Whitetails, however, aren't as heavily impacted as they tend to live in agricultural areas and river bottoms where farms provide a year-round food source. Clearly, there is a difference for big game in terms of upcountry and winter-range fire effects. Wildfires are good overall, but those fires that occur at low elevation in mule deer wintering range, for example, can hurt shrubs, which may take years to grow back. But fires have extensive nutritional value in other ways. To maintain healthy mule deer populations, this important forage must have a nutritive value of 7 to 8 percent.
Fire stimulates younger plants that have much higher nutritive values for wildlife.
Butler says we're paying the price for past fire suppression. In the years after the Yellowstone fires of 1988, the U.S. Forestry Service began to consider the need for controlled burns, but public opinion and the opinion of politicians still favored fire suppression. As I said, big fires bother people the most, not animals. This stewardship is intended to increase state and local control of fire fighting and management. Communities threatened by potential fires would be interested in, if not supportive of, this, but there would also be much concern over environmental impacts of such a plan among wildlife biologists and sportsmen.