NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

Out of the Ashes
   "Out of the Ashes" [September/October 2002] stated that the Arizona fire of 2002 was the largest in U.S. history. Actually, the largest in history was the Peshtigo fire in 1871, which burned in Wisconsin on the same day as the Chicago fire. Most have heard of the Chicago fire but few are aware of Peshtigo. The Peshtigo fire covered 2,400 square miles and actually burned over one million acres. It killed over 1,300 people in a single night. The fires of 1910 also covered many square miles and burned in Washington State, Idaho and Montana. Many people were killed. It was after the 1910 fires that a great effort was made to control wildfire.
The article is right on target. I have seen wildfires burn into a subdivision and all the houses with shake roofs, wood piles next to them, and trees and snags nearby burned. Those with fire-safe roofs and other prevention methods made it through the fire. It is almost impossible to accomplish suppression when weather conditions are against you.
Duane Thompson
Kelso, Washington

   The feature on wildfires was both informative and timely. While people are clamoring for somebody to do something about the fires, the Bush Administration is advocating a fire plan that would increase logging in national forests. The idea of fuel reduction by commercial logging would remove big, fire-resistant trees in backcountry areas and streamline the process for timber sales. Lawless logging would eliminate public input and give timber companies free reign to take what they want.
   The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have the first pro-active environmental plan to protect communities at risk from fire while enhancing ecological health on our forests. The plan has seven major elements:

• Do the most important work first. Make protection of communities from fire the Forest Service's top priority.
• Provide meaningful funding. This program should be a minimum of five years and funded at $2 billion a year, all of which should go directly to fireproofing homes and removing hazardous fuels in the community protection zones.
• Match personnel to work. Shift Forest Service personnel skilled in preparing brush clearing and thinning projects from backcountry, low-priority areas to the community protection zones.
• Immediately carry out the vast majority of fuel-reduction projects in the community protections zones that raise no significant environmental issues.
• Restore natural fires to help produce natural forests. Prescribed burns can help to reduce fuel buildup and restore healthy forest habitats.
• Protect our ancient and wild forest from logging and logging roads. Stop the attack on forest protection safeguards.
  I realize that the steps above have more to do with national forests than national parks, but quite often our parks are bordered by national forests. Consequently, what happens in the national forests sometimes affects the parks too.

Gerald Neff
Pleasant Valley, IA

   "Out of the Ashes" was a fine article. But the sidebar "Fueling the Fire Debate" contains an error. The largest fire in U.S. history was the Peshtigo Fire of 1871, in which over 1,000,000 acres of northeast Wisconsin and western Michigan burned and over 1,000 people died. This dwarfs the Arizona fire your article describes.
The Peshtigo Fire, today a compelling lesson of resource exploitation (following the "cutover"), covered an area that is touched by the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. Besides the best place in the United States to learn about the continental glaciation that shaped half of our continent, the Ice Age Trail brings serious stories to conservation history and the National Park System, such as the endangered Karner blue butterfly, the return of the wolf without costly reintroduction efforts, Nelson (who dedicated the IAT's western terminus on September 28, 2002), Leopold (whose shack is near the IAT), and Muir's boyhood home.
Last year, over 5,000 people donated more than 70,000 hours to help the Ice Age Trail. To learn more, visit www.nps.gov/iatr/ or www.iceagetrail.org.
Andrew Hanson
Ice Age Trail Geographer
Via e-mail

   First, let me point out that I have lived with countless wildfires and prescribed burns over a 40-year work span. And I must say I strongly disagree with the comparison of fire with "a wolf on a deer herd" ["Out of the Ashes" September/October 2002]. I assure you that prescribed fires need not be just 300 acres at a time, but ten to 20 times this, or more, with adequate planning, funding, and commitment.
   I support prescribed fires and wildfires that can be safely left to burn within our park without killing as many of the older trees as the 1988 Yellowstone fire did. I stepped into one of the dense stands of dead trees along side one of the public Yellowstone higher elevation roads in the summer of 1993. Five years after the fire, there wasn't a sign of anything green or apparently alive. There were no chipmunks, no birdcalls.
   Yellowstone needs a system of permanent firebreaks, some 20 feet wide and maintained annually, that could be backfired on well before a wildfire or prescribed fire reaches them.
   Many of us visit our parks for viewing wildlife and scenic beauty, not devastation. If we want the natural, we can visit our millions of acres of wilderness areas.
Charles W. Stout
DeRidder, LA

A Grizzly Future
   "A Grizzly Future" [September/October 2002] attributes anti-grizzly sentiment among lawmakers in Wyoming and Idaho partly to the fact that the greater Yellowstone region is one of the "fastest growing rural areas" in the West. The article only uses the terminology that politicians, developers, and chambers of commerce everywhere have trained us to use. I suggest, however, that areas don't "grow"; they "fill up". If we begin to use more apt terms such as "fastest filling areas" instead of "fastest growing," perhaps we might raise an awareness of what really amounts to the loss of our open spaces. To me, this relentless filling only underscores the need for more off-limits areas such as national parks and makes the efforts of groups like NPCA more crucial.
Richard L. Fluker
Marshall, Texas

Snowmobiles Stay in Yellowstone
   Regarding "Snowmobiles Stay in Yellowstone" [September/October 2002], it has become apparent that while democracy in this country guarantees our right of free speech, it does not guarantee the right to be listened to, unless you represent a multi-billion dollar commercial industry as do snowmobile manufacturers.
Elaine Blainey
Westminster, CO