Land Management Dilemma

The Good Fire - Bad Fire Controversy

"The western inland forests that we so love and cherish for what they do for the environment, for the economy, and especially for our souls have, for the past 100 years, been experiencing dramatic and unhealthy changes. The primary cause of this major, region-wide, problem has been the exclusion of fire from the forests."

R. Neil Sampson

Since the beginning there have been forest fires in the west. These early landscape fires were started naturally by lightning or Native Americans, with low intensity burns at frequencies ranging from 5 to 25 years. This established fire within the natural range of variability for most western forests. These fires burned irregularly in a patchwork pattern called "mosaic" which left some areas unscathed as a safe haven for wildlife. Fire acted as a culling mechanism which thinned out younger trees and left mature specimens. This ensured an open canopy with enough sunlight to support a diverse understory of nutritious grasses and forbs. This was a good fire, a healthy fire.

But within the past five years there has been an explosion of huge, stand replacing conflagrations which are not within this natural range of variability. How do we know? New and previously unknown phenomenon has been discovered in the wake of such fires which proves these are not good fires, nor are they healthy fires.

The men and women working on the Boise and Payette National Forests saw 400,000 acres burned, over 20 percent of the Boise since 1986. They, as well as the experts at Missoula Montana have compiled some disturbing statistics. Following the great fires of 1994 in Washington, Idaho and Oregon, many of which burned until the first rain or snow of fall, there is a growing concern over the ability to contain such fires at all.

Anyone who believes the new, bad fires are beneficial to endangered wildlife should know that for the first time rangers are discovering the charred remains of mountain lion and elk in the ashes. These species can normally outrun a fire. A stream filled with precious endangered trout was not exempt either, for they were literally poached to death in the boiling water.

Perhaps one of the most telling signs is the recent death by fire of a 600 year old ponderosa pine on the Boise National Forest, a magnificent specimen which managed to survive six centuries of periodic fire, but could not stand against the new high intensity burns. Yet another example is shown by hydrophobic soils, a term given to earth baked to a temporary concrete-like hardness by fire in layers typically only three to four inches deep. But in recent years the severe Idaho fires have left hydrophobic soils as much as fourteen inches deep, a condition never before seen, and foresters are hard pressed to predict the long term impacts to soil stability, populations of beneficial microbes, revegetation and wildlife.

Since the beginning there have been forest fires in the west. These early landscape fires were started naturally by lightning or Native Americans, with low intensity burns at frequencies ranging from 5 to 25 years. This established fire within the natural range of variability for most western forests. These fires burned irregularly in a patchwork pattern called "mosaic" which left some areas unscathed as a safe haven for wildlife. Fire acted as a culling mechanism which thinned out younger trees and left mature specimens. This ensured an open canopy with enough sunlight to support a diverse understory of nutritious grasses and forbs. This was a good fire, a healthy fire.

But within the past five years there has been an explosion of huge, stand replacing conflagrations which are not within this natural range of variability. How do we know? New and previously unknown phenomenon has been discovered in the wake of such fires which proves these are not good fires, nor are they healthy fires.

The men and women working on the Boise and Payette National Forests saw 400,000 acres burned, over 20 percent of the Boise since 1986. They, as well as the experts at Missoula Montana have compiled some disturbing statistics. Following the great fires of 1994 in Washington, Idaho and Oregon, many of which burned until the first rain or snow of fall, there is a growing concern over the ability to contain such fires at all.

Anyone who believes the new, bad fires are beneficial to endangered wildlife should know that for the first time rangers are discovering the charred remains of mountain lion and elk in the ashes. These species can normally outrun a fire. A stream filled with precious endangered trout was not exempt either, for they were literally poached to death in the boiling water.

Perhaps one of the most telling signs is the recent death by fire of a 600 year old ponderosa pine on the Boise National Forest, a magnificent specimen which managed to survive six centuries of periodic fire, but could not stand against the new high intensity burns. Yet another example is shown by hydrophobic soils, a term given to earth baked to a temporary concrete-like hardness by fire in layers typically only three to four inches deep. But in recent years the severe Idaho fires have left hydrophobic soils as much as fourteen inches deep, a condition never before seen, and foresters are hard pressed to predict the long term impacts to soil stability, populations of beneficial microbes, revegetation and wildlife.

