Isle of Fire: The Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar (University of Chicago Geography Research Papers) [Paperback]

This book is an excellent, thorough study of the role of fire in Madagascar. People in Madagascar light fires to clear forest and pasture. This habit has been widely denounced in official and popular sources. Many writers believe, mistakenly, that Madagascar was covered with lush forests until people got there and started burning. Yet, Madagascar is mostly a dry tropical environment, with frequent lightning storms. The existence of fire-adapted endemic plants and vegetation types confirms what common sense would lead us to expect: fire has always been there. On the other hand, much superb forest, especially in the eastern and central highlands of the country, has been converted to waste by burning in recent decades or centuries.

Christian Kull discusses this complex picture--good fire, bad fire, complex fire. He shows that the inflated rhetoric about fire's awful effects stems from the needs of national and colonial regimes to maintain control as much as from the actual needs of fire management. He provides a number of excellent case studies of local communities that use fire in a variety of ways--sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, in terms of overall welfare and environmental management. He provides really excellent suggestions at the end on what should be done--I hope the NGO's and Madagascar government are reading this book.

One problem that might deserve more attention is the case of introduced plants. Madagascar was inflicted by the French colonial regime with eucalyptus, pine, and acacia--nonnative plants that burn explosively. (Native forests do not burn so explosively, so far as I have observed.) They have created an unnatural and terribly fire-prone environment in many areas. They are currently managed (illegally!) by local burning during times that are wet enough to prevent runaway fires.

So, why not five stars? First is that Kull gets carried away at times, and indulges in rhetoric that is a bit too "inflammatory" (the word is irresistable). The government and NGO workers are really not just out to push people around; there is a real point here. Burning is too little controlled and too badly managed. The leaders are clearly motivated by a desire for control, but they have a real point, too. Simplistic bash-the-leaders rhetoric sits poorly with Kull's otherwise thoughtful and nuanced study. Second, Kull might have checked more on other areas of the world--those in which indigenous burning is much better controlled and managed than it is in Madagascar (e.g. the Maya lowlands of Mexico), and those in which it is as badly managed, with devastating results (parts of south China). Third, Kull does not say enough about the biodiversity problem, which is getting worse by the day. Madagascar is home to an incredible endemic biota, which must be preserved for the benefit of humanity. Unfortunately, the costs of preserving this biota are currently being paid by the desperately poor Malagasy people, while the benefits go to humanity as a whole--especially to well-off tourists and scientists. Fire prevention to save endemic species is desperately needed, but somebody will have to figure out how to compensate local people more fairly. Kull's advice on overall fire management is so good that he might well turn his efforts to this problem. As I explained to some students in the Madagascar bush: It's not about lemurs vs. people, it's about lemurs and people vs. no lemurs and no people.

Fire management is a part of the wider issue of environmental control, an issue far too important to be left to government agents or local people or anyone else. We all have to work on it; all of us, lemurs included, are in this together.