Fire suppression, logging and prescribed fire all represent active management. The option of eliminating fire suppression and allowing fire to take a more natural course is unrealistic given the private ownership patterns and severe fires that will follow. The policy of allowing natural fires in wilderness and remote unroaded areas should continue since timber harvest is not an option. Timber harvest is now an option on about 17 million acres of forestland in Montana. This does not include wilderness or the recently designated roadless areas.
Harvest is less than one-half of growth.
A healthy timber industry is needed to economically cut and remove trees. Projects proposed for federal forests in Arizona bear this out. Restoration treatments are often not viable because there are no longer timber markets in which to sell products removed by such treatments. Contrary to common belief, forests are dynamic, not static. Fire played the dominant role in shaping and sustaining our forested ecosystems since the retreat of the glaciers.