Smokey Bear might have a tough time getting his head around this one. It's no longer only lightning strikes, untended campfires, and errant cigarettes that spark fires on public lands—it's land managers with drip torches. But such "prescribed" burns—fires that are set intentionally to burn brush and other fuels that have built up over time—definitely align with Smokey's goal of preventing wildfire.

While prescribed burns are more common as a fire-prevention tool in the western United States, they are used here in the East as a safe, cost-effective way to maintain habitats like open grasslands and pine barrens, a rare and totally fire-dependent type of forest. Before 18th-century settlers began suppressing them, wildfires frequently ran through our pine, oak, hickory, and chestnut forests, says David Publicover, AMC's senior staff scientist. As a result, many plants and animals became fire-adapted, requiring periodic fires to survive. American Indians also set intentional fires to control insects, make space for planting, and create travel corridors.

As a way to maintain the uncommon vegetation types that could disappear in the absence of fire, controlled burning has slowly come back into favor in the Northeast over the last several decades. And with it, numerous fire-dependent species have made comebacks at surprisingly rapid rates, says Tim Simmons, restoration ecologist with the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. These species include the barrens buck moth, the bushy rockrose, the Northern harrier, and New England's only native rabbit, the New England cottontail. Simmons adds that even some species not known to be fire-dependent, such as bees, "show a dramatic positive response to the effects of fire."

Properly conducted prescribed burns are extremely safe. Simmons educates residents near the Bay State's designated burn sites about the process and says that while some have trouble accepting fire as a natural part of the landscape, "they become receptive after they see just how dull a controlled burn can be." According to U.S. Forest Service research, of more than 30,000 prescribed burns in the United States from 1996 to 2001, only one-half of 1 percent burned outside of the specified boundaries.

In the Northeast, the most frequently burned areas are sand plain habitats, including pitch pine-scrub oak forests, dry oak woodlands, heathlands, and grasslands, says Simmons. This spring and summer, land managers from Gorham, N.H., in the White Mountains (where a total of 240 acres will be burned) to Kennebunk, Maine, and from the New Jersey pine barrens to the Nantucket moors, are monitoring winds and moisture levels, waiting for the perfect day to set their next fire.