BURNING ISSUE
From Scorched Earth, a New Vision of Yellowstone and the West
By Todd Wilkinson, 10-27-05
September 7, 1988: A day at Old Faithful Geyser that one had to witness firsthand in order to believe. As a young newspaper journalist, I was dispatched to write about the economic effects of Yellowstone's epic forest fires on local tourist communities. Arriving at Old Faithful that day amid an evacuation of visitors and concession workers, the outward flow of traffic suddenly was suspended as rapidly advancing columns of flame forced the closure of all roads leading out. With winds picking up ominously in the afternoon, a golden maelstrom, sounding like a blare of converging freight trains, sweptthrough the forest and literally leapfrogged over the development. All of us there that day could feel the super-furnace bearing down and none of us knew what would happen.
The famous Old Faithful Inn was spared destruction but only for a slight, last-minute shift in the gale. Smoke was blinding, soot filled our ears, blackened our faces and caused us to wheeze for days afterward. Old Faithful proved to be the last major battlefront of that historic wildfire season in greater Yellowstone, and the events of the summer ignited a national debate about the important ecological role of fire, the consequences of more than a century of suppression, and the choices that still loom large today on hundreds of millions of acres of public land in the West.
As I say, you would've had to be at Old Faithful to fully appreciate the chaos and danger. Or, as a fascinating alternative, you can read Rocky Barker's new book Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America (Island Press). Seventeen years in the making, Barker's narrative opens with the dramatic scene at Old Faithful, which he, too, encountered, almost lethally, but he places the firefight in a larger context of landscape, culture, science, and geo-politics. Let's face it, most books about wildfire are not likely to summon our interest. Barker, however, crafts a gripping story line and traces the siege at Old Faithful back to the original genesis of western fire suppression. It's birthplace: Yes, Yellowstone National Park.
I had no idea that it was former Civil War General Phil Sheridan--one of the most vocal early protectors of the park and perhaps one of the least liked bluecoat--who actually gave the order for a group of cavalry troopers to attack a fire near Mammoth Hot Springs with axes, shovels and buckets of water. This modest exercise in futility, it turns out, became the first seed of federal fire policy that would transcend western forests and create the incendiary fire conditions that are now so problematic. Barker, who ranks as one of the finest environmental reporters in the U.S., has a good nose for ferreting out tidbits of history that, by themselves, may seem interesting only as anecdote. Yet by connecting the dots, this book earns a place, alongside of the works by historian Stephen Pyne, as some of the best about wildfires ever produced.
"Scorched Earth began as I recovered from the traumatic shock of covering the Yellowstone fires in 1988," Barker writes. The book is filled with plenty of "A-ha!"Â? revelations, including the underdocumented notation that famed naturalist and forerunning conservationist John Muir endorsed the fire suppression tactics that were initiated by Sheridan. Sprinkled throughout are references to the icons of the conservation movement at the dawn of the 20th century.
There is no doubt that the Yellowstone fires, in the wake of Congressional hearings; naive, politically motivated rantings from some of our elected officials; and yes, even thoughtful discourse, were supposed to make us smarter.
Yet in an age when more people are flooding into the wildland-urban interface, hamstringing the ability of land management agencies to use fire as a tool in achieving forest health, Barker questions how far the application of fire science has actually progressed.
Scorched Earth is an important book for all who love Yellowstone and for anyone--meaning any of us in the West--who are likely to be impacted by federal fire policy in the coming decades. I shall never forget the sight of Barker bounding out of the forest in front of Old Faithful as a dense canopy of lodgepole pine erupted in flame behind him. Rocky took the knowledge gleaned from that close encounter with death and has given us something far more enduring.
Recently, I had an opportunity to interview Barker. He is scheduled for a book signing and reading on Tuesday, November 1 at Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, an event sponsored by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
NEW WEST INTERVIEW WITH ROCKY BARKER
Todd Wilkinson: The Yellowstone fires of 1988 were proclaimed by some as a new high-water mark for promoting better understanding of fire behavior AND of the need to consider fire as an important management tool. But did that really happen?
Rocky Barker: Not really. It did teach firefighters humility and made many fire bosses overall less apt to throw folks in front of big fires. But in many ways it set back the effort to restore fire to western forests. The negative public reaction and the political fallout made managers less willing to take even small risks to allow fires to burn. They wanted fire only under the most careful conditions, which of course, is not natural in the historic sense.
