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Foresters may extend ‘let it burn’ policy beyond wilderness areas

KALISPELL – Foresters looking to fight fire with fire have started looking beyond the boundaries of designated wilderness areas, and this summer will apply a sort of “let it burn” policy to public lands throughout northwest Montana.

They call it “wildland fire use” and this summer it could be used in the North Fork Flathead drainage above Columbia Falls, the Swan Range near Bigfork and the Mission Mountains.

While many wildfires will be fought, others can provide “a valuable tool for land managers,” said Steve Brady, Swan Lake district ranger for the Flathead National Forest. “Decisions to use naturally ignited fire as a tool for resource management objectives are made incident by incident, and only under certain conditions,” he said.

It all began back in 1983, when lightning struck deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a tree burst into flame, and firefighters did absolutely nothing. Instead, they watched as the flames crept slowly up-mountain, eventually burning across 230 acres.

It was, by forest officials’ own admission, a “huge moment,” coming as it did on the heels of seven decades of aggressive fire suppression.

Following the big burns of 1910 – when more than

3 million acres burned in Montana and Idaho – forest policy was to quench every flame by midmorning the day after a lightning storm.

But by the early 1980s, foresters had realized a whole host of problems with that policy. For instance, all that timber they saved from burning was piling up, creating a huge fuel stockpile.

In addition, a change to hotter, drier, longer summers was making it harder and harder to snuff the big blazes. And Western forest ecosystems, it seemed, needed that fire, had evolved with that fire, were missing that fire.

Far from being biological deserts, scientists were learning that burned-over forestland was home to tremendous life.

Western tanagers thrived in low-severity burns. Juncos nested in somewhat hotter burns, and birds such as the black-backed woodpecker, mountain bluebird and olive-sided flycatcher actually liked their forest well-done.

They came to feast on beetles, some of which have evolved infrared detectors

in their thorax, and some with smoke sniffers in their antennae.

Lodgepole pine relied on fire’s heat to open their serotinous cones and release tree seed. Western larch hate the shade, and grew faster once the overstory was burned away. Seeds from red-stemmed ceanothus – dormant for centuries – germinated only after a good fire.

Spirea, fireweed, arnica, pine grass, Bicknell’s geranium, even certain toads, all boomed in the burn.

It was time, forest managers concluded, to make a distinction between fire that ate homes and private property, and fire that had for millennia been a part of Western woods. The one was certainly foe, but the other, it seems, was friend.

Since that first 230 acres burned in the Bob back in 1983, tens of thousands of acres have been monitored rather than attacked after the lightning struck. But most all of those acres have been within designated wilderness areas, places where nature is left to her own devices.

Now, however, wildland fire use is spreading onto other forestlands.

If the time is right, and the place is right, the long-term climate and short-term weather forecasts are right, and the terrain is right, then wildland fire use can be a tool for forest lands well beyond the Bob.

Last year, Flathead National Forest officials expanded the program outside the Bob Marshall and Great Bear Wilderness areas, to include forestlands around Hungry Horse Reservoir. Now, they’re looking to more lands as possible wildland fire use sites, hoping not only to restore forest health but also to eat up fuel and reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in the future.

“Not all fires started by lightning will be managed as wildland fire use,” said Jimmy DeHerrera, The Flathead’s district ranger on the Hungry Horse-Glacier View District. “But, when fire can benefit the forest and wildlife, and there are no values at risk, we will consider utilizing fire use.”

Fighting fire with fire allows managers to better pick the time and the place of the blaze, officials said, and to steer resources to other, more high-priority burns.

To hear more about the Flathead’s expanded wildland fire use program, drop by any of several public meetings scheduled in coming weeks.

For fire’s future in the North Fork, an open house is set for Thursday, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Sondreson Hall, north of Polebridge. The Swan Lake District is holding two meetings, one to discuss wildland fire use in the Swan Range, and one to talk about fire in the Missions.

The first open house will be Wednesday, June 18, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Condon Community Center. The second is Thursday, June 19, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Swan Lake Ranger Station in Bigfork.

Flathead forest fire management specialists will be on hand at all meetings, available to discuss firefighting policy past, present and future. For more information, call the Hungry Horse-Glacier View District at 387-3800, or the Swan Lake District at 837-7500.

By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian