The thin red line: Debate rages over best way to curb forest fires

"Millions of acres of public lands are affected with insect damage. Invasive plants crowd out native plants. Tree stands, after years of poor management, are so thick that they cannot grow to natural size," Interior Secretary Gale Norton said last week. "We need to reverse these trends."

"Poor management," in this case, may be a reference to decades of the US Forest Service's "Smokey the Bear" fire suppression policy, the goal of which was to put out every fire by 10 a.m. the next day. Now, most forest ecologists agree, fire needs to be seen as a tool for regeneration.

Looking down from the Cessna at Bald Mountain in southern Oregon's Kalmiopsis Wilderness, forest activist Lou Gold points out the broad areas of green among the charred remains of trees. The fire swept through these areas, burning the brush and "woody debris" of a natural forest while leaving the bigger old-growth trees that had evolved with thicker, fire-resistant bark. Nearby lie severely charred sections of forest that have been salvaged, logged, and replanted after another devastating fire in 1987.

"The lesson is essentially that the fire spreads most quickly and most violently through the young forest, whether it's recovering after a previous fire or a managed plantation system," says Mr. Gold. "The overall fire problem is that we have managed the system into younger and younger forests, and the younger it is the more fire-prone it is," Gold adds. "You can replant, but in another 15 years you'll have a young, dense forest waiting to burn again. Basically, it's a monocrop like a field of corn."

Dave Calahan is a retired Medford, Ore., firefighter who now tends 80 acres of forest in the Applegate Valley. Standing on a ridge between Sterling Creek and Spencer Gulch in the middle of what was the 2,800-acre Squire Peak Fire, Mr. Calahan offers opinions on fire's vital function in this part of the West. "When it blew up that day, thinned or not, it toasted," he recalls. "If Mother Nature wants to go on a rampage, it doesn't matter whether it's been thinned or not." "We need to de-villainize fire," he says. "Fire is not a villain unless it's about to burn down your house."

Following this philosophy, many people with homes in forested areas on the outskirts of Western communities are working hard to prevent this from happening. Like Perry Prince in nearby Ashland, Ore., they're taking advantage of government-subsidized programs to clear out undergrowth that built up during years of fire suppression. Mr. Prince's 1.3 wooded acres includes his house and another building for his Chinese antique import business. He says a fire would spell disaster.

But with help from the Lomakatsi Restoration Project, a nonprofit ecoforestry group, Prince removed brush, woody debris, a few smaller trees. Now, the land he shares with the occasional bear or cougar is far healthier than it was a year ago, although he's had to give up a bit of privacy. "After years and years of putting it off, I just said enough is enough," says Prince. "I can see my neighbors now, but if there was a fire our house would probably be saved."

It's also more than a one-time effort. Students from a local wilderness charter school have "adopted" Prince's land to help remove Scotch Broom and other fire-prone invasive species.

In the long run, says Timothy Ingalsbee, director of the Western Fire Ecology Center in Eugene, Ore., all of this requires "permanent engagement with the landscape." "We really have to start with community protection," says Dr. Ingalsbee. "And that's going to affect the way we live."

The federal costs of fighting wildfires set a record last year.

Year/ Million acres/ Costs (million) 2002 6.9 $1,661

2001 3.6 918

2000 8.4 1,362

1999 5.7 524

1998 2.3 329

1997 3.7 256

1996 6.7 679

1995 2.3 340

1994 4.7 845

Source: National Interagency Fire Center

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