Silver lining seen in Linville Gorge wildfire

LINVILLE GORGE –

Surveying a landscape ravaged by wildfire eight months ago, U.S. Forest Service ecologist Lisa Jennings stops to inspect a stand of white pines left brown and shriveled by the flames.

"That's what we like to see," she says of the species not native to the rugged slopes of Linville Gorge. "We'd like to get them out of here."

But along the trail leading to the summit of Table Rock, the lush regrowth of other plants is clearly abundant. Fire-resistant species historically found in the gorge are getting a boost.

"See this oak right here?" Jennings said. "It's got a lot of char, but it's still doing really good. If you had come here right after the fire, you wouldn't see any of this green growth. It really is amazing.

"Immediately following the fire, it looked pretty stark. It was a very black landscape with a lot of ash. Shrubs were brown and wilted. There were black snags or dead trees in some areas."

The public's notion of a devastating wildfire is sometimes at odds with the way experts see it.

While it cost nearly $2 million to extinguish the blaze that scorched some 2,600 acres in the gorge, putting the lives of firefighters at risk, land managers say the benefits to the ecosystem are obvious.

"A lot of ecologists including myself believe the absence of fire has been a bigger problem in Linville Gorge than the presence of fire," said Josh Kelly, public lands biologist with the Asheville-based environmental group Western North Carolina Alliance.

"The fire had a lot of beneficial effects, like creating and maintaining habitat for many of the rare, fire-adapted species in the gorge."

Sometimes called the Grand Canyon of North Carolina, the 11,786-acre Linville Gorge Wilderness is the deepest gorge in the eastern U.S, with the ridge rising about 1,400 feet above the river.

Based on witness accounts, authorities believe the wildfire started on Nov. 11 near the Table Rock picnic area when a bonfire built by a group of campers rekindled and spread into the forest.

The blaze was soon out of control, running upslope to the summit of Table Rock and down the eastern slope of the gorge nearly to the Linville River.

At its peak, more than 200 firefighters, including federal crews from across the country, battled the wildfire as westerly winds as high as 40 mph fanned the dry vegetation. They used bulldozers and hand tools to cut containment lines in the extremely rugged, rocky terrain, while helicopters dropped water from the air.

But the lines were repeatedly jumped by the flames, forcing crews to regroup and mount new attacks.

It took nearly three weeks to finally put out the fire. By then it had scorched 2,579 acres, according to the Forest Service. Fighting the wildfire cost the government more than $1.9 million.

No structures were burned, but the blaze threatened the N.C. Outward Bound base camp at Table Rock.

"The Forest Service did an amazing job of protecting our base," program director Sara Halbe said. "They set up hoses around our buildings. We're very grateful to them."

The landscape was stark in the immediate aftermath of the fire, but it had no impact on the camp's programming.

"It just looked bare," Halbe said. "You could smell charred smell. Burned trees were sticking up. In some areas there were a lot of burned trees.

"Now it's starting to look a lot more green. It's pretty amazing to watch the change."

In the wake of the fire, a team of ecologists and hydrologists evaluated the impact, Jennings said.

Some areas along fire lines were reseeded to prevent erosion. Non-native plants also were removed, primarily along roadways. Workers cut down dead "hazard trees" next to trails.

Jennings said the agency spent $7,522 on restoration and monitoring efforts after the fire.

There was an evaluation of rare plant species like that mountain golden heather, which only grows on the Grandfather Ranger District of the Pisgah National Forest. The plant will benefit from wildfire in the long run, she said.

"Fire is really the only thing that will allow that population to be sustained because if removes the duff layer — the organic matter and binded roots above the mineral soil," she said.

Following a major wildfire in another part of the gorge in 2007, the population of mountain golden heather increased by about 300 percent, Jennings said.

The gorge is what's known as fire-adapted ecosystem. Tree cores show that wildfires ignited by lightning strikes occurred there every five to seven years before fire suppression efforts became common in the 1920s, she said.

"Linville Gorge has a really rich fire history up until the last 100 years," Jennings said. "Since then the forest has changed a lot because fire hasn't been part of it."

The lack of wildfires spurs the spread of shrubs like rhododendron and mountain laurel, plants normally confined to wetter areas of the forest along streams. Jennings said that that makes the fires that do occur more intense.

"The shrubs burn a lot hotter than a grassy understory," she said. "The leaves pop and send embers out. It leads to higher flames and more dangerous conditions for firefighters."

Jennings is coordinator of a project on the Grandfather Ranger District called the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program. The goal is to restore the ecosystem to a more natural state.

A primary tool is the use of prescribed fire. Also called controlled burns, these intentionally set fires of low intensity reduce excessive amounts of brush, shrubs and trees to encourage the growth of natural vegetation.

The Forest Service uses prescribed fire on about 6,000 acres a year in the Grandfather District. Jennings said the practice encourages the growth of oak trees, which are a good source of food for wildlife, and lessens the chance of catastrophic wildfires.

"The wildfire knocked back the rhododendrons and mountain laurels," she said. "That is also the goal of our prescribed fire program. Even a small amount of fire will burn through the bark and kill the rhododendrons.

"It allows seeds in the understory to get their chance to grow ferns and grasses. It's really just allowing the light to come in."

But use of the technique is much more limited on federally designated wilderness areas like Linville Gorge. A 2012 proposal to conduct controlled burns in the gorge is on hold for more study, Jennings said.

"It's a very sensitive subject, especially for those who know and love the gorge," she said.

Opponents of the plan created a website called "Save the Linville Gorge Wilderness." Bernard Clark, a resident of the Gingercake Acres community on the edge of the gorge, said he worries about prescribed burns getting out of control.

"I thought (the proposal) was overblown," he said. "There's a lot of controversy about prescribed burns. We want to do what makes sense for the forest."

Kayah Gaydish, who leads hikes in the gorge for the Carolina Mountain Club, said it was disturbing to see the forest in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

"It's scary when a beautiful forest catches on fire," she said. "The ground was black. I could see from across the gorge it was bad. But in a way I knew it could be a good thing.

"It's really recovered incredibly. I'm so amazed. The wildflowers have come back. It seems like it's going to be a much healthier forest now. It will be interesting in a few years to see how the areas that burned really hard come back."

With an average cost of about $50,000 to plan and conduct a prescribed fire on 2,500 acres, the technique is much cheaper and less dangerous than a major wildfire.

Jennings thinks November's Linville Gorge blaze offers a lesson on the benefits of fire in some ecosystems.

"Hopefully it will change some people's views about fire on the landscape."