Week One Post

Fire Management: 1920 vs. 2020 – Greeley vs. The Contemporary

In 1920, U.S. Forest Service Chief William B. Greeley – a veteran firefighter of the 1910 Big Burn – had a stubborn view on the role of wildfire in forest ecology. Greeley was avid on the total suppression of all wildfires on federal lands, and advocated for a policy that spared no expense in manpower and funding to ensure that fires never grew to the size they did at the beginning of the century. Under his command, and with Congress and the social majority backing his play, Chief Greeley continued a then 20-year tradition of throwing all they (the Forest Service) had at preventing and stifling wildfires.

In his eyes, the agency’s valiant efforts were a large success – one of the greatest in U.S. History. Yet, they still weren’t good enough, due to one specific factor (among many others). Chief Greeley identified a threat to his efforts: the practitioners of the so-called “Paiute Forestry”. These “forest burners” were a group composed of agriculturalists, prospectors, settlers, and even big Southern railroads who used small, prescribed fires to clear the lands of fuels.

Greeley would have none of it. The idea of intentionally putting fire on the ground was more than absurd to him, and directly contradicted the mission of the Forest Service during that period. Greeley claimed that it was cost-ineffective compared to fire suppression, killed valuable young and mature merchantable trees, and posed immense threat to becoming blow-up conflagrations (very large uncontrollable fires). To him, light-burning was an abominable practice that should solely be replaced by intense fire suppression.

Yet, who can blame the man? As alluded to above, Greeley was a boots-on-the-ground firefighter who luckily lived through the 1910 Big Burn. He saw devastation, death, and destruction first hand. With the loss of many of his crew mates and friends, Greeley lost his tolerance and respect for fire. To him, the best and most logical course of action was to prevent something like that from ever occurring again. And so, he managed his agency accordingly.

One hundred years later, here we are, and oh how much we have learned! Today, we see a wildland urban interface that is much larger than it was back in 1920, so fire suppression is still a method that the U.S. Forest Service grants the majority of it’s annual funding to. Yet, now the Forest Service, along with many other land agencies, see fire as a process that should be re-introduced to landscapes for the sake of forest health and, counterintuitively, for the prevention of large, catastrophic wildfires. This “Paiute Forestry”, as Greeley would snidely dub it, is ironically the way today’s forestry is somewhat persisting. More and more, we are seeing the enthusiastic use of prescribed fire as a natural tool to manage forested ecosystems. People are now taking Smokey Bear’s message with a grain of salt, seeing past the total suppression propaganda and understanding that not all fires are bad.

We credit the initial transition to this clearer way of thinking to other federal agencies, who, during the 1920’s, learned early that fire was good. These agencies, including the National Parks Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs, continued to burn and educate those who could be pulled-out from under the bias of the U.S. Forest Service. The individuals who worked to paint wildfire in a different light helped pave the way to where we’re at today, and while our social-fire infrastructure still has a lot of change to undergo, the field of forestry is taking a step in the right direction.

Cited Source:

Greeley, W. B. (2000). “Paiute forestry” or the fallacy of light burning. Fire Management Today, 60(4), 21. Retrieved from http://proxy.library.oregonstate.edu.ezproxy.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/docview/232961923?accountid=13013