Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

How Forest Burning Could Have Become Federal Policy

11/10/2016

A century of forest growth at Bear Creek Fire Guard Station in Plumas National Forest | Image: Capital Public Radio, from USFS photographs

Forests in California and across the American West face an odd calamity. They are crowded with trees, crawling with beetles, and loaded to explode with wildfire at the next spark. While other environmental crises in history-for instance, destruction caused by the industrial revolution-may have been largely unavoidable, this one truly might not have happened.

--

--

In the first decades of the twentieth century, a range of powerful actors, virtually all white men, struggled to define how American foresters ought to deal with forests and fires. The fire historian Stephen Pyne has recounted their debate in multiple books, perhaps most compellingly in Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910. A range of opinions and practices vied for prominence, but basically they fell into two camps.

One was a sort of libertarian, local-control model, in which foresters close to the land administered regular, small fires to protect themselves and the resources around them against large conflagrations. In California, high-profile voices like the poet Joaquin Miller and Sunset magazine (owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, a huge timber landowner itself and a supporter of light burning), defined this as the Indian way. A California forester wrote in 1904, The white man has come to think that fire is a part of the forest, and a beneficial part at that. A 1910 Sunset article declared, practical foresters contend and can demonstrate that from time immemorial fire has been the salvation and preservation of our California sugar and white pine forests.

The second model was a top-down, expert approach associated with President Theodore Roosevelt's administration and a new conservation movement.

On the right, a more open Sierra forest with a plume of smoke suggesting a Native fire. At left, the dark, dense forest that came to be seen as natural by some foresters. | Artwork: Edwin Deakin, Donner Lake, 1869, courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection, Autry Museum of the American West

In 1905, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service, and installed his friend Gifford Pinchot as chief forester. Pinchot had studied forestry in France and founded the Yale School of Forestry in a quest to rationalize America's timber management. He and his successors saw all fire as profligate waste of timber, an inefficiency incompatible with a modern nation.

1930s-era fire-suppression poster | Image: U.S. Forest Service

Or, for that matter, a modern empire. The United States had recently conquered a number of territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and it still held New Mexico and Arizona (not to mention Alaska and Hawai'i) as imperial territories. Like those imperial holdings, the vast tracts of federal land across the West could also be administered by centralized authorities. As Pyne writes, They would keep fire out by keeping fire-setting people out, and regulating those who could enter. The premier agencies were forestry bureaus like those devised by Britain for India and France for Algeria. In the late nineteenth century they offered the boldest experiments in wholesale conservation.

The fire suppression model mostly won out, its partisans consistently denigrating light burning as Paiute forestry. In 1910, a ferocious series of wildfires in the Northern Rockies - one called the Big Blowup - captured the nation's attention, burning more than 3 million acres and killing at least 85 people.

Reaction to the Big Blowup set the new Forest Service on a path of absolute fire suppression for generations. Twenty years later, when Big Blowup veteran Ferdinand Silcox became head of the Forest Service, he enacted what became known as the 10:00 a.m. policy : a Forest Service goal to extinguish all wildfires by 10:00 am on the day after the fire was reported.

But the dogma of what one historian called the gospel of efficiency in the first decades of the twentieth century did not need to wipe out the practice of controlled burning completely. As an analogy, consider the similar, efficiency-inspired movement toward Simplified Spelling of American English from the same era, promoted by Roosevelt and funded by Andrew Carnegie. This kindred folly would have removed and replaced every silent or counterintuitive letter from the language, using spellings like hav, ruf, and abuv on the grounds that it would reduce the size of, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica from 24 to 20 volumes.

A USFS bookmark | Image: courtesy Estes Park Museum

Fire suppression could have flamed out too. It could have been a footnote, an absurd overreach by Progressive Era experts. Some balanced approach might have emerged, the way Americans changed the spellings of colour, honour, and civilised, but left rough as it was. Fire suppression did become more decentralized, undertaken cooperatively between state and federal governments. But the timings of the Big Blowup, partisan and regional political fights, and now-outmoded conservation theories allowed fire suppression to become gospel long enough for the forests to grow impossibly, dangerously thick. Today, there is no easy way to put fire back on the land in many parts of California and the rest of the West without the chance of spurring the destructive fires known as holocausts.

