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Outside Magazine June 2003

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We're Toast (Cont.)

THE NEW FACE OF FIRE

In a decade, the Biscuit Fire will probably be viewed like the 1988 Yellowstone fires are today—as a natural event that results in an explosion of vitality. "You really can't say a fire has done Ôgood' or done 'bad,' " says Tom Atzet, 58, an ecologist with the Grants Pass, Oregon, office of the Forest Service. "Fire has always been a factor in the forests here, and this was just one more example. It does what it does."

Atzet almost bounces out of his seat when he talks about changes the Biscuit Fire will cause in an ecosystem that had grown a little stale. The distribution of tree species will change, and fire-resistant ponderosas will likely survive where Douglas firs and white pines may not. Wildlife populations will be thrown into tremendous flux, with an explosion of insect-loving birds like western flickers flocking to burned areas, where bark beetles and other bugs attack dead and burned trees.

"The only thing certain is change," Atzet says, "and fire is an essential part of that change."

Atzet makes a great point: Fire is an agent of change, not of good or evil. That notion goes right to the heart of why fire is so difficult for people to view dispassionately. Politicians depict it as nefarious, but environmentalists stir up fear of it, too, by depicting wild places as eternal and static—the revered "ancient forest." In fact, few forests survive for more than 400 years before some natural process takes them down.

Ultimately, the debate about fires is a debate about control. Its roots go back to the late 19th century, when forestry pioneer Gifford Pinchot had to leave the U.S. and study in France, since no American schools even offered forestry programs. There he was trained to see woods as domesticated entities, which is precisely what European forests had become after thousands of years of human oversight.

American forests, particularly those in the West, were functioning natural systems, not tree farms. But Pinchot decided to tame them. This interventionist attitude led directly to the Forest Service's determination to eliminate fire, to its efforts to cut down "decadent" old-growth trees, and to its willingness to help President Bush pursue a fire-prevention plan that isn't going to work.

In the end, forests and fires can never be tamed in the big, wild American West. No matter what we do, when the woods are dry and the winds are blowing, the flames will rise. When that happens, we'll start making the same old mistakes again. The firefighting machine will kick into gear, egged on by headlines, and more people will die in the effort.

It's time to stop the waste and think of a better way, a way that gives fire its due as a natural force. We don't dare try to stop hurricanes or tornadoes. Why fire?

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