Flying Finns
What if we do nothing?
If we do nothing, most of the Southwest’s forests will be lost to fire.
Thereafter, the fire cycle will subside and the process of renewal will begin. It will take several hundred years. Meanwhile, there won’t be much to look at or enjoy.
Despite this reality, some environmentalists still insist such a forest meltdown would be good for nature. But forest ecologists who are studying the situation warn that the fires we are witnessing have moved well beyond “the range of natural variability.”
 Heavy rains scoured this streambed to bedrock following the June 2000 Viveash Fire. The blaze ripped through 28,000 acres of heavy timber on the Santa Fe National Forest on a windless day. Flood-related erosion is common following stand-replacing wildfires. |
What we are instead witnessing is nature’s increasingly forceful response to one of our nation’s felt necessities: the need to limit wildfire for reasons involving public health, safety and enjoyment. The question is, “Where do we draw the line?” Where does public health, safety and enjoyment end and nature begin? Or should there even be such a line of demarcation in modern society?
Should we step back and let entire towns burn to the ground because someone thinks they were built in the wrong place? Or do we simply carve out mile-wide buffers at the city limits, ceding what lies beyond to inevitable wildfire? Do we arbitrarily set up our defenses ten or 20 miles from town or do we try something completely different—a more holistic approach that would take us deeper into the forest where we would enlist science, technology and nature in a quest to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in forests that are simply too important to us for whatever the reason?
While there are no easy answers to any of these questions, a 1998 statewide poll of registered voters in Arizona suggests that most people living in the Southwest understand that there are serious environmental consequences associated with inaction in the face of catastrophic wildfire, especially for a nation that places such high values on clean air, clean water, abundant wildlife and beautiful forests.
The poll, conducted for the Eastern Arizona Counties Organization (EACO) by the Arizona State University Media Research Service revealed 87 percent support for protecting endangered plants and animals, 91 percent support for controlled burns to protect forest health, 97 percent support for recreation on public lands, 91 percent support for harvesting old or dying trees and 88 percent support for thinning.
“For most Arizonans, wildfire has become a quality of life issue,” says Dr. Martin Moore, executive director of EACO, now the Environmental Economic Communities Organization, St. Johns, Arizona.
“We recognize that if we lose our forests we lose much more than trees,” he observes. “We lose a very appealing lifestyle that makes the Southwest such an attractive place for businesses and families alike. We simply cannot afford to leave our future to chance, so we are bringing together groups of people who share our belief that restoration forestry beats watching forests burn to the ground.”
But restoration forestry’s proponents face two daunting tasks. Many politically powerful groups see restoration as nothing more than logging in disguise, and therefore oppose it. Worse, even if restoration’s opponents could be swayed, there is virtually no forest products industry left in the Southwest to process and market whatever wood fiber might be thinned from national forests.
“We’re working very hard to recruit technologically advanced businesses that capitalize on the emerging opportunities we see in small-wood processing and energy development,” Dr. Moore reports. “Without these businesses we cannot begin to deal with the underlying causes of these awful fires.”
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."