Related

Fire Suppression is Bad for Wildlife, And So is Post-Fire Logging

Cultural Burning

Cultural Fire on the Mountain: An Introduction to Native Cultural Burning

1 of 3

next

To be clear, light burning was not the same as cultural burning, which Native Californians had practiced for thousands of years. Though it was described as the Indian way, and sometimes even learned directly from Native
LINK: https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-the-wild/how-forest-burning-could-h...
See more stories from kcet

Most recent headlines

09/11/2025

Dalet Unveils Agentic AI Media Workflows at IBC2025

Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...

18/10/2025

NESN Taps Harmonic for Primary Live Sports Distribution

New England Sports Network (NESN) has chosen Harmonic, working with Astound Business Solutions, as its enterprise technology partner to transform primary distri...

18/10/2025

DirecTV Launches Gray's Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network

NEW ORLEANS, La. In the run-up to the start of the NBA season, WVUE-TV and Gray Local Media have announced a deal with DirecTV that will greatly expand access t...

18/10/2025

Berklee Celebrates 40 Years of the Fall Together Concert

Berklee Celebrates 40 Years of the Fall Together Concert Faculty composers Bob Pilkington and Greg Hopkins are among the featured artists for this year's ...

17/10/2025

NEP Group Receives New Equity Investment From 26North Partners LP, Co-Investors

NEP Group Receives New Equity Investment From 26North Partners LP, Co-InvestorsCarlyle remains the largest shareholder as the company prepares for the futureBy ...

17/10/2025

Apple Lands Five-Year Deal for F1 Distribution in the U.S.

Apple Lands Five-Year Deal for F1 Distribution in the U.S.Besides airing on Apple TV, the sport will be amplified on other Apple servicesBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Ed...

17/10/2025

SVG Sit-Down: Marshall Electronics' Bernie Keach on the Future of PTZ Cameras

SVG Sit-Down: Marshall Electronics' Bernie Keach on the Future of PTZ Camera...

17/10/2025

L2 Productions' REMI Facility in Austin Can Produce Content From Anywhere

L2 Productions' REMI Facility in Austin Can Produce Content From AnywhereMusic festivals, sports events are produced via flypacks and remote control roomsBy...

17/10/2025

Give Me the Backstory: Get to Know Sarah Dowland, the Filmmaker Behind Sue Bird: In The Clutch

By Lucy Spicer One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...

17/10/2025

Cooper Raiff Returns to the Sundance Film Festival With His Independent Series Hal & Harper

(L-R) Christopher Meyer, Addison Timlin, Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Alyah Chan...

17/10/2025

Ferramenta de arte da capa de playlists do Spotify chega ao Brasil com uma noite de autoexpresso

M sica e arte se uniram em uma noite especial na semana passada na ZIV Gallery, ...

17/10/2025

Spotify's Custom Playlist Cover Art Tool Arrives in Brazil With a Night of Self-Expression

Music and art came together for one special night last week at ZIV Gallery, an i...

17/10/2025

Spotify and FC Barcelona Extend Partnership Through 2030

Spotify and FC Barcelona are extending our partnership through 2030, continuing a collaboration that's redefining how fans, players, and artists connect. Th...

17/10/2025

Sports Fishing Championship Deploys DigitalGlue Storage Platform

MURRIETA, Calif. The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC) has deployed DigitalGlue's creative.space storage platform to streamline video production by centrali...

17/10/2025

TV Ad Impressions for Football Spiked in Q3

BELLEVUE, Wash. Football continued to cement its reputation as a bulwark of TV advertising in Q3 2025 with new data from iSpot that showed both the NFL and coll...

17/10/2025

Reeling in the Chaos Sports Fishing Championship Simplifi...

The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC), the premier competitive saltwater fishing series, has transformed its production workflow by adopting creative.space, the...

17/10/2025

QuickLink Unveils StudioPro Version 4 With Major Enhancem...

QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning multi-camera video productions and remote contribution solutions, announces the release of StudioPro Version 4, ...

17/10/2025

Westcoast Pixel dazzles with dynamic 3D video projections

Although the annual Grammy Awards celebration is best known for recognizing achievements in the recording industry, the show often proves a visual spectacle as ...

17/10/2025

Alex Dunfey Promoted to CTO at OpenDrives

OpenDrives, Inc., a leading provider of software-defined data storage and data services, has promoted Alex Dunfey to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from his for...

