 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.480 then the coil populations diminished. And that one thing that 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.920 had that had grown up was the woody undergrowth. And 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.000 the reason the woody undergrowth was allowed to grow up 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.840 was because the Yankees came in and stopped using fire. 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.760 That's right, and that interesting. So it was all because 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.840 these rich guys, um, these rich industrialists who wanted to 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.800 hunt quail were like, war's all the quail, and they 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:55.400 hired the government to come look into it. And this 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.520 government guy came in and was like, oh, here's the problem. 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:00.880 You guys need to set this on fire. But the 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:03.680 thing is is no one listened to him. Well, no, 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:06.960 he had he had a few people that um I 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:08.760 mean they hired him for his expertise, so he had 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.919 a few people that got on board. But he fought 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:16.080 for many many years. UM. Like the history of control burning, 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:20.240 it wasn't until post World War two is when it 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.639 started to catch on a little bit, and then in 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.960 the fifties and sixties it became more commonplace. But it 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.240 wasn't until ninety one that the U. S. Forest Service 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:34.000 had their very first symposium on UH on prescribed burns, 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:36.240 and that's what really turned the tide. But this was 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.560 the nineteen twenties, and it took all the way till 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.760 the nineteen seventies for it to become like completely accepted 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.159 that's the right way to do things. And in the 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.560 meantime we had a lot of unnecessary wildfires well. And 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.200 one of the reasons too was apparently all the forestry 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:56.040 um workers in the South were from the North UH 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:58.840 and so they had these bad experiences in England and 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:02.320 elsewhere with like devastating fires that kill people in wiped 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:06.040 out villages. And apparently they also had this German influence, 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.720 like a protectionist influence from Germans in forestry school that 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.080 was taught to them that way, so they were they 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:14.800 were doing it all wrong. Well, one of the other 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.560 explanations I saw for why the forestry services like, no, 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.480 you can't burn down here is because um one I 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.760 guess one of the spoils of winning the Civil War 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.359 was the North came down and just clear cut the 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.879 south of its pine and they figured, well, the pine 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.040 forests have been so devastated for what for timber uh huh, 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.800 that we can't let any fire happen or else. No, no, 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.720 this pine is never gonna recover, so we really can't 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:43.320 do any burning now. And yeah, so eventually everybody started 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:48.800 listening to Stoddard and um. Now we use fire um 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.879 pretty much everywhere in the United States. And there's a 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.840 couple of reasons to set fires on purpose. And the 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.919 coolest one is that if you set fires on purpose, 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:03.040 you actually prevent wildfires down the down the line. Yeah. 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.280 And and you know we're not talking about like completely 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.800 burning down every tree in the forest. Yeah, they're mainly 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.080 burning uh that that you know, the stuff that will 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:16.440 catch everything on fire, like the the understory, the underbrush, 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.280 the dead leaves, dead branches, stuff on the ground, right, 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.920 and if you if you burn that on purpose, you 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:26.879 burn out the fuel for again a future out of 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:30.040 control wildfire. One of the other things you do is 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:34.879 you open up the canopy, right, So you're burning out 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:38.200 some trees, but for the most part, the older, more 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:43.000 established trees can survive. And since that canopies opened up, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.440 more sunlight can come through. And when more sunlight can 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:50.320 come through, you have smaller trees that can start to grow, 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.960 so there's more reproduction. Actually, yeah, and and if you're 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:58.040 listening thinking, well, this all sounds great, but uh, doesn't 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.840 that release a ton of carbon emissions in the air 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.760 when you're burning things? And if you're burning thousands and 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.400 tens of thousands of acres a year on purpose, aren't 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.240 you just adding to the problem? No, I was being KOI, 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.760 But the answer is no. Well it depends, so it's 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:17.399 a little bit of both. I thought this was a 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.920 little strange for the way that this was parceled out. 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.879 So on the one hand, in this article it says, nope, 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:30.919 Actually they've done studies and the the large established trees 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.520 that can survive a controlled burn actually lock in more 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:39.639 carbon um in the long run than uh, So the 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.840 control burn releases less than say, a wildfire that's burning 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.640 out a control that burns those trees and unlocks that carbon. Right. 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.760 And then later on in the last like section of 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.760 this article, the authors like, Yeah, that really just depends 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.679 on what kind of forest you're talking about. In some forests, 0:20:57.680 --> 0:20:59.760 it doesn't make a difference at all. And and yes, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.000 and in that case it's bad for the for the environment. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.400 I don't know about that last part. I'm the same. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.600 I just think it was weird. Well, I think it's 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:14.320 cool though, Like what you just said, the the large 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.200 trees capture that carbon, and if you burn off the 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.200 small stuff underneath what you said earlier, it's gonna open 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.280 up that canopy and let those big trees grow bigger. 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.400 And uh, that's gonna you know, that's gonna be good 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:30.000 in the long run, short long term gain for a 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:34.679 short term carbon emission output. Right. So and then also 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.800 in addition to opening up that canopy allowing more sunlight 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:42.560 so reproduction can happen, there's actually they found, um some 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.560 species of trees that depend on fire to reproduce. In 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:51.359 chief among them is the giant sequoia in Yosemite. And 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.040 I think the sixties, Yeah, the sixties. Um, they were like, 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:59.600 the sequoias aren't reproducing. What's going on? And somebody, a 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.240 guy in aimed um. Dr Richard Hartsfeldt said, I think 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:05.600 it has to do with fire. We stopped doing fire, 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.639 and we want to do fire, so let's do some fire. 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:11.520 And they're like, shut up. Hearts felt you can't even 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.040 talk right. And he's like, I'm gonna go burn some 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:16.280 stuff and prove you guys wrong. So he started doing 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.639 some tests. He did, he'd do fire tests, and um, 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:25.280 he found that when fire was applied to a sequoia forest, 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:30.840 the sequoia cones opened up and their seeds could germanate. Yeah, 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:34.440 and the big daddies are very fire resistant. So they 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:37.440 were like, I'm a little hot underneath in the undercarriage, 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:40.119 but it feels nice. But it feels pretty good, and 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:43.159 I'm gonna stand strong. But what I'm gonna do, like 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:45.520 you said, is I'm gonna open my cones. Uh. And 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:47.520 the other thing it does is, you know, when you 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:52.280 drop seeds, if you have a woody understory and understories 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:57.520 another word for that under brush under what'd you call it? Uh? 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:01.959 Under cover under coverage? What do you cover for a 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:04.560 Bob White coil. That's what the Bob White coils call 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:07.560 it amongst themselves. All right. So imagine a seed dropping 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.199 from a pine cone from a hundred feet up and 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:12.840 the ground is covered in leaves and sticks and things. 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:16.080 That seed might fall on a pile of leaves six 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:19.040 inches deep and just sit there, just sit there and 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.240 be like I'm unfulfilled. A ka. It never makes contact 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:27.760 with the soil where it needs to be to establish roots, right, 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:32.240 or even if it did, the sunlight is being blocked 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:35.520 out by that understory. And fire solves all those problems. 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:37.960 It does. Because fire pops that pine cone open, the 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.360 seeds come out. Uh, they are in the newly burned ground, 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:45.560 which has a lot of carbon fertilizer now in the 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.960 form of ashes and um, lots of sunlight coming through 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:51.480 because the understoy has been burned away. So fire is 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:55.080 the greatest thing ever. Pretty amazing. Um. But again we 0:23:55.160 --> 0:24:00.119 said before, it depends on the ecosystem, right. So, especially 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:03.120