Few ecosystems in America are truly intact, and those of the western states have been severely altered by the exclusion of fire. Though the effects of poor logging techniques also contribute to the problem, this alone is such a contentious issue it is best left out of the argument. Many environmental impact studies and ordinances are based on the concept of intact, well defined self-sustaining ecosystems, yet due to these changes of density plus species diversity, it is incorrect to begin with this assumption.

Whether dealing with a single residence or large subdivisions, there is always the opportunity to help improve the forest environment and better protect homes from inevitable wildfire in the same effort. However, trees and the environment are very hot issues today because of the debatable rhetoric concerning global warming, which is still just a theory. The notion that trees are our most potent means of protecting ozone places the emphasis on increasing quantities, rather than the quality and long term health of those tree communities. This presents a public barrier to general forest thinning programs, or selective harvesting to restore proper species diversity and all its inherent benefits. It is far easier to encourage the public to save every tree than it is to explain the complexities of realistic forest ecology.

This forest management concept can be applied to entire communities, as was done by the residents of Incline Village, Nevada, on the northern shore of the Tahoe Basin. They understood how serious the wildfire threat was to their homes on a community-wide basis and created an organization, Neighbors For Defensible Space to develop a program of localized forest management. In ecologically sensitive area, combining the interests of many government agencies as well as private conservation groups was not easy, with many disputes and conflicts along the way.

Now that the program has been implemented, there is greatly reduced wildfire threat to a sizeable watershed containing hundreds of homes. Perhaps the greatest benefit, however, was that wildlife populations increased dramatically. Biologists realized that withthinning of trees came breaks in the once continuous canopy, which allowed the understory grasses and forbs to return to what had been barren, deeply shaded ground. With the rise in food supply, wildlife from rodents to raptors reproduced prolifically, and the original diversity of the forest floor returned. Thus the thinning of the forest around Incline Village, though unattractive at first, actually benefitted the entire food chain while at the same time dramatically reducing the threat of serious wildfire.

Today the interface between development and wildlands is growing at a fast pace throughout the West and in the wooded southern states. This increases the incidence of destructive wildfire because many peripheral wildlands are often so appreciated by residents, even a simple management program meets with stiff opposition. As professionals it is our duty to help clarify these issues if the open spaces and wildlife preserves which enhance our communities are to remain safe and provide productive sustainable habitat.

Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior states it so perfectly when he defines the true solution and new environmental approach. "The only way to break this vicious cycle is to put controlled fire back into the land. We must apply the torch to recreate the prehistoric cycles of light burning in which ground fires moved swiftly across the land, consuming brush and accumulated ground fuel, pruning out thickets, and maintaining healthy stands of forests."

As a child thirty years ago I can still see the old "Smoky Bear" ranger at Sequoia National Park gather a handful of litter beneath a great ponderosa and promised it will someday kill the great specimens that towered overhead. "This would never be this deep naturally," he said. "Fire no longer cleans up our forests as it should."

There is so little time to repair what took a century or more to create. Either we step in and manage these forests with harvest programs and prescribed burning, or they will burn uncontrollably to leave nothing but barren waste in the wake of the flames. We must also remember that fire does not discriminate, a fact proven by the death of many fire fighters last year on Storm King Mountain, Colorado, which reminded us so painfully, that despite these predictions of three decades ago, those in the nation's capitol continue to argue the politics of emotional environmental issues, much like Nero fiddling away, oblivious to the fact that Rome is burning.

Contact and/or join one of these groups for more information and to keep up on the latest in forest health, and wildfire threats in America.

• American Forests
  P.O. Box 2000 Washington DC 20013 (202) 677-3300
• The Evergreen Foundation
  4025 Creater Lake Highway, Medford, OR 97504 (503) 770-4999
• International Association of Wildland Fire
  P.O. Box 328 Fairfield, Washington 99012-0328 (800) 697-3443