For about 60 years, Smokey Bear has warned the American public that fire is bad. But scientists say it's time to stop attributing human values to wildfire. Here are some of the interesting facts researchers have found out in the 70 years since the Forest Service began its aggressive fire control program:

Many fires do not kill trees.
Many fires kill trees we want killed.
Many fires help trees grow.

Many forests-and all their trees-are supposed to burn up every 100 to 500 years according to Mother Nature's plan. Fire can be very helpful, today's scientists say.

But what about the wildfires that singed about 356,000 acres in the mountains surrounding the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana last summer? Encouraged by hot temperatures, fed by extremely dry and heavy fuel loads, walls of flame that at times flickered 200 feet in the air ran up and down mountainsides. Across thousands of acres, fire killed all the vegetation in its path. It torched 70 houses and forced thousands to evacuate.

You'll not find anyone in western Montana who thinks those fires, which smothered the valley in thick smoke, did any good-unless you talk to Glenda Scott, who is in charge of seeing that those charred forests get the best chance to recover.

According to Scott, last summer's fires offer the U.S. Forest Service a great chance to reestablish species diversity that had already been lost in a good portion of the burn areas. It was work the agency had already planned to do manually. "The fires give us an opportunity to restore targeted species on a scale we usually don't have," she says.

Provided, of course, that the right trees get planted in the right places before too much time passes. That's where American Forests' Wildfire ReLeaf program comes into play. The Bitterroot National Forest has asked for American Forests' help in procuring seedlings to reestablish up to 50,000 acres of forests to their historic glory. Every dollar contributed to Wildfire ReLeaf plants a tree in a scorched forest; the Forest Service has pledged to match those donations, tree-for-tree.

"Partnerships will allow us to plant more acres," Scott says. "We can make a limited budget go farther."

Natural History

One has to think four-dimensionally when it comes to evaluating the extreme fire danger that lurks in many of the country's forests: individual tree species, elevation, weather, and social attitudes. No one can control the weather or alter elevation, but the Forest Service can influence social attitudes and, to some extent, manipulate tree species.

If you watched the Yellowstone National Park fires in 1988, you know that lodgepole pine is made to burn. Growing in dense thickets, it becomes vulnerable over time to attacks from insects and disease. Trees die and drop to the ground and litter accumulates on the forest floor, waiting to feed the flames. The same holds true for many of lodgepole pine's spruce and subalpine fir neighbors.

So why doesn't Yellowstone burn every summer? Because the park sits at a relatively high elevation where the air is often cool and there is moderate rainfall. But when drought and high winds come together after a lightning strike, watch out: A mountainside can burn in a day. Lodgepole forests burn hot and fast, typically every 100 to 200 years. But that's good news for the tree, since fire opens its serotinous cones to release the seeds, starting the process over again.

Because it's often difficult to build roads up mountainsides to reach lodgepole forests, and because the relatively small-diameter tree is not worth much at the mill, society seldom takes much notice of stand-replacement burns in lodgepole pine forests-unless a national park is burning. Fire is an even less-frequent visitor to the highest elevations, where whitebark pine and subalpine larch rule. However, both fire-resistant trees depend on an occasional low-intensity fire to kill their competitors, the true firs and spruces. Plus, the slow-growing trees have an even lower market value than their neighbors.

It's a different story in low-elevation forests where it's hot and dry. That's where ponderosa pine and western larch grow and where more people live. Both trees are fire-resistant-especially ponderosa pine, which could be called the 'asbestos' pine. When ignited, the top layer of the ponderosa pine's thick bark actually springs off, carrying the flame yards away. Its roots run deep, too, so they seldom burn out. Exceptionally long needles reflect heat away from large, moist buds.

Loggers covet ponderosa pine's straight, thick trunks. When crown fires sweep through these forests, the public takes notice. In fact, the Forest Service created Smokey Bear to protect forests, water supply and merchantable trees like ponderosa pine. And, in a sense, the move doomed the species.

Social History

Until about 1920, fire was an integral component of almost every ecosystem from sea to shining sea, thanks to lightning and Native American pyrotechnics. Instead of a "forest primeval," early colonizers of the Atlantic seaboard found vast grasslands flourishing beneath well-spaced trees.

Various Native American tribes routinely set "light fires" to make it easier to hunt, defend their villages, and stimulate berry bushes and other wild foods. Because the frequent fires burned ground litter and brush, the fires seldom climbed into the crowns to kill mature trees. Settlers later carried on the tradition but to a lesser degree as farms spread across the landscape.

In his book Fire In America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, Stephen J. Pyne explains that "in the long run, suppression of Indian fire practices made possible the accidental and deliberate reforestation of the Northeast."

The same drama played out across the country.

As late as the 1920s, rural Southerners routinely set fire to the underbrush in the longleaf pine forests. Across the prairies, Indians routinely lit grass fires. In fact, when Europeans arrived in the New World, grassland was the dominant ecosystem on the continent, with bison drifting as far east as Pennsylvania. Later, hot ashes from railroad locomotives became a major ignition source for grass fires.

The ponderosa pine forests of the Rocky Mountains, which range from Mexico to Canada, experienced the same historic Native American fire practices. "The historic fire regime was every 5 to 30 years for ponderosa pine," says Amber Kamps, the silviculturist with the Bitterroot National Forest. "Fire created mosaics with uneven age characteristics, but the forest was generally open.

