Ranchers Criticize Forest Service’s Let-It-Burn Policy Officials Defend Not Fighting Some Lightning-Caused Blazes

After decades of rushing to put out fires started by lightning, the U.S. Forest Service is letting some burn naturally in wilderness areas, worrying some ranchers and businessmen.

The critics say the policy allowed three wildfires in eastern Oregon - the Salt Creek, Sloan’s Ridge and Wildcat fires - to grow into huge blazes last summer that eventually cost $25 million to fight.

“I think they’ve pretty well screwed our country up,” said George “Rusty” Clark, 54, a Long Creek rancher-businessman. “There was no reason for those fires to ever get that big.”

The 52,600-acre Salt Creek fire in Hells Canyon of the Snake River was Oregon’s most extensive run-away prescribed natural fire. The 10,560-acre Sloan’s Ridge fire burned in the nearby North Fork John Day Wilderness Area. In the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness Area near Prairie City, the Wildcat fire charred 10,655 acres.

“They let those suckers burn,” said Ken Holliday, 40, a John Day, Ore., rancher. “We’re going away from a timber and cattle economy and going to a firefighting economy.”

The goal in allowing lightning fires to burn is to restore the natural role of wildfires in wilderness and primitive areas which have survived seasonal flames for untold centuries.

“Our history and science show the longer we delay the natural process from occurring, the more severe the effects on the landscape,” said Dave Bunnell, a national fuel management specialist for the U.S. Forest Service in Boise.

The danger is that the fires tend to occur at the hottest and driest time of year, when they quickly can spread across thousands of acres, said Jerry Williams of Missoula, leader of an eight-person Forest Service team reviewing management of natural fires last summer.

But that very danger is the reason to avoid a natural-fire policy in the summertime, said Ted Ferrioli of John Day, executive director of the Malheur Timber Operators commodities group and a candidate for the Oregon Senate.

“It shows there is precious little common sense in the decision-makers,” Ferrioli said.

John Howard of La Grande, Ore., a member of Union County’s board of commissioners who is active in forest planning projects, called the policy of allowing summertime natural fires “extremely risky.”