You guys all have really good insight into the role of fire in forest evolution. If you were running the U.S. forest policy there would definitely be a better balance between conservation, timber harvest and protection of private property from wild fires.
In 1900 Frederick Weyerhaeuser (who was raised near the Black Forest in Germany where timber has been managed for 800 years) stood in the Northwest rain forest and stated there would never be a case for forest management in the United States until wild fires could be controlled. Weyerhaeuser was a seasoned midwest timber man at that time and he certainly remembered such memorable fires as the great Hinckley fire of the 1880's in Minnesota.
When he purchased his huge old growth timber tracts in Washington at the turn of the century he knew he was taking the biggest gamble on earth -- could he liquidate his timber holdings before mother nature did it for him with catastrophic fires? Modern forestry would be an economic disaster without modern fire suppression.
This is really what fire suppression is all about -- the protection of private property from the vagaries of random wild fire. But, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you divorce forest harvests (liquidation) from fire protection then the fire suppression policies just allow endless fuel build up until you get major fire storm epochs that are unstoppable -- just like in the old days before modern forestry and fire supprssion came along. This is inevitable as Yellowstone and now, Los Alamos are proving. When I was in New Mexico last October I noticed there was no lumber industry left. This fact coupled with the endless growth of the pine forests insured that, indeed, this fire was inevitable and every year it didn't occur meant it was destined to get bigger and bigger until the year it happened. Old man Weyerhaeuser cut and hacked to make his gamble pay off. The removal of forest harvest from New Mexico removed all gambling odds and insured that sooner or later mother nature would liquidate at her convenience.
I would call the pine forests of New Mexico the typical fire evolved intermountain ecology -- they burn hot and they burn fast -- that is how the pine forest got established. Even in the Olympic rain forest of Washington state the Forks fire of 1952 travelled about 50 miles in 12 hours through forests nobody thought could burn. In the right conditions it will all burn and heaven help those who are in the way.
Bill Petitjean
