‘Let it burn’ common in some forests

MCCALL, Idaho – Western public lands, including the Payette National Forest in Idaho, the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico and the Bitterroot National Forest that straddles the Montana-Idaho border, have become “let-it-burn laboratories,” federal wildfire managers say.

Sparse populations surrounding those forests make it possible to pursue some of the nation’s most progressive fire management policies.

An increasing number of wildfire managers are letting more lightning-caused fires on federal land burn, to help return forests to their natural state where wildfire and trees survived in equilibrium before modern man’s arrival. The policy also keeps firefighters from harm’s way – and could save millions of dollars otherwise spent fighting fires miles from civilization.

Environmental advocates favor these changes, saying they let Mother Nature take her course – even as some forest communities fear that allowing more fires to burn is a recipe for disaster.

The 1988 firestorm in Yellowstone National Park that torched 1.2 million acres was one turning point, emboldening fire managers who were already arguing that battling every drought- or wind-fueled fire in the West was an exercise in futility.

Sam Hescock, a U.S. Forest Service regional fire manager on the Payette National Forest north of Idaho’s capital, remembers a key turning point in his forest: It was July 1996, and a dry lightning storm rolled over the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, igniting a remote wildfire. He told firefighters to hold off – to the chagrin of some forest bosses.

“They told me, ‘Sam, we normally don’t let those things go until Aug. 15. In July, we just don’t do that,’ ” Hescock recalls. “I told them, ‘Then you hired the wrong person.’ “

Hescock has survived as a fire manager at the Payette, and he’s still letting thousands of acres of ponderosa pine burn annually following lightning strikes, whether it’s Aug. 15 or not.

Last year, fighting wildfires cost $1.3 billion when a record 9.8 million U.S. acres burned. Twenty-four wildland firefighters died. A study by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise concluded that a wildland fire costs $43 an acre to monitor, compared with suppression fires where bills can run as high as $250 an acre.

“The benefit is safety and a lot of economics,” Hescock said. “What happens if we crash an airplane or hurt a smokejumper on a fire miles from nowhere? What do we tell the parents? Why not just have a fire scar out there?”

Between 1972, the first year the Forest Service says it allowed a lightning-caused fire to burn, and 1988, the agency let an average of just 12,000 acres burn unimpeded annually. From 1988 to 2000, that figure tripled to 35,000 acres, for what came to be called “Wildland Fire Use” fires. Since then, the number has spiked to as many as 300,000 acres a year.

That’s a far cry from the 1930s Forest Service’s “10 a.m. policy,” when the agency set a goal of extinguishing new fires by 10 a.m. the next day.

“A vast majority of agency personnel, whether it’s Forest Service, National Park Service, or Bureau of Land Management, now appreciate the important role that fire plays in the landscape,” said George Wuerthner, author of “Fire Ecology: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.”

“Most of the people in the agencies are recognizing we can’t put out all the fires,” Wuerthner said. “We don’t have the resources to do it, and with climate change, it’s getting harder to put out fires.”

That’s easy for faraway officials to say, contend residents of Idaho’s deep-woods hamlets such as Yellow Pine or Secesh, who are surrounded by wildfires every summer. Their fear: The policy could lead to disaster if a wildland fire once deemed harmless gets out of control.

A case in point: The 1988 Canyon Creek fire, originally allowed to burn in Montana’s Scapegoat Wilderness, exploded to torch a total of 250,000 acres, including 40,000 acres of private ranchland. Such fears run high in Idaho’s remote communities, with more than a dozen wildfires now burning on more than 1,300 square miles – more than 830,000 acres – across the state, including several Wildland Fire Use fires that likely won’t be out until October brings rain and snow.

Margaret Cooper runs the Winter Inn in Warren, just northeast of McCall, where she’s lived since 1970.

Outside her lodge, fire crews Wednesday were installing sprinkler systems and trimming roadside brush after ordering a voluntary evacuation due to the 62-square-mile East Zone Complex of wildfires, which has already torched three Salmon River cabins. It’s not a Wildland Fire Use blaze; about 350 firefighters were digging fire lines there.

Still, Cooper believes efforts to suppress many of the area’s fires have grown less aggressive as the Forest Service becomes more comfortable with allowing some fires to burn.

“It used to be, they didn’t let anything burn. And now they’re going to let it all burn in a few years,” Cooper said. “The firefighters that are in there trying to help us are doing a very good job of it. We’re not mad at them, it’s the policy that’s handed down to them.”

Tim Sexton, the Forest Service’s fire use program manager at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, said his agency hasn’t stopped suppressing fires near private property. Deciding when to let a lightning-caused blaze burn and when to deploy firefighters with shovels, bulldozers and retardant-dropping C-135 military air tankers is a balancing act.

First, there must be a minimum risk to private land before a fire is allowed to burn, he said.

And while sparsely populated forests in Idaho, Montana and New Mexico make ideal candidates for the strategy, it’s unlikely managers of the San Bernardino or Angeles national forests in populous Southern California will ever let fires burn, Sexton said.

Still, more are adopting the practice. Across America, the Forest Service has expanded its areas where Wildland Fire Use fires may be allowed to burn to a third of its nearly 200 million acres.

In 2006, the Boise National Forest had its first Wildland Fire Use blaze, as did Arkansas’ Ouachita National Forest, according to the Forest Service. And since June 24, a 400-acre lightning-caused hardwood blaze in the George Washington and Jefferson national forests in Virginia, about 60 miles from the U.S. capital, has also been allowed to burn.

“We want to use the fire, instead of spending large amounts of money suppressing it, while at the same time protecting private property,” said Sexton, whose job isn’t growing easier as development encroaches farther into forests. “Any time we suppress a natural ignition, it allows fuels to continue to accumulate. Sooner or later, it’s going to burn so intensely that some of our options will be compromised in being able to protect those homes.”