National Forest Protection Alliance Wildfire Policy Overview

As the national forest system enters the 21st century, fire has emerged as the dominant management issue for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Aggressive fire suppression policies, created 90 years ago and perpetuated by the agency's infamous icon "Smokey the Bear" are finally being reexamined. However, many Americans are justifiably confused about the ecological benefits of wildfires. This is due to the USFS's misguided policy and to widespread anti-wildfire propaganda spread by the timber industry and reinforced by the media.

Aside from fire suppression, commercial logging and grazing are also contributing to the severity and frequency of wildfires now occurring on both public and private forestlands. Industrial forestry has changed the age classes and the composition of tree species resulting in younger, less diverse forests that are more vulnerable to fire. Grazing, combined with fire suppression, has resulted in a proliferation of younger seedlings growing and surviving as the grasses are grazed and fire is excluded. This is particularly true for the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota and Wyoming and the Apache-Sitegraves National Forest in Arizona.

A great example of the contradictions between what scientists are recommending and what the industry, federal land managers and politicians are proposing is the wildfires of 2000. Despite plenty of excellent research from fire ecologists showing that these wildfires, while large, burned within natural fire patterns and burned the hottest in previously roaded and logged areas, the agency is using them to precipitate another phony forest health crisis. According to the USFS, between 1916-1999, an average of 13.9 million acres burned annually in the U.S., while in 2000, 7.4 million acres burned. Less than one-third of the acreage burned was on national forest land.
Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, of the Western Fire Ecology Project in Eugene, Oregon, summarizes the USFS's preoccupation with logging projects designed to fireproof our forests. "Instead of evaporating, the forest health hoax of the 1990s has metamorphosed into a fire hazard hysteria. Logging proposals are no longer presented truthfully as commercial timber sales, but instead are being portrayed dishonestly as fuels reduction for fire protection projects."

In the fall of 2000, Congress mandated the implementation of a National Fire Plan (NFP) allocating $2.9 billion to the USFS and the Dept. of Interior for FY 2001. Simultaneously, the agency and the timber industry started to play on the public's fear of fire by launching a public relation's campaign to sell massive commercial thinning and post-fire "salvage logging" proposals. Montana's Bitterroot National Forest and the Black Hills National Forest are the best illustrations of the USFS offering huge volumes of salvaged timber for sale while disguising them as fuels reduction.

Unfortunately, NFP funds are being misused.

Instead of using NFP's resources to improve home protection, to help communities effectively adapt to wildfires, and to start restoring wildfire into fire-dependent forests, NFP efforts are going towards increasing fire suppression capabilities and to developing risky and unproven logging projects. Scientists agree that both of these activities have increased wildfire intensity and severity.

Management activities and policies that rely on fire suppression beyond the wildlands-urban interface or on commercial logging, thinning or grazing should be eliminated.