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166  Even Controlled Burning Of Forests Has Drawbacks
     The Washington Post   August 30, 1969

     The mastery of fire symbolizes, in the legend of Prometheus, the
application of human intelligence to technology and man's escape from
blind submission to the untempered cruelties of the life of the beast.
The control of fires that ravage the forests is a mission whose
emotional appeal would seem to be matched by its economic advantage.
Few national heroes have as broad a following, at least in lip
service, as does Smokey the Bear -- and please do break your matches
to be sure they're out.

     It is a humbling reflection on how little we really know of our
place in the world that our fire protection policies remain the center
of continued argument among conservationist groups.  Science magazine
recently carried a broad overview by Mark Oberle, whose credentials
as a contemporary ecologist include service as an emergency fire
fighter in central Alaska.

     The problem is that man is not the only agent to bring fire into
the forest.  Over the ages, however, our noblest trees have adapted to
repeated clearings of underbrush fire, leaving the redwoods and tall
pines unhampered by competition.

     Periodic fires, furthermore, prevent the accumulation of ground
litter that helps to fuel the devastating crown fires.  After a few
decades of careful coddling, some forests may become absolutely
dependent on fire prevention, for if one gets a good start, it will
be uncontrollable.

     Animal life, like bear, deer and moose in Alaska and the condor
in California, according to authorities quoted by Oberle, also suffer
in the absence of "lightning fires to maintain a constant cycle of
vegetation types for food and cover".  The National Park Service and
the Bureau of Indian Affairs have begun to follow prehistoric Indian
practices of controlled burning, but the U.S. Forest Service,
according to Oberle, has generally resisted this approach.

     It cites the problems posed by fragmented ownership of land
parcels and the legal liabilities that might attend the escape of
an intentional though "preventive" fire, presumably more serious
than those from an uncontrollable natural one.  The general public,
it is also assumed, would become indiscriminately careless about fire
if preventive ones were intentionally started.

     There is possibly also a deeper lesson: that growth, death and
change are part of nature.  If our sentiments are not accompanied by
knowledge deeper than we usually bother to acquire, our efforts to
preserve a status quo may be self-defeating.

     This view must not be an excuse to devastate our irreplaceable
1000 year-old redwoods; we have no substitute for them during our
own and the next generations.  But we could also be starting new
forests whose management we may understand better than the ones we so
imperfectly protect now.

     Our urban centers may be posing an ecological parallel, but many
of them have gone beyond reclaiming.  Why do we persist in a futile
struggle to rebuild them when their sites could better be planted to
trees and new communities built where there is room and fresh air for
their inhabitants?
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