Many of Oklahoma's landscapes have evolved with fire as a
natural and necessary contributor to their overall health and
renewal. Many plant species require fire to germinate, to
establish, or to reproduce, or all three. Native Americans used
fire across Oklahoma to provide better access, improve hunting,
and ridding the land of undesirable species so they could farm.
Early European settlers to our state observed this and continued
the practice of using fire as a beneficial agent. But as more
settlers arrived, an encroaching urban interface and losses to
timber, farm and range land called attention a growing wildfire
problem and led to fire being labeled as destructive. Since that
time great effort has been made to exclude fire from the
landscape. But removing fire from the landscape has had
consequences. Many of our lands are no longer healthy and the
growth which has continued in the absence of fire resulted in an
accumulation of fuels increasing the overall risk of wildfires.
As knowledge accumulated, the u