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Lucia Garay

Ms. Gardner

Honors English 10 Period 5

29 October 2017

Persuasive Video Letter: Wildfires in California

While hiking through Lassen National Park, I came upon an area where a fire had burned

not too long ago, a scar across the green forest. I walked a little farther, and that’s when I saw it.

I walked a little farther and witnessed a miracle. I walked a little farther and there, rising from

the ash-covered ground, was a field of brilliant wildflowers. This occurrence was a perfect

example of a fact today’s ecology community is just beginning to understand; fire may destroy,

but in the end, it also gives life.

My name is Lucia Garay and like you, my fellow Californians, I have been personally

affected by wildfires, most recently in 2017, when one of the largest wildfires in California

history devastated our home. The destruction caused by fires makes many people afraid, and

often their first reaction is to suppress fires, including those in the wilderness, started not by

people, but by natural causes. Little do they realize, suppressing the fires is making the problem

worse.

A large herbivore, like this elk, can regulate the amount of plant matter in an ecosystem

by continually grazing as they move from place to place. An article titled “Fire as a Global

Herbivore” by William Bond, University Botanist, and Jon Keeley, Fire Ecologist, points out the

shocking similarities between fire and herbivores. In our California ecosystem, fire acts on the

environment in a similar way as grazers do. Naturally, fires burn at regular intervals in
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ecosystems, this keeps vegetation from becoming overgrown and choking out other species and

decreasing the biodiversity and destroying an otherwise healthy ecosystem. The more fires that

are suppressed, the more biomass is allowed to accumulate, and the stronger and higher intensity

fires will be in the future. Eventually, there will be a fire, and because we didn’t allow smaller,

lower intensity fires to burn as they were supposed to naturally, the end result will be an even

more destructive and higher burning fire.

It’s not just the safety of people that should drive us to find a way to coexist with fire;

California’s entire ecosystem depends on this natural phenomena to be one of the most

biodiverse and wild places in the world. Many plants in California depend on fire as much as

they do on water or air. The knobcone pine needs a fire of over 350 degrees Fahrenheit in order

to open its sealed pine cones and spread its seeds over the forest floor, devoid of competition

now that the fire has burned away all the other plants. An article titled “Cannot See the Forest for

the Bees” by Lauren Ponisio, National Geographic Journalist, comes to the conclusion that a

variety of fires of different severity, in different places, at different times cause a higher diversity

and health in wildflowers. Fires open up areas filled with old and dying plants for new life to

take its place, just like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes. A diversity in plants leads to a

diversity of animals and the entire ecosystem is affected by the frequency and intensity of fires.

Interestingly enough, high-intensity fires, which burn higher up, are difficult to control,

dangerous to people, and detrimental to the environment. It is low-intensity fires, fires that burn

low to the ground, that increase the environment’s fertility by burning away an overabundance of

underbrush and transferring the burned organic matter back into the soil. These low-intensity

fires are usually started by natural causes and are much easier to control.
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The history of fire in California is revealed by Kat Anderson, park commissioner, in her

book “Tending the Wild.” Native Californians used fire as a means of enhancing the fertility and

diversity of the wild that they depended on. The Natives of California helped cultivate a more

productive ecosystem, a productive ecosystem helped the Native culture. This idea is called land

stewardship.

Land stewardship centers around the idea that the best way to care for the environment is

not to remove human influence from wild places entirely, but to tend for the wild in a way that

allows a mutual relationship between people and the environment. The Natives of California

helped their environment thrive so they could harvest food, clothing, and their livelihoods from

their surroundings. People today have to cultivate a productive relationship with the environment

in order to preserve a healthy ecosystem. As citizens of California, take the responsibility to

realize that your actions and your mentality matters. Do you want to continue living in one of the

most beautiful and diverse places in the world, or will you let this place wither away?

Coexistence with fire is the only way to avoid more fire-related disasters, to preserve California

biodiversity, to build a society more closely connected to the natural world.

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Works Cited

Anderson, Kat. ​Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of

California's Natural Resources​. University of California Press, 2013.

Bond, William J., and Jon E. Keeley. "Fire as a Global 'Herbivore': The Ecology and Evolution

of Flammable Ecosystems." ​Science Direct​, vol. 20, no. 7, July 2005, pp. 387-94.

Ponisio, Lauren. “Cannot See the Forest for the Bees.” ​National Geographic Explorer​, 26 Oct.

2015.