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Forest Fire Primeval
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15050 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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9 / 1988 |
3,261 Words |
| Author
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Thomas W. Swetnam
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On a warm June day in an Arizona pine forest, everything looks flammable. Even the pine-scented air smells like it could burn. On such a June day in the year 1900, a forester from Yale University rode horseback through the parklike stands of ponderosa pine along the Mogollon Rim of central Arizona. Gifford Pinchot, the chief of a new conservation agency--the Division of Forestry, later renamed the Untied States Forest Service--must have felt that he was as far from his accustomed realm of eastern hardwood forests as he could possibly be. Pinchot rode his horse to the edge of a bluff where he could look out over the spreading canopy of the largest continuous ponderosa pine forest in North America. Years later, in his book Breaking New Ground, he recalled that moment: "We looked down and across the forest to the plain. And as we looked there rose a line of smokes. An Apache was getting ready to hunt deer. And he was setting the woods on fire because a hunter has a better chance under cover of smoke. It was primeval but not according to the rules."
Pinchot was convinced that forest fires, whether started by people or lightning, were "not according to the rules" and must be extinguished with all the effort that could be mustered. That conviction became nothing short of a mission to the young agency that he built. While this mission has endured to the present, it has changed considerably in recent years. The direction of Forest Service fire policy, as well as that of other U.S. governmental organizations charged with public land management has shifted toward greater acceptance of fire as a necessary natural component in wilderness and parklands, and even as a forestry tool to be used on other managed lands. This change has been forced by an accumulated weight of historical and ecological evidence regarding the role and pervasive influence of fire in the natural maintenance of forests. While polices have indeed changed, they have changed slowly, perhaps because of the momentum of bureaucracies and careers built upon different perspectives.
The long adherence of U.S. forestry organizations to a policy of all-out fire suppression was due to a combination of dedication to the protection of tremendously valuable forest resources and the self-preservation instincts of the agency that essentially had a blank check to draw upon for carrying out its fire-fighting mission. Fire fighting is also one of the most glamorous aspects of the forestry and park management professions. Fighting forests fires, at least in the mind of fire fighters, is the moral equivalent of war. Large numbers of men (and increasing numbers of women) combine efforts in an emergency struggle against a hostile force, and while there is significant danger, death is uncommon. On large "project fires," battle lines are drawn and forces are arrayed over the landscape with reinforcements on alert. Air support from aerial retardant bombers, helicopters, and smokejumpers (paratroopers) are called in, and legendary "last stands" are made by crack fire-fighting crews. It is no wonder that many professionals cling to this exciting lifestyle and have only slowly, if at all, accepted the proposition that not all fire is bad.
But fire fighters now understand that a new dimension and challenge has been added to their jobs. They must still fight forest fires, but only in certain situations, while in others they may even set the fires themselves. The reasons for this transformation are both historical and ecological.
Ancient
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