Habitat destruction in Mexico

[rudy benavides]

Burning was also practised in this part of Maryland (and nearby 
Pennsylvania) by the Susquehannoks before the settlers arrived in the  early 
1600s.  When the settlers first saw these large open prairies here in the 
east, they called them *barrens*.  The Susquehannoks fire-hunted 
white-tailed deer by burning huge circles (several miles in diameter) and 
driving them in where they could be easily taken.  Prairie-like grasslands 
with Big and Little Bluestem, and Indian Grass developed.  From historical 
accounts we know that these were pretty good sized tracts - the Pennsylvania 
barrens were about 130,000 acres in the early 1700s.  In Maryland it was 
less, but grassland openings extended from the Pennsylvania line to 
Montgomery County - a Washington D.C. suburb.  In Baltimore County there is 
a park managed by the Department of Natural Resources that maintains a 
remnant of that early ecosystem, and they have to maintain it with 
controlled burns, otherwise invasive pioneering Virginia pines and 
greenbrier would take it over.  Actually today, it is an oak-grassland 
savannah.  This environmental area is also home to the Edward's hairstreak 
and to various federally and state endangered wildflowers.  We tend to think 
of the early Eastern U.S. landscape as an impenetrable forest, and of course 
much of it was, but in some areas it was also more like a patchwork as 
described by the settlers.  Burning was an easy way for the native tribes to 
open the forest up to gain access to a variety of game not normally 
accessible  ... although these fires were not on the scale of what is being 
burned in Mexico today.

Rudy Benavides

Maryland
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