August 18, 1998
A major focus of the environmental movement and ecology studies is supposed to be the preservation of our natural resources. But many self-proclaimed ecologists in high academic and government positions actively promote a policy of “let forest fires burn” which they know can result in the total incineration of many of our forests and all living things therein. Many other good scientists and experienced foresters who have seen the consequences consider this blanket policy to be grossly irresponsible, if not often outright insane, considering the explosive condition of our forests today. Forest fires do promote forest renewal, but only when the fires do not destroy far more than can be renewed. There was a time when most of our forests were fire tolerant. That is not the case today, as described below. The “let forest fires burn” dogma can at best be called a religion because there is no science that says that a forest totally destroyed is better for the ecology long-term than a forest that continues to live.
The 1988 fire that destroyed almost 40 percent of the Yellowstone forest and its once rich ecology is a ghastly example of horrible judgment that the “let forest fires burn” promoters are still trying to rationalize (with tens of millions of dollars of scarce government research funds). The recent monstrous fires in Florida are another good example of what will eventually happen in all of our forested areas unless we mount a national campaign to clean up our forests and return them to fire safe conditions. The U.S. Interior Department has spent more money in the last ten years to rationalize what its National Park Service dogma of “let fires burn” did to Yellowstone in 1988 than would have been required to construct protective fire breaks and conduct controlled burns that could have saved both the Yellowstone and Florida forests.
I am a scientist who grew up in our national forests. I have fought forest fires at dangerous times and help managed controlled burns at proper times for the last forty years. I was one of ten thousand called upon, too late, to try to stop the burning of the Yellowstone forests in 1988. Defiant National Park Service bureaucrats, humming their religious “let it burn” mantra, ordered that hundreds of lightening fires be allowed to rage unchecked during the most dangerous fire season in decades. Experienced government firefighters and knowledgeable scientists alike pleaded with the park officials to stop these fires before they joined up and became an unstoppable fire storm. The park service officials wouldn’t listen. They insisted that there was some divine difference between a fire started by a man-made match and a fire ignited by a lightening strike.
Any thinking person can easily understand and respect the vast difference between the “natural fires” of a hundred years ago and the all-consuming forest fires of today. When our forests were in fire equilibrium, frequent forest–cleansing ground fires (usually caused by lightening) reduced the combustible fuel load on the forest floor. Native Americans often torched brushy areas that Nature did not clean up in time. These natural fires periodically burned the brush, debris, and excessive numbers of small trees. This was mother nature’s way of cleaning house – without burning down the house. Anyone who walks through an old-growth forest can see the burn marks on the lower trunks of many big trees as evidence that the natural fires of long ago seldom reached the lower limbs of big trees which would cause them to ignite and in turn create a fire storm that incinerates everything else in the forest. Unfortunately, a fire storm is what usually happens in forest fires during peak fire season today.
Very few natural fires can occur today because most of our forests are not in equilibrium. Man stopped most natural forest fires a hundred years ago. Incendiary conditions now prevail because of decades of accumulated brush, debris, and thickets of small trees on the forest floors. This unnatural fuel load creates intensely hot forest fires that ignite the big trees and destroy every living thing in the forest. Massive amounts of precious top soil is then washed away from hillsides before new root structure can save it. Failure to recognize this difference between the consequences of natural fires of a century ago and unchecked forest fires of today can be disastrous for our forests, as the 1988 Yellowstone fire demonstrated.
Nevertheless, officials in charge of our national parks and forests actually espouse the theory that there is something divine about lightening-caused fires as compared to man-caused fires. They approve stopping a runaway campfire, but won’t allow firefighters to extinguish lightening fires. This is what happened in Yellowstone in the summer of 1988. Can anyone even suggest with a straight face that the progress of a raging forest fire is dictated by whether man or nature provided the first spark? There is not a shred of evidence that mother nature preferentially directs its lightening bolts at forested areas that deserve to be burned—as the “let fires burn” religion seems to believe.
The cruel irony is that any camper who lets an uncontrolled campfire burn even a few square meters of national forest will be charged with a criminal act, while a government agency that deliberately incinerated 320,000 hectares of our most beautiful national park is then allowed to spend tens of millions of dollars of scarce research funds to cover up its acts of horrendous negligence based on unforgivable ignorance of the consequences of inappropriately applying their “let forest fires burn” dogma. Anyone who doubts this should take a look at the forest of blackened carcasses and scorched landscape that still typifies most of the burned areas in Yellowstone today and assess for themselves whether what was done in 1988 by park officials was an act of divine wisdom--or an act of such incredibly low-grade stupidity that it must be covered up at all cost by National Park Service officials.
Many experienced foresters and scientists believe that a long-term program of constructing fire breaks and conducting controlled burns during off-peak fire season is the only way we can clean up and protect our national forests and avoid their eventual destruction by “unnaturally” intense forest fires during peak fire season.
Ironically, many national groups that call themselves environmentalists opposed a bill in congress that would build fire breaks in three large national forests in northern California as the primary objective of sustained-yield timber harvesting operations on these forests. This plan is called the Quincy Library Group plan. It was formulated by local environmentalists, the U.S. Forest Service, and timber industry representatives meeting in Quincy, California, over several years. A bill to implement this plan was approved overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives by both parties. In press reports, the President praised the plan as an example of what he wanted when he asked for compromise, not confrontation over the issue of managing our national forests. Nevertheless, national environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have lobbied selected U.S. Senators such as Barbara Boxer from California to stop the bill in the Senate because these groups claim that approval of any activity by man in our national forests will lead automatically to expanded exploitation of the forests. But they, the self-styled environmentalists, are quite willing to watch these same forests go up in smoke! They know that all our forests, even the few remaining old growth forests that they claim they are protecting, eventually will be burned to blackened stumps if there is no way to stop unnatural forest fires or at least limit their extent during peak fire season.
To protect our national forests and parks until they can be returned to fire equilibrium, firefighters must have defensive fire breaks. Adequate fire breaks require only thinning excessive numbers of small trees and reducing the fuel and debris on the forest floor, not removing the big trees, just as nature once did with natural forest fires. Then controlled burns can be safely attempted in isolated sections and lightening fires can be allowed to burn in off-peak times because they will be limited in area by surrounding fire breaks. Eventually, the entire forest becomes a fire break because it has returned to fire equilibrium. This is the only sensible and sane “let forest fires burn” policy that congress should allow. This is the Quincy Library Group plan.
Fortunately, the Quincy Library Group plan was finally approved by in the Senate in the fall of 1998. However, there are already indications that the Clinton White House will buckle under to the power-hungry so-called environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and resist implementation of the law.
All scientists who care about our national parks and forests must demand a national debate and assessment of the “let forest fires burn” policy. Otherwise, more of our most precious natural resources such as the Yellowstone forest will be senselessly sacrificed as guinea pigs for poorly supported ecological theories that are not consistent with the conditions of today. I think any scientist should take great offense to the implication that only those who anoint themselves as modern “fire ecologists” are fit to judge what is sensible policy for the management of our forests. Any thinking person, scientist for sure, can easily understand the basics of this subject and the consequences of fire in any given forest today. Letting forest fires burn during high fire season with the present incendiary conditions of our forests is as stupid and irresponsible as telling people to build campfires next to the gas pumps at service stations.
Copyright © 1998 Dr. Bill Wattenburg
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