Heartpine

By James Furman, U.S Forest Service Liaison at Air Force Wildland Fire Center, Eglin Air Force Base

Pontifications of a Paid Pyromaniac

I’ll admit it—it was exciting when the firetruck came.

Barefoot in Wilcox County, Alabama, lighting leftover Fourth of July firecrackers in fire ant beds (they deserved it) on the parched hill above the pond behind the homeplace, life was good. And even more exciting once the grass caught fire, followed by a wind gust from a distant thunderstorm. My brother Stephen and I did our best to stomp it out with our leather-soled bare feet and almost had it, but after a bigger gust of wind, we realized it was time to sound the alarm and get some help. No plausible deniability here. A busted, 10year-old firebug, I could almost see the mugshot in the post office.

Auburn Forestry School led to a fire job with the Florida Division of Forestry working on Blackwater River State Forest, with its 186,000 acres of longleaf pine forest, and fighting fire in Santa Rosa County (then the arson capital of Florida). I eventually found a home on 12 acres of cutover longleaf pine forest just off Blackwater’s southern edge. I was burning on the homeplace and Blackwater to restore the longleaf ecosystem and fighting wildfires, all while learning from experienced burners at Blackwater and teaching others the joys of painting a landscape with a drip torch. Never satiated, gatherings with friends and family at the house always included bonfires, some that I’m sure were picked up by Landsat and had roosters crowing ½ mile away at midnight, thinking the sun was rising. I even got to drive a fire truck home—red lights, siren, the works. Life was good.

While at Blackwater, I began hearing of something called GCPEP (Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership). It started as an idea, then crafted into a framework for sharing information and resources related to fire and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker between seven large landowners in Northwest Florida and South Alabama.

A major career move took me to Eglin Air Force Base, the largest contiguous longleaf forest in the known universe, to manage the fire program, arriving there just in time for the kickoff of Florida’s epic 1998-2000 drought/fire season. I am still trying to convince some folks at Eglin that all the wildfires were not my fault; though given the timing and my sordid pyromaniacal past, I can’t blame them.

When I arrived at Eglin, the Air Force, and the Department of Defense in general, were fully embracing, and more importantly, funding science-based ecosystem management. Eglin was “all in,” supporting The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to coordinate GCPEP, conduct longleaf pine restoration research, and facilitate science integration into management decision-making. TNC hired Vernon Compton, one of my previous compadres at Blackwater, as the first Director for GCPEP (and first staff of any kind for that matter). Cross-border collaboration and resource sharing, including “partnership burns,” became a regular occurrence as multiple GCPEP partners would converge on Garcon Point, Gulf Islands National Seashore, and other locations. This concept is now more commonplace across the country with the “National Wildland Fire Cohesive Strategy” but was almost unheard of pre-GCPEP.

GCPEP grew in stature and gained staff and influence assisting with projects and facilitation across the Partnership, including development and staffing of the Ecosystem Support Team (EST). The EST concept became a model for grant and partnership-funded collaborative ecosystem management support across the longleaf pine landscape and beyond. Nearly ALL of the GCPEP partners relied heavily on the Partnership for a myriad of services and support. In 2010 The Longleaf Alliance was willing to take the huge step forward of taking GCPEP’s full staff and mission under its wing. And the rest, as they say, is history. Happy 25th Anniversary, GCPEP!

I’ll close with a couple of my favorite quotes.

Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing. Helen Keller

He not busy being born is busy dying. Bob Dylan

Smokey scene post-fire on Eglin Air Force Base. Photo by Kaiden Spurlock.