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Type C:

Fire history type (5)

Communities:
a) Lodgepole Pine/Sedge-Needlegrass
b) Lodgepole Pine/Bitterbrush/Sedge
c) Portions of Lodgepole Pine/Sedge-Lupine

The more open areas, best represented in the following locations:

1) South and West of Timber Crater
2) SW of Sharp Peak
3) Upper Western Pinnacles Valley

Suggestions: No prescribed fire necessary.

Reasons: These forests are somewhat to very open, with light and discontinuous fuel. It is doubtful that (1) fires have ever been large or severe and (2) these areas will produce enough. fuel to support such fires in the foreseeable future.

Type D:

Fire history type (3)

Communities:
a) Mixed Conifer/Manzanita
b) Mixed Conifer/Bitterbrush-Manzanita/Sedge

Suggestions: Prescribed burning should be carried out in the not-too-distant future, perhaps following the higher priority areas in the ponderosa pine (after priority 4). The fire should be a low-intensity ground fire; it should miss many areas and be intense enough to scar, but not kill, some lodgepole (if possible) and white pine. The ignition pattern should not be so all-encompassing that all pockets of fuel burn in any one fire. This type should be burned over a long period–perhaps 30 years–to produce a variety of age classes. Fires could be repeated at 30-50 year intervals in any given area. Areas burned by natural fire need no treatment.

Reasons: This area has low fuel loads except in spots. Small scars on living lodgepole give evidence of ground fires. The only scars with 2 fires, on white pine, had a 30-year interval. The relatively great ages and heavy dwarf mistletoe of these stands indicate that fires which destroy the entire stand are rare.

Type E:

Fire history type (4)

Community: Denser parts of Lodgepole Pine/Lupine-Sedge, best represented at:
a) East of North Entrance
b) Lower Western Pinnacles Valley
c) ESE of Bald Crater

Suggestions: Prescribed fire appears justified and desirable in some of this type, with a goal of its all burning (by nature or prescription) within the next 70 to 100 years. The first burns (following preliminary experimental work) could begin any time, and should be aimed at breaking the extensive areas of this type (1) between Timber Crater and the north entrance road, and (2) in lower Pinnacles Valley into smaller units, to decrease the hazard of very large, intense fires. After that, burning should be periodic, in Unit III first, to fulfill the 70-100 year burning cycle and provide a mosaic of stands of several different ages. After the first burning cycle, in which prescribed fire will help remove the accumulated fuel and thickets that fire suppression has allowed, a natural fire regime should be sufficient. Even now, prescribed burning should be applied only as necessary to assure that new stands are generated more or less evenly over the next 70-100 years, assuring that areas of high fire danger remain relatively small and discontinuous at any one time. Prescribe-burning large areas, or the whole area within a few years, will only result in a probably unnatural concentration of fire danger both now (large expanses of dead fuel) and at some future date (extensive thickets of mature forest again). Reburning after snags fall (10-20 years) will be necessary to keep fire danger low. Extreme caution will be necessary.

Reasons: It appears that these areas burned in intense fires in primeval conditions, destroying the old lodgepole forest, and replacing it with a young one. Fuel loads are very heavy in extensive areas; prescribed burning to break up the expanse will reduce the danger of a wild fire here moving over large areas or out of the Park. Only in this type has the fire suppression since 1902 allowed fuel build-up to exceed our perception of primeval conditions in a lodgepole type whose area does not need to be reduced.