TW: What were some of your most vivid recollections of the fires of 1988? You also note in the book how you needed to step back after being in the trenches all summer. You hint at suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Do you think that's what it was?
RB: You watched me run from the fire at Old Faithful, Todd! I still get nightmares about that moment. But the long term slog, breathing smoke every day, sleeping in my car and facing yet another day of huge fires was both thrilling and hard on me. I think when you run on adrenaline for a long time it triggers things in your head. I gladly sat behind a desk for a year after the fires and I have never wanted to return to the front lines, though I've flown over a few firestorms and watched from a ridgeline several times since.
TW: You do an excellent job of revealing the advent of fire suppression in the West and spin a wonderful circular story of how it began in Yellowstone and cycled back upon itself in 1988. Sheridan's edict certainly wasn't based upon science but rather a mixture of aesthetics and utilitarian motivation. Are we any smarter about our relationship with fire today?
RB: What I learned and wanted to show in my book was that General Phil Sheridan, one of history's least likable heroes, played the critical role in placing land conservation in the hands of government and making government control the centerpiece of conservation and eventually environmentalism. He wasn't sophisticated enough to consider fire's role but he intuitively recognized that to protect the elk, bison and other big game he loved in Yellowstone,he had to protect all of the habitat. His "Greater Yellowstone" idea wasn't big science but it was a big idea that was rediscovered by the Leopolds, the Craigheads and others.
TW: Different special interests, including government agencies which today pad their budgets with fire management money, proclaim wildly different statistics about how much of the West is actually at risk to "catastrophic fire," given fuel loads. How serious is it?
RB: I would stop at the edge of the ponderosa pine from an ecological standpoint. The sequoia and other California species are in the same boat. But the high elevation forests like Yellowstone are going to burn big no matter what we do. Beetles, while making forests more volatile briefly, actually thin these forests and reduce their ability to carry big fire but when conditions are right -- and since the 1980s conditions have been right regularly, we're going to have big fire. Even in ponderosa that has returned to its more natural age mix, may burn worst if dry hot summers with big winds continue.
TW: It seems that there has been an utter disconnect between the desire of the public to have healthy landscapes and the challenges presented by people inhabiting the urban-wildland interface. It's like people building homes in beach areas prone to hurricanes or in floodplains. If we are going to have a truly progressive approach to wildfire as a management tool, isn't it going to take government (and insurance companies) emphasizing more personal responsibility?
RB: Absolutely. Recently Sen. Larry Craig (of Idaho) brought the ire of the state of Louisiana for suggesting the return of New Orleans' 9th Ward to wetlands. He can see it there but not so clearly in western backwoods hamlets like Elk City and Atlanta. The real tough solution would be to zone forests where firefighters won't go to fight fires because of the danger, cost and lack of marketable resources. Elers Koch proposed this for north central Idaho in 1935.
TW: As you look back now at the journey the book has taken you, elaborate some on the unexpected epiphanies you discovered. Originally you were thinking of writing a retrospective of the fires of 1988 but it turned intosomething far broader and ambitious. You've produced an important mirror for readers to see themselves in the context of the New West.
RB: I reveled in the stories of Sheridan and Jay Cooke, Nathaniel Pitt Langford and Moses Harris, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold whose ambitions and ideologies converged at Yellowstone. I thought I knew these men until I got the chance to research this book. FDR's last act before his polio came on was to fight a forest fire. Aldo Leopold died in a forest fire. Don Despain {Yellowstone's renowned fire ecologist] played with matches as a kid. Most of all I was struck by the missed opportunities when history passed John Wesley Powell and Elers Koch by. Consider this fascinating line: Muir spoke at Thoreau's funeral and knew Ralph Waldo Emerson. He taught both TR Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot taught Leopold. Leopold taught his son Starker. Starker taught Yellowstone Superintendent Bob Barbee who presided over the park when the 88 fires blew up. The connections are so powerful.
TW: Where do we go from here? Is society better equipped today to co-exist with fire?
RB: We have no choice but to live with fire. With global warming likely tied to our own behavior we have joined fire and the other natural forces, floods, landslides, volcanoes, hurricanes, even erosion in generating the power to reshape the world. What remains unresolved is not whether we can control nature but whether we can control ourselves.
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