SCOUTING
the Northwest
By Scout Arnone
A human problem
We don9t have a wildfire
problem. We have a human-
made structure problem. The
war on fire is the longest
continuous war in the United
States. After the devastating
fires of 1910 that claimed
many lives and many mil-
lions of acres, the Forest
Service fought any sugges-
tion that fire may be benefi-
cial to our forest; they went
so far as to adopt adorable
fire-ravaged mascots like
Bambi and Smokey Bear to
place the guilt on society for
something which happens
naturally.
After 1910, the Forest
Service9s fire exclusion
policy became the law of
the land based on the prem-
ise that fire was unneces-
sary and destructive. But the
Indigenous peoples of the
Western United States had
an intimate knowledge of
fire regimes (the local pat-
terns of forest fire frequency
and intensity) and knew that
fire was necessary in order
for the serotinous cones of
lodgepole pine (Pinus con-
torta var. latifolia) to open
up and drop their seeds on
charred, fertile ground. As
the West became overrun
with settlements, agricultur-
alists, and miners, forest fires
became increasingly viewed
as a threat to Manifest
Destiny. Naive settlers fell
in love with the lush forests
of the West and decided to
set up shop without prepar-
ing for the inevitability of
fire. Then, with increasing
exploitation of forests in the
Progressive Era, the United
States launched itself into a
crusade against fire to pro-
tect the logging industry.
When we start a dialog
about forest fires, we need
to remind ourselves that
there was nothing tragic or
destructive about them until
we, as settlers, arrived and
assigned them this value. I
don9t mean to say that fire is
a neutral player in the ecol-
ogy of our environment. It
would be far more accurate
to say that fire is an incom-
parable force of good sweep-
ing through our forests.
Woodpeckers (family:
Picidae) are wildland fire
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
specialists. After the fires
have passed, they gleefully
make their homes in the
charred snags that were once
ponderosas (Pinus ponder-
osa) and feast on the bugs
that have come out to devour
the swarm of bugs munching
away on downed logs and
sapling sprigs shooting up
through the soil. The olive-
sided flycatcher (Contopus
cooperi), mountain blue-
bird (Sialia currucoides),
chipping sparrow (Spizella
passerina), and mountain
quail (Oreortyx pictus), too,
achieve their highest abun-
dance in the decades that
follow a freshly burned snag
forest.
The media doesn9t work
in the interest of small for-
est-dwelling creatures. The
Eagle Creek Fire that burned
50,000 acres in 2017 was a
dream come true for fire-
suppressionist members of
the media who dramatically
painted an image of Oregon
that was forever marred by
the foolishness of a minor
and his fireworks.
However, ecologists have
noted that the whole scenic
area of the Columbia River
Gorge was long overdue
for a stand-replacing burn,
as dictated by its historical
fire regime, and the only
tragedy is that the foolish-
ness of man had prevented
it from doing so for so long,
because fire would threaten
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PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON
Woodpeckers are wildland fire specialists.
to burn human-centric cul-
tural sites like Multnomah
Falls Lodge. The result of
that suppression was a fire
that burned much larger and
hotter than it might have,
had we not interfered.
As Westerners, we love
our forests; approximately
three million of us reside in
or adjacent to forests. Our
forests are active, breathing,
moving, changing beings
flush with life that are reliant
on fire in the same way they
are reliant on water, topogra-
phy, and wildlife. When we
consider the best way to care
for them, our plan of action
should include adopting a
new wildfire mascot, the
woodpecker, whose more
ecologically responsible slo-
gan might read, <Only you
can create healthy forests
by opening up conversa-
tions about the importance
of fire.=
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