The death of Smokey Bear: The ecodisaster myth and forest management practices in prehistoric North America

Through time primeval Europe was transformed into a landscape where managed woodlands ( forestis ) became repositories for resources and wild woods ( silva ) were seen as being occupied by wild men, the savages. The importation into the New World of these attitudes resulted in verdant North America being classified as 'wilderness'. It was generally assumed that the worlds of the past were essentially unaltered by hunter-gatherer activities. By the twentieth century, forest management practices in North America, supported by the myth of the primeval past, encouraged old growth forests through fire suppression. The fallacy of the unmanaged forest of prehistory is now being challenged. In its place are put forward models of forests as managed sustainers of a wide range of resources. In such models, fire is an essential management tool, not an ecodisaster.