"Stand replacement fires in ponderosa pine stands were few and far between, maybe 500- to 1,000-year events, but on a small scale. Regeneration wasn't necessarily a problem. Mother Nature was able to come back on her own." In the Southwest and California, the practice of light burning became known as "Paiute forestry." Around the turn of the century, when the nation began setting aside forest reserves, professional foresters debated whether fire was good or bad. Many private landowners defended light burning as the best means of reducing fuels and avoiding large conflagrations. Stockgrowers also liked fire because it reduced brush and provided grass.

Those who leaned toward developing industrial forests claimed fire retarded reproduction and undermined a sustained timber yield. The fires of 1910 in Idaho and western Montana helped tip the scales against fire. Beginning August 20, high winds pushed hundreds of small fires together in a conflagration that burned close to 3 million acres, killed 87 people, and destroyed a dozen towns in two days. In time, the Forest Service took the position that light burning was "at worst, a cynical sham promoted by timber barons in order to avoid their responsibility for the management of a public resource," Pyne says.

By 1945, with the first appearance of Smokey Bear, total wildfire suppression was becoming part of the national psyche. It wasn't until the 1970s that foresters admitted their mistake. Fire not only reduces fuel loads, but some forest types need fire to regenerate.

Ponderosa Pine

If you were a ponderosa pine, your biggest complaint in life would be how those Douglas-firs are always moving into the neighborhood. The Dougs fare well in shaded forests. Mature ponderosa pines don't tumble over and die just because the Dougs move in, but the young ponderosas, which need direct sunshine, do. When logging or a crown fires removes the seed source for ponderosas, they never come back. That's because ponderosa pines produce heavy seeds that don't travel far. By the time they radiate out from a seed source, the lighter-winged fir seeds are already well established.

A 1999 federal General Accounting Office report warned that "39 million acres on national forests in the Interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire" due to Douglas-fir infringement into lower-elevation forests, and added that large wildfires could become widespread in "about 10 to 25 years."

The fires of 2000 followed. Now, according to Glenda Scott, the Forest Service has a great opportunity to right some wrongs.

"There is an opportunity to restore ponderosa pine in the Bitterroot," she says. "In burn areas in northern Idaho and the Kootenai, where there is more moisture, the target trees [to plant more of] are white pine and western larch."

What Now?

The Bitterroot burns were anything but uniform. At low elevations, charred trunks today stand sentinel on steep slopes where fire burned very hot, consuming every needle and pine cone. Higher up though, there's still plenty of green islands amidst the fingers of brown that stretch across the landscape. In many burns, brown pine needles still cling to dead limbs.

Beneath the dead trees, the forest floor is awash in fresh grasses and sporadic thick blooms of lupine, arnica, penstemon, and other wild flowers. In many areas, pine cones lie scattered across the floor, with seedlings already pushing up through the ash. Amber Kamps has been busy surveying burn areas to determine where there is a need to plant trees. She hopes that most of the burn areas-up to 70 percent, especially in the higher elevations-will regenerate on their own. At lower elevations, in ponderosa pine habitat, Kamps is planning to plant up to 50,000 acres of seedlings. But planting trees involves more than placing an order at the local nursery. First, workers must gather seeds from trees that grow in a similar habitat and at the same elevation where the planting will occur.

"We were having a difficult time collecting enough ponderosa pine seeds before the fires," Kamps says. "We haven't had a good seed crop in 12 years on the Bitterroot. Usually, it comes every 4 to 6 years."

The importance of planting seedlings from trees that have developed similar traits cannot be overemphasized, says Jeff Amoss, the Bitterroot's resource staff officer. "During the last 30 years we made great advances in understanding about not planting offsite trees. We once tried planting seedlings that came from North Dakota. Today, you can see the adverse effects in those stands. They don't show up right away, but eventually they do.''

Historically, offsite trees have proved unsuited to non-native climates and different soils and vulnerable to local pests.

To get as many acres as possible planted before grasses, forbs, and brush shade out the seedlings, the Bitterroot will experiment by planting 1-year-old ponderosa pine seedlings in some of the less harsh and moister locations.

"If it works, it will give us some options for reforestation," Kamps says. "The 2-year-old ponderosa pine seedlings, which we usually plant, will still be needed for the harsher sites."

Traditionally, tree planters space the seedlings every eight-feet-by-eight-feet. Kamps wants to experiment with 12-feet-by-12-feet to cover more ground. "We're uncertain about it because of typical losses to animals and drought," she says.

The Forest Service also sometimes nets trees to protect them from browsing elk and deer, but Kamps says "there's no way we can be netting everything. We're going to have to live with our losses."

But the work isn't done after the young trees take. Seedlings from Doug-firs and other trees will naturally encroach onto the pine plantations. In 15 to 30 years the patches should be thinned.

"We will plant up to 50,000 acres, and there'll be the same acreage regenerating naturally," Kamps says.

"How do we thin it all? Hopefully with prescribed burns at the lower elevations where ponderosa pine communities occur, which is what Mother Nature would have done. Fire will also help the tree develop thick bark. It also kills lower limbs, which act as ladder fuels."

In other words, the Forest Service will return to practices it abandoned more than half a century ago. Once again there will be "good fire" in the forest. AF

AF

Mark Matthews writes for The Washington Post and other publications from Missoula, Montana. [TOP]