Dear HCN,
In his essay, “Los
Alamos is burning” (HCN, 5/22/00: Los Alamos is burning), Frank
Carroll, formerly with the Forest Service and now with Potlatch
Corp., presented us with two stretches of the imagination. First,
he managed to avoid placing any blame for the Los Alamos fire on
the Forest Service and other land-management agencies, which have
long pursued a disastrous policy of preventing fire in the dry
forests of the West. Instead, he placed the blame for the fires now
spreading across the West on “well-intentioned’” environmentalists
who are fighting to keep people and management out of the forests
so as to preserve the forests “for all time in a pristine
condition.”
I don’t know which planet Mr.
Carroll is speaking about, but it certainly isn’t the one I live
on. Everyone, including the Forest Service, admits that the
overload of forest fuels and current flammability of Western
forests are due first and foremost to their decades-long “Smokey
the Bear” policy of preventing and fighting forest fires. I don’t
know how Mr. Carroll missed this widely accepted
conclusion.
More importantly, I don’t know a
serious environmentalist in the West who opposes all entrance by
humans into Western forests. Due to past mismanagement of American
forests by federal and state agencies, forest activists strongly
advocate reintroducing fire by prescribed burning and reducing fuel
loads by thinning small trees and removing the dog-hair thickets
now blanketing the Western forests. I’ve worked with top forest
activists throughout the West and have never heard one demand a
hands-off policy, although they certainly don’t trust the Forest
Service or want to give them a completely free
hand.
Mr. Carroll and others in the
forest-products industry who are now blaming environmentalists
should look at a fire policy published five years ago by Oregon
Natural Resources Council, an environmental organization dedicated
to protecting old-growth forests and wilderness in the West. I
wrote this policy in 1995 along with forest activists Tim Lillibo,
Wendell Wood, Andy Kerr, Regna Merritt and Doug Heiken. Not once
did we consider a hands-off or people-out-of-the-forest policy. Our
policy was reviewed positively by top forest activists, as well as
by fire specialists with the Forest Service. The policy is just as
useful today as it was five years ago. If it had been implemented,
maybe we wouldn’t now be watching Western towns burn
down.
Joy Belsky
Portland, Oregon
Joy Belsky is staff ecologist for Oregon Natural Desert Association.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Carroll lives on imaginary planet.
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