The Associated Press
DULUTH, Minn.- The area of Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness where a wildfire burned more than 1,300 acres this month is naturally prone to fire, and some say it is best to let the forest burn.
The Alpine Lake fire started with a lightning strike on July 30 and burned over 1,335 acres between Alpine, Seagull, Red Rock and Grandpa Lakes.
Experts say the area sees about twice the number of fires as other forests in the region. There have been three major fires in the area in the past 29 years and dozens more over the past few centuries, said Lee Frelich, a University of Minnesota scientist who specializes in the relationship between fire and the BWCAW forests.
“That’s the most fire-prone area we’ve found,” he said. “Instead of seeing major fires every century or so, that area historically gets them every 50 years or even more often.”
The soil in the narrow swath from near Ely to Saganaga Lake is especially thin and cannot hold much water. That causes plants and trees to dry out faster than forests elsewhere in BWCAW. Also, the area is hilly and the high points attract more lightning strikes. The jack pines that make up much of the forest burn easily and add fuel to fires.
But experts say species in the area -- from jack pine to blueberries to birch -- thrive after the forest burns.
Forest Service officials started allowing lightning fires to burn their own course inside the 1.1 million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the late 1990s. But after the blowdown on July 4, 1999, with millions of new dead and drying trees, officials changed the rules to fight all fires inside or close to the blowdown area.
The policy hasn’t changed, but with new firefighting resources like water-bombing planes, officials say it may be time to let more fires burn again, even in the blowdown area.
“It’s something we’re looking at,” said Barb Soderberg, public service team leader for the Superior National Forest. “We know a lot more about how fire reacts in the blowdown now. And we’ve hardened a lot of the area around development, good fire break.
“We’ve got a lot more resources on hand to fight fires, too,” Soderberg said. “Maybe it’s time to look at letting some fires inside the wilderness blowdown burn on their own.”
They won’t let fires threaten people or property, Soderberg said, and if conditions become too dry, fire fighters will not leave any fire alone.
The Forest Service also will continue with its plan to keep burning tracts of the blowdown on purpose to develop more fire breaks to slow down fires. The service has burned thousands of acres, with thousands more acres to be burned this fall.
“We’ve been putting fires out up there for too long,” Soderberg said. “That’s why we got into the kind of fuel loads we’ve seen up there. Fires are supposed to happen up there more often than we’ve let them.”
Federal officials also might revisit their agreement with Canadian fire officials that demands both sides quickly put out all fires that could cross the border.
The BWCAW forest appears to be recovering well from the massive 1999 blowdown windstorm and from intentional fires started to remove downed trees, Frelich said.
Areas that have burned are sprouting with young birch trees and red pines, and areas where most big trees blew down are sprouting with balsam fir, black spruce, white cedar, maple and paper birch, he said.
But in the blowdown areas outside BWCAW, especially where logging occurred to remove downed trees, several exotic species are flourishing, possibly at the expense of native species.
Some say reseeding may be necessary if certain species are to flourish. Forest Service wilderness rules don’t allow seeding in the BWCAW.