Sensible fire policy easy to implement

Every summer, controversy swirls around wildfire management. The debate is ironic because the outline of a reasonable policy that focuses on protecting life, property and the natural ecology of the forest is not only easy to describe but easy to implement.

Clear policy is needed because large fires cannot be avoided. Large fires are driven by climate and weather, and we can no more control them than we can control earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, volcanoes or floods. The illusion that we can control large fires stems from our success at controlling small ones.

Any sound forest and fire management policy should: protect lives and property, protect and restore the ecology of the forest, and protect the taxpayer. No policy should subsidize any activity that degrades the taxpayers' "portfolio" - salvage logging, for example.

Is such a policy really possible? Yes.

Protecting lives and property primarily requires implementing "firewise" techniques within a few yards of human habitations, and developing site-specific firefighter access. Distant forest "thinning" will not protect lives or property.

Protecting the ecosystem after fires primarily means aggressive soil conservation practices in the parts of the forests crisscrossed by roads. The extent of chronic erosion and the risk of catastrophic erosion is magnified by the effects of a fire so that the period following a fire represents the time of greatest risk, and conversely the moment of highest need for soil conservation and watershed restoration.

Protecting the taxpayer requires both eliminating hidden subsidies and critical examination of the effectiveness of yet-unproven forestry techniques.

In practice, the forest can be treated as consisting of three large zones:

n Zone One: roadless areas and wilderness. In this zone, fire exclusion is neither possible nor desirable. These areas have burned and recovered, burned and recovered, since time immemorial. Many of their fish and wildlife values benefit from and depend upon wildfire. They don't need our "protection." They are harmed not by fire, but by salvage logging.

n Zone Two: forested areas with extensive road access - the forest outside of wilderness. This is the zone where chronic erosion from the road system can be aggravated by wildfire leading to increased and sometimes catastrophic erosion (mudslides) and essentially permanent damage to the watershed. Proper watershed restoration can cost-effectively minimize this risk. Salvage logging is not part of the prescription because such logging (and the associated roads) dramatically increases erosion risk at the moment it should be minimized.

n Zone Three: the inhabited forest - where people have built houses in fire-prone areas. Here, the policy should concentrate on firefighter access and managing vegetation and fuels immediately adjacent to structures. The responsibility for implementation will frequently need to be shared between the federal government and the affected private parties.

Western forests are going to burn - just as the ground is going to shake in California and hurricanes are going to come ashore in Galveston. But when they do, lives and property can largely be protected and catastrophic erosion minimized if we set aside the controversy and concentrate on what actually needs to be done.

David Bayles is senior adviser of the Pacific Rivers Council, and has been with the organization nearly since its inception in 1987. He is a national leader in the conservation community on aquatic conservation generally, and has particular expertise in the effects of land management on aquatic systems and the public policy setting for watershed and aquatic species conservation.