Twice Burned? The Los Alamos fire rekindles debate
over logging
If anyone has a right to take a hard-line stance against
"controlled burns" in the nation's forests, it's Jim Rickman. The
Los Alamos, New Mexico, county councilor lost his home to the
runaway blaze that leveled more than 200 dwellings and charred
nearly 50,000 acres in his community in May. His mother's house was
destroyed too, along with those of dozens of friends and
neighbors-families 37-year-old Rickman had delivered newspapers to
while growing up in the area. Today Rickman is adjusting to the
unanticipated inconveniences of apartment life-like carting his wash
to a communal laundry room-and pondering the chore of replacing all
his possessions.
But instead of joining the chorus of conservative lawmakers who
want lands agencies to do away with intentional burns altogether
(substituting them, in many cases, with accelerated logging),
Rickman puts his life-altering experience in sober perspective.
"Sometimes fire is a good thing, a necessary thing," he says.
"Despite what I've lost, I still support the concept of prescribed
burns." Neighbor Marvel Kellogg is just as resolute. "We lost our
property and publishing business," says Kellogg. "Needless to say
the fire has been devastating. But eliminating the burns is clearly
not the answer."
Not that those views mean much to the lawmakers who have decided,
like Representative Joe Skeen (R) of New Mexico, that the federal
government's controlled-burn policy is "out of control." Not
coincidentally, most of them supported the salvage-logging rider of
the mid-1990s, when environmental laws were suspended so that
commercial loggers could cull fire- and insect-damaged forests. The
result was healthy live trees being offered up to loggers in order
to make salvage logging profitable.
Representative Helen Chenoweth-Hage (R-Idaho) is leading the
drive for "thinning" and "partial harvests," along with brush
clearing, to replace controlled burns. In hearings on Capitol Hill
in June, she charged that "the politics of a preservationist elite"
caused the Clinton administration to prefer prescribed burns,
thereby setting the stage for the New Mexico fire. The timber
industry responded on cue, linking fire risk to President Clinton's
proposed national-forest roadbuilding ban. "Many of these roadless
areas are in overcrowded forests at high risk for insects, disease,
and fire," wrote Theodore Rossi, president of Rossi American
Hardwoods, in a letter to the Hartford Courant. "To eliminate the
option of accessing these areas forever . . . is shortsighted. The
fire at Los Alamos is a sign of things to come."
But Sierra Club Southwest Regional Director Rob Smith says that
"land-management policies based on commercial logging, aggressive
fire suppression, and grazing are what created the problem." Many
people now understand that years of Smokey Bear-style fire control
prevented small fires from naturally and safely clearing the forest
floor of debris-a process that prescribed burns attempt to
replicate. But fewer realize that grazing removes grasses that
encourage regular, moderate fires, or that fires tend to burn more
intensely in areas that have been logged. They are drier and less
shaded than natural forests, and the "slash piles" left behind by
logging crews make perfect tinder. (See "Big
Timber's Big Lies.")
As with salvage logging, the problem for the timber industry is
that the small-diameter trees that choke public forests after years
of fire suppression have little commercial value. Without strict
controls, "thinning" regimens could simply encourage logging of
mature trees as well.
Complicating the debate is the fact that trimming of dense
undergrowth- particularly adjacent to developed communities-may be
appropriate. New Mexico Representative Tom Udall (D) has suggested
"pre-commercial thinning" of trees too small for commercial use.
Even Sam Hitt of Forest Guardians (an organization that, like the
Sierra Club, favors an end to logging in national forests) has
called for labor-intensive thinning of the canyons around Santa Fe.
But sale of logs taken from the lands would be prohibited.
In the wake of the New Mexico blaze, Secretary of the Interior
Bruce Babbitt, the White House, and dozens of national newspaper
editorials reiterated their support of a (somewhat revised) federal
fire-management policy.
Noting that less than one percent of prescribed burns get out of
control, the U.S. Forest Service recently issued a draft study
calling for the biggest increase ever in spending on the
controlled-burn program. But the debate will only get hotter as
commercial timber interests swap their old salvage-logging caps for
new fire-management ones. It's a fight familiar to the Sierra Club
and other environmental organizations, who will this time have to
convince lawmakers that citizens want to protect their homes and
their forests. By Reed McManus
Lay of the Land 1 | 2 | 3
Up to
Top
|