Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008
Fifty years ago last week, on April 21, 1958, six wildland firefighters at Everglades National Park successfully completed the park's first prescribed fire. Although other national parks such as Sequoia Kings Canyon were also experimenting with using fire for resource benefits at the time, the 1958 Everglades burn marked a radical departure from a nationwide wildland fire strategy of total suppression.
The Everglades fire of April, 1958, was conducted under the first comprehensive burn plan in the National Park Service. Research was already beginning to show that fire was critical to maintaining the Everglades pinelands; without it, the pines would be replaced by tropical hardwoods. Like many of today's prescribed fires, the 1958 burn had both resource restoration and fuel reduction objectives.
On Wednesday, April 23rd, the Everglades National Park wildland fire communications committee celebrated this historic anniversary at the Krome Center in Homestead, Florida, with a presentation on the history of prescribed fire in the park. Engine operator Jenn D'Emilio made a presentation that she shared with the other members of the committee, fire effects monitor Katie Budzinski and lead helitack Henry del Valle.
Over the last half century, the National Park Service has invited a wide variety of partners to cooperate in prescribed fire in the Everglades. During the Miccosukee prescribed burn held on April 16th, for example, National Park Service firefighters from both Everglades and Big Cypress were joined by personnel from US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Seminole Tribe and the Florida Department of Forestry. The burn, planned in cooperation with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, successfully reduced hazardous fuels in the wildland-urban interface between the park and the Miccosukee Reserved Area.
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