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. A number of Western senators back the idea of allowing the timber industry to remove more trees. However, environmental groups point out that the biggest fires in Montana and Idaho are burning not in wilderness areas, but in land that has been developed or logged. Last year, a record 1.4 million acres of Forest Service land was deliberately burned.
Most prescribed burns go off without trouble.
But it only takes one to stir public ire. And this year, the one that got away, a 43,000-acre blaze set by the National Park Service near Los Alamos, N.M., destroyed more than 200 homes. And no matter how convinced the experts are that Los Alamos was an exception, the fires now raging in every state of the West look horrific on television, blackening national treasures like Mesa Verde National Park and raining embers on popular campgrounds.