Our Idaho Forest Campaign Manager, John McCarthy, spent 48 hours with the U.S. Forest Service in the
middle of the Trapper Ridge fire. This unique, on-the-ground experience gave him the chance to examine,
first-hand, the more modern fire management approach the agencies are taking to some fires that don’t
immediately threaten people or property – allowing the fires to perform their natural role in restoring
the landscape. McCarthy also had the opportunity to discuss environmentalists’ support with the fire troops
making it happen, and to learn from those experts how to more consistently apply this new management approach
in other landscapes. This is his report from the fire near Trapper Creek, located about 75 miles northeast of Boise.
Trapper Creek, Idaho -- When the California-based Yosemite Fire crew walked past a burning log at the
edge of the 18,000 acre wildfire here and took no action to put it out, I knew these were a different
breed of cats. These young folks are not only fighting against fire – they’re working with it because
they know some fires are good things. And that’s good for our public lands and our
public pocketbooks. [pdf]
Pictures of 50-foot flames raging in a forest captivate our primordial fears. Seeing and hearing
trees ignite into torches could be an adrenalin pump for these guys, but when sub-alpine fir
exploded into fire brands, we didn’t jump into action. This wildfire burned in the right forest
at the right time, even as a major effort was underway to fight fire elsewhere in the region.
Working with fire is as complex and difficult as anything in public lands management. Fires that
threaten people and property should, and always will be, suppressed. That’s the Forest Service’s
mandate. Ditto for other agencies including National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and some state fire agencies.
After a helicopter dropped me in the middle of the fire zone, though, I watched the Forest Service
allow a fire to burn that posed no danger to citizens or fire crews. Fires doing what they’ve done
for eons is
good for the environment. [pdf] The process creates habitat for wildlife, regenerates plants
and trees, clears out brush, and provides ecosystem building blocks such as moisture and sunshine by
opening the forest canopy and returning nutrients to the soil.
Knowing when to put fires out and when to walk on by is just one example of a very tricky business –
but the Forest Service is getting this right, too. The Wilderness Society sees fire use as
connecting
good science, realistic policy, economic efficiency and human safety.
A lightning bolt started the Trapper Ridge fire on July 17, on the eastern edge of the Boise National
Forest about four miles from the Sawtooth Wilderness boundary. The fire was being managed under what
interagency fire managers call “Wildland Fire Use” [pdf] protocols. That means they resist the knee-jerk
reaction to extinguish the fire and instead monitor it – allowing the fire to do what’s good for the
ecosystem. If the fire changes directions and becomes a threat, managers attack it.
My flight to the fire edge revealed two immediate realities as we circled the perimeter. One,
wildfire isn’t a total burn-out; a lot of green is left. Two, fire behavior is variable, depending
on topography, fuels, and weather -- and the weather can change everything -- fast.
Four days into this fire, the wind kicked up, blowing the fire from 1,500 to 8,500 acres in one day.
The flames were headed north – exactly where fire managers didn’t want them to go. The fire dynamic
went from one of expected beneficial effects to one threatening a sensitive watershed and scattered cabins.
Much of the fire moved toward remote, unpopulated forests and headed to remnants of a large 1994 fire.
One part of the fire presented opportunity and one flank threatened trouble, so the fire managers called
in air support to dump water buckets and ground support to cut a selective line.
Within days, the local forest also called in a specialized interagency
Fire Use Management Team from
Colorado to work with local fire people. Over the course of a week, more than two dozen people put
together a 134-page fire plan. The plan set a fire containment line along a northern ridge, while
directing the fire movement into the fire use zone.
The containment line held, the threat subsided and the fire crews shifted from selective containment
to overall monitoring. By the time I went up on the ridge, monitoring meant we hiked off-trail along
ridges to get views of the fire, sent crew members in pairs and threes to assess fuel conditions and
took actions in hot spots if needed.
The mobility on the ground provided different data collection and vantage points from the aerial
reconnaissance. Monitoring also shifted to fire control when needed. Three days after I left the
fire, the crew stopped a 6-acre spot fire from growing and hooking to the north into the danger
zone. After a 14-day hitch of 12-hour field days, plus preparation and planning time in camp,
they returned to California and turned monitoring back to local forest officials.
By mid-August, the number of acres involved in fire topped 1.5 million in Idaho. Montana also burned
big, with another .5 million acres involved in fire. Managers dealing with fires that are threatening
people and property are dousing them, while allowing fires that don’t to burn – performing their natural
role in the landscape.
My old friend George Weldon, deputy fire and aviation director for the Forest Service in northern Idaho
and Montana told the Missoulian, “we need to live with the expectation that fire will be part of life here.”
Just the way it always has.
Read John McCarthy's Journal »
« Photos from Trapper Ridge
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