In Fire's Way: A Practical Guide to Life in the Wildfire Danger Zone

8: What to Do

 Logging and thinning, however, are two very different concepts. Logging is about taking more big, old-growth trees that are not fire hazards and that are badly depleted in many forests. Thinning is about weeding out the unnatural accumulations of small-diameter trees that create explosive fire situations. . . . The work of thinning shouldn’t be done by either timber companies or the federal government. It is best done by community agencies, creating jobs in the woods for local residents on the old Civilian Conservation Corps model. Bruce Babbitt, Former Secretary of the Interior Very few professional foresters would accept this dubious distinction between “logging” and “thinning.” The problem is that former Secretary Babbitt stereotypes loggers as abusers of the forest, rather than giving them the chance to become the highly skilled and highly professional forest stewards they can and should be. How did we get to the sorry point where the secretary of the interior uses what ought to be technical language in this inflammatory, highly politicized way? Why are “loggers” evil and “community agencies” good? Can it be true that loggers know nothing of value? Or that they cannot learn new approaches to their craft? Woodswork and logging are inherently dangerous, second only to firefighting. But just as dangerous, in a different way, is an untrained or poorly trained person working with a chain saw in the woods. We should beware of romanticizing the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, even while we applaud former Secretary Babbitt’s goal of “creating” work in the woods. Perhaps EIGHT What to Do there is a fundamental if unspoken philosophical difference here. While it is true that any level of government can “create” jobs, it is also true that markets themselves “create” jobs—and often do it more efficiently than other entities. If community agencies are to do the work in the woods, then what can and should be the role of other levels of government and other taxing entities in this process? This chapter tries to address such questions by examining a unique and recently concluded experiment. Before we fire up every chain saw in the West, we should also ask ourselves and our leaders: What results are we trying to achieve through wildland fuel hazard reduction programs of the sort proposed by Babbitt? Research scientist Jack Cohen’s work suggests that effective landscape fuel reduction may do many good things, but it will not necessarily prevent Wildfire Danger Zone home fire destruction. As the Los Alamos case shows, given severe enough fire conditions and high home ignitability, any exposure to flames and particularly to firebrands can result in residential destruction. Fuel reduction might be effective in limiting the extent of crown fires in ponderosa pine forests. But it cannot and will not eliminate all torching and crowning that can loft firebrands into a highly ignitable residential area. What can we and should we do? A Different Perspective We Americans are good at creating new forms of organization and partnership to address new problems. New partnerships are indeed emerging to address and mitigate the Wildfire Danger Zone’s issues and problems. They include public education ,trainingforwildlandandstructuralfireagencies,trainingforlocalgovernment and community leaders, technology transfer, improved coordination and planning, conducting fire protection assessments, fire analysis, developing partnerships, and targeting selected geographic areas for implementation of special pilot projects. Speaking of pilot projects, New Mexico’s Senator Bingaman said, “Communities based right in these forests or right near these forests can benefit tremendously from the restoration work that is now being done.” He added that it is time for more forest management decisions to be made at a local level. The government needs to support thinning the forests, and local governments should be involved in that effort. In , Bingaman sponsored legislation to give $ million in grants to community groups in New Mexico to work with the Forest Service on forest restoration projects. As of , he and Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) wanted to make this program national. Local businesses would get a preference in winning contracts. These ideas and others come from recommendations made by the conservation group American Forests. They make the case that years of letting either lumber companies or environmentalists control policy resulted in shifts between too much and not enough cutting. Allowing decisions at the local level would put WHAT TO DO  the power in the hands of people who rely on the health of the forest for their...