U.S. Forest Service

MISSOULA, MT – Only you can prevent forest fires from obliterating your house. This twist on the old advice of Smokey Bear* is what the U.S. Forest Service is telling homeowners nowadays. But the agency is having some trouble getting the word out.

The Forest Service’s chief of firefighting, Tom Harbour, left his D.C. office and flew to Missoula to relay that message to reporters here for the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which wrapped up today.

 Even with more than 10,000 federal firefighters ready to roll every fire season, the Forest Service simply can’t protect the throngs who have chosen to move into the woods in the last few decades, Harbour said.

“When that fire is coming over the ridge at your house, it’s too late,” Harbour said. “From an ecological perspective and a social perspective, we only face two choices: We’re either going to act as a society, or we are going to get acted upon. … The choices we have made as a society have put us in this position.”

Those choices include a century of suppressing fire in the woods, a policy kicked off by the more than 1,700 wind-fueled blazes that coalesced from eastern Washington to western Montana on Aug. 20-21, 1910.

 Next came the individual decisions by so many Americans to move into the woods over the last four decades. Many others moved to suburbs set amid fireprone grasslands or chaparral such as the acreage scorched annually by the Santa Ana winds in southern California.

“It may be the most significant internal migration we’ve ever had,” Harbour said.

Those folks living in the woods and fields are the ones Harbour and other fire scientists want to take action.

A rule banning mining, logging and new road construction on nearly 40 million acres of national forest land was reinstated by a federal court Wednesday. Among those covering the decision by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals were the Anchorage Daily News and the Los Angeles Times.

The rule was created during the Clinton administration, but later repealed during the Bush administration in favor of state-level decision making. As a result, the Tongass National Forest and national forests in Idaho are the only areas of forest land that are not protected under the reinstated rule. Another case affecting the rule is going on in the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

After the approval of a timber sale in the Tongass last month, it will be interesting to see if the Obama administration enforces the “Roadless Rule” by reinstating it for the Tongass as well.

– Emily Linroth