Life in the Boondocks

Trey Smith

On July 12, lightning sparked a forest fire in western Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex -- a place where wildfires are common this time of year. Usually, if they’re small and don’t threaten to get out of control, the U.S. Forest Service will let them burn. Small fires are good for the forest ecosystem, burning off dead timber and creating habitat for many woodland species; because of that, all U.S. agencies adopted a policy in 1995 to reintroduce fire on federal land.

So what happened last month was unusual: The US Forest Service, which manages the 1.5 million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and an additional 35 million acres of federally designated wilderness land nationwide, ordered a full-on attack of the fire by smokejumpers, bucket-bearing helicopters, and four lumbering slurry bombers that each dumped more than 2,000 gallons of red chemical fire retardant on an ecosystem that is otherwise treated as pristine.

This has been happening all across the West this summer, as the Forest Service throws its already-thin firefighting resources at blazes that in previous years would have been allowed to spread naturally and burn out on their own. The stated reason is cost: The Forest Service is so worried that the hot, dry conditions will cause one or more of those small fires to burn out of control — consuming not just acres of forest, but also the agency’s strapped budget — that it’s willing to pour money and resources into fighting blazes that threaten little and are usually considered healthy for the forests.
~ from Forest Service Orders "Aggressive Initial Attack" on Wildfires — Despite Consequences by Richard Manning ~

Manning does a commendable job explaining the US Forest Service's convoluted reasoning for this change in strategy...though it truly makes little sense! The two things I want to point out are that 1) Due to climate change, what we're seeing this year in the Western US will be undoubtedly a precursor of things to come and 2) Part of the unstated reasoning is the desire to protect the rich from Mother Nature.

Many scientists are predicting that the massive drought of 2012 is just the tip of the iceberg. There's an even chance that next summer will make this summer seem like child's play! In fact, many climate scientists contend that we are in the beginning stages of a prolonged drought that could last a decade or two at the very least.

Since the industrialized world refuses to get serious about mending our evil ways, we are beginning to see the repercussions for generations of ecological folly.

The second part of this concerns the rich who love to build their palatial estates on the fringes or deep inside the forest. Not content to dominate the urban and suburban landscape, they want to dominate wilderness areas as well. And so, fires that in the past would have been allowed to burn with little consequence, now must be fought tooth-and-nail to save massive economic investments.

It's not just homes and property that must be saved either. If you've plunked down millions of dollars to create your own little slice of paradise, the VIEW becomes just as important. You shouldn't have to be forced to sit on your golden deck overlooking the charred remnants of a forest, should you?! You paid good money to see trees and, dammit, you can't see the trees if they've burned down.