Forests need return to historic state

Thomas M. Bonnicksen - Knight-Ridder

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The drumbeat for "prescribed fire" has never been louder -- despite the fact that 32 large out-of-control wildfires are raging throughout the United States, destroying billions of dollars of prime timber and private property.

The Sierra Club and other environmentalists say deliberately set fires are the best way to solve today's wildfire crisis. Their simplistic reasoning: fire is natural and therefore good for forests.

Yet, ironically, the Sierra Club also has a "zero cut" policy. It wants to protect trees from loggers, but it does not mind killing millions of trees with fire.

Environmentalists cannot have it both ways. Are they tree huggers or eco-arsonists? Widespread burning would make sense in a different century, but it's 2002, not 1802.

If we could look back 200 years, we would see fires burning regularly in about 91 percent of our forests. These were mostly gentle fires that stayed on the ground as they wandered around under the trees. You could walk over the flames without burning your legs.

In a historic forest, gentle fires burned often enough to clear dead wood and small trees from under the big trees. They might flare up in a pile of logs or a patch of thick trees, but would quickly drop back to the ground. Such hot spots kept forests diverse by creating openings where young trees and shrubs could grow.

These were sunny forests that explorers described as open enough to gallop a horse through without hitting a tree. Open and patchy forests like this also were immune from monster fires like those that scorched Arizona and Colorado this year.

Our forests look different today. They are crowded with trees of all sizes and filled with logs and dead trees. You can barely walk through them, let alone ride a horse. That is why the gentle fires of the past have become the ravenous beasts we know today.

Environmentalists blame foresters for creating thick forests by putting out fires. However, environmentalists want thick forests. They lobbied for years to convert forests to old-growth, which they define as dense, multi-layered, and filled with dead trees and logs.

Now they also want to keep 58 million acres of forest roadless and unmanaged. They are using tree-hugger arguments to set up our forests to burn. Then they use fire-hugger arguments to justify the infernos they create. It is naive to believe we can have thick forests and gentle fires. Even carefully planned prescribed fire is unsafe in today's forests.

Each 20,000-acres of "prescribed burn" is likely to produce one escaped fire. That means there could be as many as 243 escaped fires a year. This is unacceptable, when you consider there are 94,000 homes at risk in fire-prone areas in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains alone.

Environmentalists also overlook what it was like when fires burned freely. Explorers often complained in their journals about the pall of smoke hanging over mountains and valleys. Today, health hazards and air pollution restrictions make extensive burning difficult and unpalatable.

In addition, most forests require thinning before prescribed burning, and 73 million acres need such treatment.

The initial treatment would cost about $60 billion during the first 15 years. And maintenance costs of about $31 billion for subsequent 15-year periods would continue ad infinitum. That figure does not include the vast amounts of money spent to fight escaped fires, rebuild destroyed homes, control erosion and plant trees to replace burned forests.

Taxpayers will not pay this enormous cost. Likewise, the public will not stand for smoky skies from prescribed fires and burned homes from inevitable escapes. We must find a better solution.

Restoration provides the best hope for returning health to our forests because it uses forest history as a model for management. The forests that explorers found were beautiful, diverse, filled with wildlife, and resistant to monster fires.

Restoring historic forests is easy, but success requires working with the private sector. People who make their living from forests have the skill and desire to help.

It would take little public funding since restored forests would come close to supporting themselves from the sale of carefully harvested wood products. Restoration is a cost-effective and safe way to protect our forests and solve the wildfire crisis.


•Thomas M. Bonnicksen, a member of the advisory board of the National Center for Public Policy Research (www.nationalcenter.org) is a professor of Forest Science at Texas A&M University and author of "America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery."