Fire has long been an important natural process in many ecosystems, and before European settlement occasional fires were integral to them, with native plants and animals adapted to their occurrence. European settlers feared fire, however, and pursued total fire suppression, a goal made more attainable by advancing technology. Although quickly extinguishing small wildland fires succeeded in the short term, it also helped pave the way for large, hard-to-control fires in many parts of the country. At Pilot Mountain State Park, fire is recognized as one of the natural processes most southeastern plants and animals depend on, and prescribed fires are used both to preserve native species and the processes that perpetuate them and to improve visitor safety in the heavily visited summit area, which is vulnerable to unintended ignitions from cigarettes, escaped camp fires, and lightning strikes and has only one road in and out by car. For that reason the summit area is closed to the public during prescribed burns. These fires are set under a burn prescription to consume wood fuels, reduce the midstory, and enhance plant and animal diversity by preparing the seedbed, opening the overstory, and allowing a wide variety of wildflowers and grasses to grow in the understory. They are ignited only under very specific conditions involving weather, fuel moisture, soil moisture, the availability of trained firefighting personnel, and air quality, and while no fire can be truly controlled, a burn prescription greatly minimizes risk compared with the conditions that favor wildfire. Certain species in the park show clear adaptations to fire: during high-intensity burns, the sealed cones of Table Mountain pine open and release seed over fire-cleared ground, and the tree can regrow upper limbs after a crown fire and survive scorching, though it has declined because of past fire suppression and now occurs only on the driest ridges where competition is lower; pitch pine cones also release many seeds when heated by fire, the tree can send out new branches from the trunk if burned off, and young pitch pines can regrow from a stump if burned or grazed; and bear oak, classified as Significantly Rare in North Carolina, grows in a few summit openings where the lack of fire has allowed upper- and mid-level vegetation to begin shading it out, so prescribed fires are intended to create a more open canopy and improve its habitat. Burned areas recover rapidly, and forest openings created by prescribed fires attract numerous insects for wild turkeys and songbirds to forage on.