Mr. Petersen also wants the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, of which he is a member, to be a formal part of the Forest Service's 5-year planning process. He wants them recognized as equal partners with the Forest Service. Of course, it is laudable to have a coalition of environmental, timber, range and other interests helping the Forest Service. Even so, they cannot presume to be equal to the Forest Service in decision-making authority.

It is hard to praise the Forest Service anymore because foresters no longer make most of the decisions. Landscape architects, fishery biologists, historians, biologists, wildlife biologists, ornithologists, geologists, hydrologists, soil scientists, sociologists, recreationists, ecologists, and everyone but foresters dominate the agency, none of whom individually or collectively know much about managing a forest.

On the other hand, professionally trained foresters take courses in these and other fields of study, and basic science, but they go beyond their narrowness by using overarching concepts and a history of experience that dates back to the 7th century to integrate them into 21st century sustainable and productive multiple use forest management. In short, today's highly trained forester is the most qualified professional to produce a sustainable yield of wood, water, wildlife, recreational, aesthetic, and other resources from forests, public and private.

In addition, Congress authorized the Forest Service to manage the national forests on our behalf. We can, and should, provide advice. However, neither I, nor Mr. Petersen, should presume to tell them what to do. I will nag the Forest Service in the scientific and professional literature, in the media, and in Congress, but they decide and I advise. I am not happy with what they are doing to our national forests but I respect their authority to decide and so should Mr. Petersen.

That said, my most serious criticism of the Forest Service is that agency personnel have sacrificed their willingness to stand by professionally sound decisions and adherence to legislative history in exchange for personal survival and advancement. The timid, fearful, bureaucrats who run the Forest Service are so afraid of lawsuits from a minority of extremists, and biased federal judges, that they take their ill-informed representatives on field trips to ask permission before making management decisions.

I remember well a Chief of the Forest Service (unnamed) who visited UC Berkeley long ago. I asked him in a seminar the goal of the Forest Service. He said, and I quote, "survival, autonomy, and growth." That perverse philosophy led to where we are today. I spent my academic career trying to teach professional foresters to believe in more.

Many responsible professional foresters who want to stand on principle still work in the Forest Service, but they suffer as a minority in a bureaucratic culture where survival is paramount. They are professionals who believe in doing the right thing instead of just saving themselves. They deserve our respect and support.

Mr. Petersen seems to know nothing about forestry, the forestry profession, the burdens foresters carry in the Forest Service, or academia. He only knows what he wants and stomps his feet if he doesn't get it.

He goes beyond his depth even further by saying, "I would call Bonnicksen a "soft" scientist who cherry picks his research to support his views." That is, of course, untrue. I spent 11 years in college studying forestry (minors in wildlife, range, and the decision sciences), with three degrees from UC Berkeley. I am Professor Emeritus, and I am certain Mr. Petersen has no idea what it takes to achieve that distinction from a research university. Emeritus status requires approval by the faculty, the Department Head, the Dean of the College, the President of the University, and the Board of Regents.

I was a professor of forest science for 30 years and a consultant for six years. I am also a former National Park Service Ranger. I have published over 125 journal articles, technical reports, books and chapters, and other articles on forestry, and I have many awards, including one from the President of the United States who handed it to me personally.

Mr. Petersen's personal attacks are a symptom of a larger problem; extremists who know almost nothing yet presume to know everything.

Mr. Petersen also accuses me of not doing scientific research on wildlife to defend my description of their absence after the Angora Fire. The Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station (PSW) did a study that was supposed to be published in October 2011. It is still not available, so I can't comment until PSW publishes the results.

I thought it best not to subject my relatives and friends who I took on a short field trip to the Angora Fire to counting deer pellets, learning birdcalls, or setting rodent traps. In any event, I used my understanding of wildlife ecology, which I studied under Dr. A. Starker Leopold (the son of Aldo Leopold), to look for animal tracks, the branching tips of browsed shrubs (which are an obvious indicator of browsing), and other signs of wildlife activity and I saw and heard nothing in those areas I observed.

