In mid-June lightning struck a remote slope in the Pecos Wilderness east of Santa Fe. The bolt started a fire that ignited dry fuels in a spruce-fir forest and quickly put up a robust plume of smoke visible from far away. The volume of smoke meant the fire was growing fast and I feared we would have a new large fire that could potentially burn a large area of this 224,000 acre wilderness.
Surprisingly, as the dry days went by, the Rincon Fire calmed down and smoldered around on its west facing slope at nearly 11,000 feet in elevation. The Forest Service flew airplanes over it and sent some people in by foot to have a look at the fire. They said there were many beetle-killed trees with the potential for real heat and fire growth. But the fire just burned calmly and cleaned up about a 530-acre area, recycling nutrients, and opening the ground for new plant life.
The US Forest Service’s response to this fire shows the agency has made huge progress in their understanding that fire belongs in the natural world and how they can shepherd it as a force for good. A decade ago, they may have jumped all over this fire with aerial attack, chain saws and people. Today they watch the fire from the air, let it nurture the land, and educate the public about why they are responding this way.
Nationally, fire ecologists like Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology, have been concerned that Forest Service firefighters often ignore wilderness boundaries and use bulldozers and chainsaws in wilderness areas. By law, mechanical devices are banned from wilderness areas and it’s not clear that the Wilderness Act exempted firefighting from these restrictions. In any case, the Santa Fe National Forest managers responded appropriately in the Rincon Fire situation, repeatedly mentioning the need to protect “wilderness values”.
The Forest Service called in a “type 4 team” to manage the fire. This is a group of specialists who know how to address a modest sized wildfire. They set up their camp in Mora, the nearest town to the east of the fire and close to where the fire would exit the wilderness area should it start to really burn. Fire behavior analysts expected growth in that direction should the fire get up and go.
But the fire didn’t move. It just stayed in its 500-acre footprint with virtually no human intervention at all except for one air drop of retardant the first day. The Forest Service held a public meeting one evening at a high school gym and streamed it online for anyone to attend and ask questions. I watched the meeting, expecting the usual hysteria that many people get into when fire is on government land nearby.
Instead, I saw a calm and measured public. One older man asked the Forest Service rangers and fire fighters why they were bothering to do anything with the fire at all? He noted that the fire is in a designated wilderness area and that the Forest Service had told us there were heavy loads of fuel in the area. Clearly the area needs to burn so let it burn he said. Leave it alone. My sentiments exactly.
Or course if the fire had been burning toward their community with high intensity, the public mood may have been different.
The Southwest Region of the US Forest Service has proven to be the most progressive in the nation in terms of ecologically sound fire management. While one would expect land managers in California and the Pacific Northwest, home of top universities and many environmental groups to lead the way, the Southwest Region has stepped way ahead.
The Santa Fe National Forest has been using lighting fire starts (when conditions are right) to create large, prescribed burns. They send in crews to light more land with drip torches or other means, expanding the fire. While it would be more interesting on an ecological level to let the fires spread naturally from the point of the lightning strike, as the National Park Service does in the backcountry of the big Sierra Nevada parks, the help fire managers provide fires ensures that larger areas are treated quickly, before the weather changes. The Forest Service understands the urgent need to chip away at the fire deficit.
By July, monsoonal rains came and wet the Rincon Fire. The Type 3 team pulled up their camp and moved on. The trails of the Pecos Wilderness reopened, and 530 acres of remote land burned by the fire will burst with new and more diverse life.
Lightning has been starting forest fires for millions of years in the West. Fire and forest live in an eternal dance. It is beautiful beyond measure.
Tom Ribe
