An official NPS Fire Management Plan (FMP) was approved for CUIS in 2015. The following is an excerpt from the Cumberland Island Museum Newsletter, March 2015:
A fire Management plan was approved that allows/promotes practices destructive to the Wilderness and shows little concern for the long-term health of the resource or the Wilderness Act.
The plan is based on the erroneous concept that all island vegetation communities are fire adapted. The ecological definition of which is that they depend upon fire to maintain their integrity. It goes on to discuss mechanical mulching and herbicide use.
Such a shame it is that the NPS avoided production of a Wilderness Management Plan long ago, which the Wilderness Act requires. That could have protected the land and communities as the law intended.
Now, ten years later, the current FMP (2024) and other relevant documents direct the NPS to “maintain and preserve natural ecosystem processes” and be “based on a foundation of sound science.” Seems perfect ! But the “sound science” on which this plan intends to operate excludes essential historic information. It does not recognize past land use and the terrific impact hundreds of free-roaming cattle and horses grazing the entire island had for over a century. This kept the understory in the developing maritime forest cropped low. Now, 40+ years after removal of the last cattle, we see thick undergrowth in this same area. People focused on fire could assume that this thick understory growth should be removed. But in this case, it is a critical stage of natural succession for the currently recovering maritime forest community.
Through the natural process of succession, the endangered maritime forest ecosystem is at long last nearing its final climax stage. The understory is thick with young oaks, so thick that it prevents sun from reaching the ground, which eliminates pine reproduction… the critical next step. Once the pines from the formerly open, fallow fields are gone, maturity of the oak maritime ecosystem will follow. The impact of cattle randomly grazing had stopped the natural succession of the uplands at the oak-pine stage for over a century.
The current FMP is updated regularly and presently shows plans to burn much of the maritime forest, contradictory to its overall intent to “preserve natural ecosystem processes.” If this proposed fire wounds or kills the thick maritime forest understory, it may again slow or stop its natural succession, further delaying the necessary final step to maturity and stability.
This news comes at a time of hardship for the NPS and most of us. The number of NPS employees is reduced and they are under a hiring freeze. When (and if) things get back to normal, we hope the next revision of the FMP will incorporate changes that benefit the struggling maritime forest. One positive move would be requiring no interference with the natural succession trajectory for all plant communities on the island, and specifically no reduction of the understory, except in those rare sites where it could endanger existing structures.
Museum Newsletters explaining the immediate fire issue:
(PDF files – view with Adobe Acrobat Reader)