I spent decades in forests, standing alone miles from the nearest road. I never heard complete silence as I did after the Angora Fire when working in a vibrant living forest. Wind rustled leaves, tree limbs fell shattering branches on the way down, bears tramped around following me, deer grunted and stomped nearby, squirrels scrambled up and down the bark of trees while chirping and the cones they cut fell with a thump, birds sung or squawked, carpenter ants crawled by, and other insects flew around me like carpenter bees, mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and many others. I heard none of these sounds while standing in the dead forest left by the Angora Fire. I didn't even hear wood boring insects chomping or woodpeckers banging on trees to eat them because they were long gone. That is the reality of what I experienced, however unscientific. All I heard in the Angora Fire area was a deathly and unnatural silence.

Equally important is something Mr. Petersen doesn't understand because of his lack of ecological knowledge. That is, when habitat burns wildlife die. Not just in the flames and suffocating smoke, which kills animals by the thousands, but also because those that flee enter adjacent occupied habitat, which cannot support them. Therefore, they die anyway.

In addition, Mr. Petersen says it is a "throwback" to talk about "big bad fire scare stories." How do you respond to this insensitive comment? Wildfire is truly scary. I suggest that Mr. Petersen grab a pulaski and stand in front of a raging wildfire, or walk through a burned community and a forest full of dead animals, before saying it isn't scary.

Mr. Petersen laments the fact that we don't manage forests his way. He states, "I want to explore those problems, but first a little ecology." He then presumes to lecture us on how our forests evolved with fire.

This is not the place to point Mr. Petersen in the direction of an enormous literature on the subject of fire and forests. Even so, he needs to go beyond the simplistic ideas he uses to make his case and dig deeply into the human and ecological history of our forests. I suggest that he start by reading my book (reviewed positively worldwide) on the 18,000-year history of North America's forests titled, "America's Ancient Forest: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery" (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) which, by the way, is available at Amazon.com.

Mr. Petersen states that I ignore science showing, "that weather drives fire far more than fuel loads, and the fact that you can't fire proof forests, but you can fire proof your house..."

I think Mr. Petersen failed to read my essay closely. I care little about controlled experiments to fireproof houses when they fail to predict what happens in the real world. I have seen many houses burned to a crisp that were supposed to be safe and others with no protection that went unscathed by a wildfire. Homeowners should do everything possible to protect their home and property. In my professional opinion, it would improve the odds of success, but it won't guarantee it. Even so, ultimate responsibility for reducing wildfires that threaten lives and property adjacent to public lands rests with the government because they created and maintain the fuels that make destructive wildfires possible.

In addition, weather (wind at various speeds in different levels of the forest canopy, whether the wind blows upslope or down slope, relative humidity, and temperature) is important to fire behavior, so is aspect and slope. For example, a 30 percent slope can double a wildfire's rate of spread. It can double again on a 55 percent slope. It is also important if it is a head fire or a backing fire, or if the fire is creating its own wind.

Fuel load, even though diagnostic, is admittedly a simplistic measure of fuel. Dead and foliar moisture content, arrangement, size and shape, compactness, bulk density, weight per unit area, crown height and crown bulk density, canopy layering, volatile compounds, and a host of other fuel related variables determine the severity of a wildfire. The main point is that wildfires can't burn without fuel and more fuel with the right characteristics creates more fire.

I would like to conclude my response with a story that is apropos to Mr. Petersen's criticism of my essay. I gave a well-received talk in San Bernardino, California, about wildfire to 1,000 people and afterword only one person, a well-known extremist, came up to me to complain. He said, in an angry tone, that I was wrong. I asked him if he would change his mind if I sent him 50 refereed journal articles that said that my conclusion on the point in dispute was correct. He said, "No, they are wrong and you are wrong." I said, "We have no more to discuss." If I glowed with green energy and sat at the right hand of the Greek Earth-goddess Gaia, I would still be wrong if I disagreed with him or, apparently, Mr. Petersen.