Forest Service Plan To Set Fires Ignites Protest Feds Will Use Prescribed Burning To Help Clear Overstocked Forests

Smokey Bear isn’t going to like this.

That’s what Rep. Dale Kildee was thinking as Forest Service officials explained why they intend to set fires at several national forests this year.

“When I grew up, fire was always the enemy of the forest. Now it’s a friend?” the Democrat from suburban Detroit asked during a congressional hearing this month.

Actually, it depends whom you ask.

The Clinton administration has ignited controversy in Congress and across the West with plans to increase the use of prescribed burning - the intentional setting of small fires - to help clear overstocked forests of dead and dying timber.

“There are a lot of hidden problems in prescribed burning,” said Rep. Bob Smith, R-Ore., the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

“People will always make misjudgments. Nobody can predict the weather,” said Smith, a friend of the timber industry who prefers salvage logging to clear the forest floor of downed wood.

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck says the low-intensity fires will reduce unprecedented fuel loads that threaten catastrophic fires across one-fifth of the 191 million acres of U.S. national forests.

Fire is indeed a friend, Dombeck told Kildee, one that should be “greatly respected.

“There isn’t a burn that’s not dangerous and shouldn’t be taken very, very seriously,” Dombeck told the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health.

But the burning planned over as many as 1.3 million acres next year - up from an estimated 750,000 this year and an average of about 300,000 each of the previous 10 years - is necessary because of decades of “extensive, overzealous if you will, fire suppression,” he said.

Until recently, federal firefighters tried to douse every fire in a national forest. As a result, they upset the natural cycle of fires that for 10,000 years made way for more mature trees.

“The price that we have paid for 60, 80 or 100 years of very effective fire suppression is that we have changed the succession of ecosystems,” said Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who drew industry criticism by pushing for prescribed fire last month.

The problem has been compounded by clearcut logging that stripped forests of native tree species, Babbitt said. Many were replaced by less fire-resistant trees that thrive in the sunlight but are more susceptible to insects and disease.

“We must not sacrifice the integrity of God’s creation at the altar of commercial timber production,” he said. “If our forest patient has a long history of poor eating habits and indigestion, then we need to burn off the unhealthy fat, not practice forest liposuction.”

The administration is seeking $30 million to $50 million to fortify the burning program in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, which would allow for treatment of 850,000 acres to 1.3 million acres.

By lighting some fires, Forest Service officials say they can pick favorable conditions, temperatures, humidity, wind direction and speed.

“If there’s a disaster, Mother Nature takes its own course. There’s no ability to control the situation,” Dombeck said.

The shifting emphasis comes as the Clinton administration works its way out from under what Vice President Al Gore calls the “biggest mistake” of Clinton’s first term - the so-called “salvage timber rider.”