Thanks for this timely article NewWest. It's certainly interesting to compare the statements regarding fire and fire suppression from scientist Mark Finney at the FS's own Fire Lab here in Missoula with the statements from Forest Service brass/upper management on the same topic.

For example, Finney (correctly) points out above: "“It’s the paradox of fire: the more you suppress them, the worse they get. By fighting every fire, “we end up destroying the very thing we’re trying to protect.”

Compare that statement to what Regional Forester Tom Tidwell (the person in charge of the management of national forests in all of Montana, North and Central Idaho as well as the Dakotas), penned in a Missoulian guest column on July 9, 2008:

"The interagency partnership that responds to wildfires in our area - the Northern Rockies Coordinating Group, of which the Forest Service is a part - is prepared to put out most fires while they are still small. In recent years, wildland firefighters have caught 97 percent of the new starts before they could grow into large fires. Achieving that kind of success will be one of our objectives again this fire season."

This is yet another example of how the Forest Service (being the political agency that it is) routinely talks out of both sides of its collective mouth. One minute they tell us that fire suppression was a major, misguided policy, the next minute they boast that they'll continue to suppress nearly every fire this year.

Just like with most everything else...follow the money. The Forest Service's budgets (and FS management) have become just as addicted to the fire industrial complex as they were to industrial logging and roadbuilding during the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Hopefully bona-fide scientists within the agency, such as Mr. Finney, get more of a say in the future.

Perhaps it truly is time for selective logging of old growth and getting rid of the kindling-like characteristics our current under-logged forests have. Responsible resource use and development is a reality given today's technology...so, let's start!

All the talk is about fuel levels. Reduce fuels, and fire is less destructive. If you chose to reduce fuels by letting fires burn (I don't believe the WFU acres quoted---many fires that had very expensive suppression efforts started out as WFU fires that did not stay home, stay on the ground, or behave as expected and ended up being very expensive to contain) you have to understand that those fires will burn things that have a public mandate to be protected.

Stand removal fire that consumes heritage forests is not a good thing, no matter how many ways you address it. The protected resource, the old trees, the untrammeled landscape, when reduced to ash and snags is not what the public wants. Erosion plugged culverts taking out the roads is not a good deal. The lost of habitat for the conserved species that older forest types have been precluded from opening to logging entry is no goal of the public.

Forests, woodlands, ranges, all have specific characteristics that are special to certain types of animals. Burned forests, woodlands, and range have renewal and pioneer species, seral stages to experience before the lands get close to climax vegetation, but that could take 300 years or more. You can celebrate the renewal that a burn will bring, but how do you replace the lost resources? And how do you justify losing them, purposefully to fire, as being superior to using some of the resources for human benefit? Trading old growth trees for a couple of years of morel mushrooms, and black backed woodpecker habitat for a while is not realistic. Idealistic, but not realistic. There will be fire, and there will be burns no matter what. Morels and woodpeckers are not going to lose their habitat renewal. We are talking about not if there is habitat, but how much.

The government has not funded programs for removing fuels because there is a county and state function of property protection that has to be respected and addressed at the local level. For the Feds to accomplish fuel reduction goals adjacent to private holdings, they have to be able to identify, plan and instigate a program with some certainty. The NGOs and their minions, including people who respond to these sites in favor of vast fires, also sue to stop fuel reduction plans because they involve cutting and removing trees, which are fuel. As long as tops are touching, the trees are too close to benefit from having underbrush removed. Well spaced trees, surface fine fuels removed, and fire will go through quickly ahead of significant wind and leave behind some ash and smoke, or without wind, the fire will creep through the forest or range floor, and can do a world of good if allowed to burn within parameters and on agreeable landowners. Conflagration is not that kind of fire, and it is conflagration that is fought hard. Those hot fires are the very real result of not removing fuels, of proposed plans stopped by environmental zealots, by NIMBY homeowners.

The first person responsible for fire reduction activity is the private property owner. If they do their part, then the expectation of their being damaged by foolhardy Federal decisions should be low. I have a very good friend who had prepared his property well, and still lost almost every tree on over 1000 acres, lost his cabin, lost it all to fire from Federal lands. The Federal fire fighters just observed his place burning from the road, and left when the fire crossed a grazed meadow, a paved road, and went another 10 miles north. I have seen the photos. The reason the fire blew up was that it got into heavy dead timber fuels on USFS land no longer available to logging, and got very, very hot. Years of litigation to "save" the Federal forest is now very moot. The large diameter trees are dead. The acres of old growth are fewer by thousands.

