Nature's Phoenix

In recent years scientific perceptions of wild fires have changed. Once viewed as an anathema to healthy forests, now fire is recognized as a vital component of forest health. Yet severe fires are still feared by most forest managers, who do their best to prevent them. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with forest ecologist Dominick DellaSala, who is the co-editor of The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature's Phoenix, which argues that mixed severity fires - ones that produce low to high severity effects in a single fire complex - also play an important role in producing remarkably rich and diverse wildlife habitat and are not ecological disasters as claimed.

Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala is President and Chief Scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon and President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section. Dominick is an internationally renowned author of over 150 technical papers, including the award winning Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World. 

More Logging Won’t Stop Wildfires, an op-ed piece in the New York Tmes by Dominick DellaSala and Chad Hanson