© David Foster, Harvard University
Conservationists have employed prescribed fire in an attempt to maintain openland habitats such as the Katama sandplain grassland on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Research by Oswald and colleagues indicates that, despite a large human population for thousands of years, fire was uncommon and landscapes across southern New England were heavily forested until European contact and deforestation for agriculture. Grazing and other agricultural practices can be used to maintain these uncommon habitats today.
Conservationists have employed prescribed fire in an attempt to maintain openland habitats such as the Katama sandplain grassland on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Research by Oswald and colleagues indicates that, despite a large human population for thousands of years, fire was uncommon and landscapes across southern New England were heavily forested until European contact and deforestation for agriculture. Grazing and other agricultural practices can be used to maintain these uncommon habitats today.
The study, led by archaeologists, ecologists, and paleoclimatologists at Harvard, Emerson College and elsewhere, focuses on the coast from Long Island to Cape Cod and the nearby islands of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, and Naushon — areas that historically supported the greatest densities of Native people in New England and today are home to the highest concentrations of rare habitats in the region, including sandplain grasslands, heathlands, and pitch pine and scrub oak forests.
"For decades, there's been a growing popularization of the interpretation that, for millennia, Native people actively managed landscapes — clearing and burning forests, for example — to support horticulture, improve habitat for important plant and animal resources, and procure wood resources," says study co-author David Foster, Director of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University. This active management is said to have created an array of open-land habitats and enhanced regional biodiversity.
Comment: As noted above, the conservationists - opening up the land with controlled burning - have actually been doing the exact opposite to what the native peoples were doing. And this wouldn't be the first time ill-informed and biased conservation efforts, despite their best intentions, have run counter to what nature intends. It also reflects that, in the long term, man's impact is relatively insignificant: