A Master’s in Conservation Medicine alum says fire has long been a tool to reduce vegetation, deter larger blazes, and keep ecosystems healthy
Master's in Conservation Medicine alum Sam Gilvarg, VG23, worked for the National Park Service and was stationed at Cape Cod National Seashore. During that time, he took this photo of a prescribed fire on Cape Cod. Photo: Sam Gilvarg
Sam Gilvarg, VG23, hosted his fourth birthday party in a local fire station. As a kid, he often dressed as a firefighter or an EMT for Halloween. But opportunities for wildland firefighting were scarce in his hometown in the Greater Boston suburbs.
That changed after college, when he joined an AmeriCorps program called Fire Corps. Stationed at the Cape Cod National Seashore—home to a fire-adapted ecosystem called the Pine Barrens—he learned to fight wildfire and undertake fire prevention efforts. As a certified wildland firefighter, Gilvarg learned to set prescribed fires, burns that are intentionally set to reduce vegetation and deter larger blazes, and to cull trees and other combustible material with chainsaws.
Over the next few fire seasons, he worked for the National Park Service (NPS) as a fire effects monitor, a job that involves monitoring the effects of wildland fire on the natural and cultural resources that are stewarded by the NPS. He had assignments at Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, Cape Cod National Seashore, Shenandoah National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, as well as on a variety of other wildfires in different states, including Texas and the Bootleg Fire in Oregon. During the off season he worked as an emergency medical technician closer to home.
In 2021, Sam Gilvarg went to Oregon to help fight the Bootleg Fire, which burned "over 413,000 acres before we got a handle on it. The size of the smoke plume is evidenced by the helicopter in the photo," Gilvarg says. Photo: Sam Gilvarg
“I found wildland firefighting was a good way to combine my interest for the natural world,” specifically plants, says Gilvarg, with a long-standing interest in fire and emergency response.
After studying environmental studies with a focus on botany as an undergraduate and completing the Master of Science in Conservation Medicine program at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, Gilvarg is now pursuing a Ph.D. at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, studying fire-adapted ecosystems. The capstone project for his master’s program was about fire and infectious disease, which helped launch him into the research he’s now conducting on the effects of wildland fires on tick populations.
“The MCM program at Tufts provided me with an intrinsically interdisciplinary academic environment where I was encouraged to explore my own interests while simultaneously being challenged by a range of new ideas and perspectives,” he says. “I was able to ground my otherwise disparate interests of fire, plants, health, and yes—even animals—into one cohesive framework. It was this amalgamation that set the stage for me to advance my career and pursue a Ph.D.”
Though many humans have come to view wildfires with fear, many landscapes have evolved alongside fire. In some ecosystems, such as the grasslands of the Great Plains and Giant Sequoia forests of California, trees, other plants, and many animals need periodic fire to be their healthiest, says Gilvarg.
In the MCM program, "I was able to ground my otherwise disparate interests of fire, plants, health, and animals into one cohesive framework," says Sam Gilvarg. Photo: Sam Gilvarg
“While we as humans perceive fire as generally being ecologically devastating,” says Gilvarg, “in the great ecological time scale — and even in the timeframe of some of our more long-lived plants — a fire really is a minor inconvenience. [Some vegetation has] evolved with this fire, and some have come to depend on fire to complete their life cycle.”
Amid climate change and the trend of ever-increasing wildfires that burn with much more intensity and severity, many landscapes will need more fire to get back to their healthiest, rather than less, he says. That may seem counterintuitive, but many fire experts, including Gilvarg, emphasize the importance of getting more fire on the land now to build resilient ecosystems in the future.
The practice of lighting fires or letting certain fires burn was common before and during the colonization of the United States, and many Indigenous people still practice cultural burning. But icons like Smokey Bear and government policies have helped establish deeply entrenched beliefs about the importance of fire exclusion. That has led to a dangerous buildup of trees, smaller plants, and grasses — which would naturally be culled every so often by a wildfire—in states across the nation, because forests have seldom been allowed to burn. Now, fire managers including Gilvarg are calling for more burning, as well as fuel treatments like manually removing excess vegetation.
Gilvarg says the United States is at a “significant fire deficit,” according to recently published research. This has resulted in the headline-grabbing fires that have burned out of control in places such as California, New York, and Canada. That fire deficit exists even in the Northeast, where big wildfires happen less often.
The forests of the Northeast are much more humid than many Western woods, according to Gilvarg, which historically has made them less likely to burn due to a lightning strike or another natural ignition.
As a graduate of the MCM program, Sam Gilvarg returned to Cummings School to speak with current students in the program. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Whittier, director of the MCM program
But the Pine Barrens ecosystem, which is found in several parts of the Northeast, needs fire for some plants to spread seeds. Gilvarg says this ecosystem is structurally and botanically similar to chaparral in Southern California, a shrubland ecosystem that burns often. It’s difficult for natural fires, which are most often caused by lightning, to spread, because fire in the northeast often happens at a more humid time of year, he says.
Ultimately, says Gilvarg, we need to reframe our relationship to fire and accept that some fire will be instrumental in fighting more extreme burns. “There’s always going to be a need to suppress fire,” he says. “But what I would say is: The need for fire suppression can’t always be the automatic, go-to.”
