On a cold October morning in a remote corner of northern Okanogan County, 10 young firefighters awaited a decision from Olympia. Word came at 8:30 a.m. They would not be setting off a controlled burn that day.

The Sinlahekin Wildlife Area, managed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, is one of the crown jewels of north central Washington. Yet, an important decision was being made by another state agency, the Department of Natural Resources, or DNR. A controlled burn had been planned for over a year. A fire-line had been dug and 4,000 feet of fire hose connected to a pump drawing from a lake. Carefully drawn plans were approved, and the weather was favorable. One last condition had to be met: Smoke could not drift into a populated area. Unfortunately, Loomis meets the definition of a populated area, and it was possible smoke might drift there.

Sinlahekin Wildlife Area Manager Dale Swedberg was trying to correct a potentially disastrous situation in the forest that surrounds the meadows and lakes of the Sinlahekin. The forest was once widely spaced ponderosa pines. Fires burned every three to six years on average, returning dead needles and fallen branches to the soil in the form of nutrient-laden ash. Native Americans set fires to improve hunting and ease travel. White settlers and early foresters saw harm in fires, and a vigorous program was put in place to snuff them out. We now have thickets of Douglas firs, surrounding the few large legacy pines. Bark beetles are slowly taking the pines. Browse for deer is limited. Decades of accumulated dead wood litter the forest. If a fire occurs at the wrong time, nothing will stop it.

Unfortunately, this situation is repeated throughout the interior Western United States. Controlled burning, often in combination with thinning, can do much to solve the problem, if only we can do enough of it.

Smoke, for some people, is more than irritating; it is a health problem. Naturally, we all want to breathe clean air, so we have created multiple layers of federal, state and local law to limit smoke. These laws ignore one central fact: The forest will burn sooner or later. With a controlled burn, forest managers can choose when an area will burn and how. It is much better to light a fire in September with an assembled crew under expert guidance than to have one start in July at the hands of a careless camper. A controlled burn will bring out the benefits of fire, whereas in a wildfire there will be all the elements of the good, bad and ugly. A wildfire will put out far more smoke.

But there is a lot of resistance to controlled burning. We all know how litigious our society is, and unforgiving if a fire crosses a property line. The U.S. Forest Service does controlled burns but garners more complaints than kudos from the public. We want our air clean and cannot see the big picture. Burning is particularly hard to pull off in Washington because of legislation crafted within view of a wet forest where dead wood molders and rots.

Approval to burn did come the next day at the Sinlahekin, and some of the planned acres were burned. Much more was left to do. I am hoping that our legislators and regulators will find a way to make things easier next year, not just for the Sinlahekin but for all forests of Eastern Washington.