Background Info, Links to accompany our Webcast from Arizona, USA

David Suzuki met up with Dr. Stephen Pyne, in October 2001, in Arizona's Ponderosa National Forest, to discuss the controversial issue of controlled burns and the importance of natural forces such as fire in maintaining the sacred balance. Dr. Pyne, a professor of fire history at Arizona State University and one of the world's foremost experts on fire, has been described as having a consciousness "composed of equal parts historian, ecologist, philosopher, critic, poet, and sociologist." He has published numerous books on the subject of fire and is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and two NEH fellowships.

Dr. Pyne's latest book is "Fire: A Brief History," University of Washington Press and British Museum, 2001. Here's an excerpt from the forward...

"The fate of humanity, like the fate of the earth, is tied to the fires that have made the world as we know it - the fires whose history is told as well in this book as it has ever been told before. If one wants to understand just how completely the story of the human past is also the story of fire on earth, there is no better place to start than this small book."

To seek out or purchase books by Dr. Pyne click here.

Do controlled burns ever go wrong? Yes.

In May 2000, the prescribed burn of a forest in New Mexico went out of control, destroying 220 homes and becoming a world-wide news story as it came perilously close to the nuclear weapons research centre in Los Alamos.

For more info on the consequences of this event check out this article on the Environmental News Network, and this article on the website of Scientific American magazine.

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