The more people study the history of fire, the more it's appreciated as a key to the way forests and grasslands evolved. Wildfires cleared overgrowth, restored the soil's nutrients and improved wildlife habitat.
Fires set by indigenous people had the same effect.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy are getting into these kinds of fires in a bigger way.
They are forming a partnership around controlled burning, saying they can make better use of their staff and equipment by teaming up when it comes to prescribed burning to improve wildlife habitat.
"The wildlife habitats we manage need more prescribed fire to survive and thrive, and we can get more done on the ground by working together," said Jim Kurth, chief of the Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Refuge System.
The Wildlife Refuge System uses prescribed fire on between 400,000 and 800,000 acres each year. The Nature Conservancy operates the Fire Learning Network, which it jointly runs with the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department.
These modern day agencies are following in ancient footsteps. Researchers at Stanford University this fall published their findings that the use of fire by aboriginal hunters in Australia's Western Desert doubled the population of monitor lizards - a staple of their diet.
Native American tribes of the northern Rockies also helped wildlife by helping themselves through the planned use of fires. A multi-media project by the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes lays out the ways its ancestors used fire and the reasons. Among them: clear the land, establish and maintain trails, make huckleberries more plentiful, and improve hunting by driving deer out of the mountains.
--David Steves