The agency had reached that conclusion even before the additional evidence foresters drew from the fires that tore through almost half of Yellowstone National Park in 1988. Fire is as much a part of nature as creeks and wildflowers. It's just not correct to say a forest is destroyed by fire.'' During the decades when fires were routinely suppressed, forests choked themselves with excess growth, creating better habitats for tree-killing insects. The fires that have already run through five million acres this year are hotter, faster-burning, more ferocious than any burns of modern times, the people battling them say. And a number of reports say future fire seasons may be worse, identifying about 40 million acres of public land as being at risk of catastrophic fire.
Fire suppression is only part of the problem.
In some forests, experts say, logging has removed the biggest and most fire-resistant trees. In addition, there are many new areas demanding fire protection. Somebody has got to get the message to these people that they are putting themselves at risk, whether it's the insurance industry or the government,'' Dr. Omi said. Our understanding of forest fire ecology is relatively new,'' he said. Under Mr. Clinton, logging in national forests has declined by nearly 75 percent, and some critics blame this decline for the explosive fires.