He salvaged logged while the fire was still burning to the north. He got about one load of merchantable logs for every ten acres the fire burned on him. He planted grass last fall, and trees this spring, and built a new cabin. He put in a clear cut fire break. And there is plenty of wood for the black backed, and ladder backed woodpeckers, bluebirds. And the grass has a large deer herd and an even better elk herd concentrated on his place. They are all eating his grass, and putting organic material back on the ground,. while the public estate is still lifeless, grey, silver, white and black, with red needles where any were that did not burn in the fire. Little green on the USFS lands. They are still planning, still negotiating with the NGOs about what will be litigated and what will not.

It is disingenuous to talk about Federal fire efforts and what happens after fire without talking about lawsuits, ongoing litigation. The Feds are not really free to much of anything, and that is why they don't do much of anything. The Federal Estate is being managed by benign neglect, and that is not a good script for good results for the future. So if you can't really do much, then you spend your science budget on justifying that result. A grand game of Cover Your Ass, by peer reviewed research. I will never come to the conclusion that burned is better. Better than what? If not all the options are on the table, it becomes burned is better than the options available, which is not a scientific paradigm, but a political one. Results based science.

Selective logging used as a means of forestry treatment should be utilized wherever beneficial and possible. This "Let It Burn" philosophy and the justifications that follow it are not working.

Well said bear bait. You nailed it on every level.
thank you

great addition bearbait.
We were in Yellowstone in 1988 during that huge blaze, stuck in the park as the fire jumped the road. The debate still rages on regarding that one. Unfortunately most of federal policy is now driven by special interests…pick your flavor, and not setting aside any interest other than the health of our national resources. If the beetle infestation going on in Colorado continues north, without removal of those dead trees, we are going to see fire fuel like no other time in our lifetimes. It is about balance of fuel removal and conservation of valuable old growth, diverse habitat. Hopefully we won’t just run from one extreme to the other

My dad was a lawyer. He thinks different than most people, as do most lawyers. He told me the more you add to a contract, the more issues to be litigated, the easier it is to break. He spent his life writing contracts, and no time in court. His partner litigated, but seldom did they have to litigate one of his contracts.

So when I was the log buyer and timber manager for logging or milling companies, I bought logs with a date to start delivery, and the date the price and acceptance ended. I noted the price per mbf camp run, with no high grading. I noted delivery to the mill, to be scaled by the Bureau at the mill, and when we would pay for what period. And I wrote all that on the back of a business card. That was my log agreement for twenty years. Never went to court. Seldom had a disagreement. My boss asked me if we ought to have a real contract and I said why? We have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to this point, why start now? If we do what we say we will do, and never waiver, we will always prevail. He nodded his head and that was that.

My point is this: the Congress has now encumbered the USFS and BLM with so many rules, regulations, stipulations, codes, what have you, that their paper work is challenged at every juncture. They forgot about KISS: keep it simple, son.

75 years ago, the District Ranger did pretty much what HE thought needed to be done on his District with the money at hand, and RO direction through the SO. No micromanagement by the SO, RO, or CO......IN order to have a good system, Rangers were picked and promoted by their common sense, and not their political views. They had to get along in the community, and they had to husband the resource, and they had to keep fire out of town and off ranches. He also had to manage the graze, and sometimes the timber cut. But it all was his personal touch, his human relations skills, his ability to control situations, people and events that made the old time Ranger a real national asset. Sure, not all were of quality. But they seemed to get winnowed out. And to a man, if asked if they had to do it all over again, would they have done things different, all said sure. Everyone learned from mistakes. They made mistakes. But they changed, and they did their jobs better. Now they have don't the latitude or ability to do anything other than fill in the blanks, connect the Congressional dots, the dotted lines of the Courts. They are not running things. It is really a case of incurable institutional dysentery, and when you look at how thin the ranks have again become, you wonder as to how long the agencies will last. I suppose until their malaise runs its course, or there is nothing left to burn.