Errakina : Pastoral Fire Use and Landscape Memory In the Basque Region of the French Western Pyrenees

What is it about?

This article documents the dynamic relationship between pastoral fire use and landscape in the Basque region of the western Pyrenees. I show how cultural and ecological legacies reflect a self-organized fire management regime that emerges from fire use driven by the production goals of individual households. I frame the self-organizing dynamic inherent in Pyrenean pastoral fire use as ‘‘landscape memory.’’

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Why is it important?

The active use of fire to manage working landscapes is a highly controversial topic. Conventional narratives portray a negative view of fire use, often making unsubstantiated claims that fire use is malicious or primitive and that it always results in landscape degradation. This article presents an empirically informed argument to the contrary and shows how fire has been regularly employed to help maintain a resilient socioecological landscape.