Abstract
Ethnographic studies have established that, until shortly after World War II, Indians in northern Alberta regularly and systematically fired habitats to influence the local distribution and relative abundance of plant and animal resources. In ways similar to what has been reported for hunter-gatherers in other regions, this pyrotechnology contributed to an overall fire mosaic that, in this case, formerly characterized northern boreal forests. Crosscultural comparisons of these practices with those in other parts of North America, as well as in several parts of Australia, illustrate functionally parallel strategies in the ways that hunter- gatherers employed habitat fires, specifically in the maintenance of “fire yards” and “fire corridors” in widely separated and different kinds of biological zones.
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We would like to thank Ross Wein tor his comments and suggestions on this paper, especially his ideas about the characteristics of fire mosaics as they would occur under natural conditions in boreal forests. We are also indebted to several granting agencies for funds that supported our earlier research. They include the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Museum of Man, Fire Science Center (University of New Brunswick), the Boreal Institute for Northern Studies (University of Alberta), the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies, and the Northern Australian Research Unit (Australian National University).
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Lewis, H.T., Ferguson, T.A. Yards, corridors, and mosaics: How to burn a boreal forest. Hum Ecol 16, 57–77 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01262026
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01262026