Ray Ring’s HCN article on fire is one of the
best pieces on the topic I’ve read anywhere (HCN, 5/26/03: A
losing battle). By promoting an understanding that today’s
superfires result from a combination of human insults to the
environment and natural climate cycles enhanced by global warming,
we can begin to look at the Western wildfire situation
realistically.
Two major elements of our
current political climate are keeping us plunged in an expensive
state of denial on wildfire matters. First, as Randal O’Toole
points out, agencies are addicted to fire-suppression funding so
they keep fighting fires that will burn eventually and inevitably.
Second, many agency people and politicians are unwilling to accept
that livestock grazing and logging (and all their associated
activities) worsen fire vulnerability, not lessen it, as industry
claims.
I propose we take the opposite approach to
the McInnis/Bush plan. For now, let’s concentrate all our
thinning and fire-suppression efforts in the urban interface, and
let almost all fires on a majority of BLM and Forest Service lands
burn within very large containment boundaries. These fires will
burn eventually, so let them go across large areas. Let the
pressure out of the system. Then, we can begin a sane
fire-management policy in their wake, modeled after the
research-based National Park Service approach.
It’s folly to imagine we will ever thin our way
out of fire danger over 200 million plus acres of public lands
under either the Bush/commercial timber model or with inadequate
appropriations from a “conservative” Congress. We need
to acknowledge the tremendous damage firefighting inflicts on
landscapes and the phenomenal waste of tax money these futile
efforts represent. Crazy as it may seem, it’s time to stand
back and let the fires burn.
Tom Ribe
Sante Fe,
New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Let the fires burn.
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