17/10/2025

University of Arizona Scales Up Broadcast Capabilities Wi...

The University of Arizona (UofA) has significantly upgraded its broadcast communication infrastructure with the integration of Riedel Communications' advanc...

17/10/2025

NESN Redefines Regional Sports Video Delivery with Harmon...

Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that New England Sports Network (NESN), owned by Fenway Sports Group and Delaware North, has selected Harmonic as its en...

17/10/2025

Austin PBS Expands Facility-Wide Production Communication...

Austin PBS has recently upgraded its facility-wide communications infrastructure, deploying Clear-Com 's Eclipse HX, FreeSpeak II beltpacks, and V-Series ...

17/10/2025

ZEISS Opens BETA Registration for CinCraft Virtual Lens T...

ZEISS announces an open call for the closed BETA testing phase of CinCraft Virtual Lens Technology, the innovative digital tool that brings authentic lens chara...

17/10/2025

Lightware powers hybrid learning transformation at Centri...

Situated in the town of Kokkola, Centria University of Applied Sciences offers higher education across five core fields: engineering, business, social and healt...

17/10/2025

Pebble to automate CobbTV

Public information channel in Georgia, USA, to implement a powerful, simple, and cost-effective playout automation platform. Pebble, the leading automation, co...

17/10/2025

HBO Maxs Global Expansion Surpasses 100 Market Milestone

HBO Max is reporting that it has launched in 15 new markets, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Macau, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine, boosting the streaming serv...

17/10/2025

Netflix Expands Into Video Podcasts With Spotify Deal

Netflix said it will make a major push into video podcasts, inking a wide-ranging deal with Spotify through which it will offer 16 podcasts in the U.S. starting...

17/10/2025

Viamedia Rebrands as Viamedia.ai

Lexington, Ky. As part of a push to highlight its advanced advertising capabilities, Viamedia has launched a new AI-powered ad tech platform and officially rebr...

17/10/2025

QuickLink to Showcase StudioPro Version 4 at NAB Show New York

NEW YORK QuickLink has announced the release of StudioPro Version 4, which the company is calling the most significant upgrade yet to its flagship video product...

17/10/2025

Apple, NBCU to Launch Apple TV, Peacock Streaming Bundles

NEW YORK and CUPERTINO, Calif. Apple and NBCUniversal said they will sell Apple TV and Peacock streaming bundles to U.S. subscribers starting Oct. 20....

17/10/2025

Q&A with Boston Conservatory Choral Conductor Stephen Spinelli

Q&A with Boston Conservatory Choral Conductor Stephen Spinelli How his research into the lost manuscripts of composer Florence Price led to a Grammy-winning c...

17/10/2025

Netflix ISP Speed Index for September 2025

Back to All News Netflix ISP Speed Index for September 2025 Product 17 October 2025 Global Link copied to clipboard This month, 1% of Internet Service Pro...

17/10/2025

Open Source AI Week - How Developers and Contributors Are Advancing AI Innovation

NVIDIA's on the ground at Open Source AI Week. Stay tuned for a celebration ...

17/10/2025

The Engines of American-Made Intelligence: NVIDIA and TSMC Celebrate First NVIDIA Blackwell Wafer Produced in the US

AI has ignited a new industrial revolution. NVIDIA and TSMC are working togethe...

17/10/2025

Showcasing global expertise in safety and risk management

Gexcon is a trusted safety and risk management partner for complex, high hazard environments. ICG has been a dedicated marketing partner to Gexcon since 2018, b...

17/10/2025

Kingfishr, David Walliams, Baz Ashmawy and Celine Byrne among the guests on this week's Late Late Show

Here is your host, Patrick Kielty! After an incredible breakthrough year, Kingf...

16/10/2025

SVG Sit-Down: FUJIFILM Execs on GFX ETERNA 55 Camera, Importance of Shallow-Depth-of-Field Production

SVG Sit-Down: FUJIFILM Execs on GFX ETERNA 55 Camera, Importance of Shallow-Dept...

16/10/2025

Squash's Most Ambitious Broadcast Production To Be Deployed at Comcast Business U.S. Open

Squash's Most Ambitious Broadcast Production To Be Deployed at Comcast Busin...

16/10/2025

Main Street Sports Group Inks Deal With Omaha Productions, Launches Original-Content Division

Main Street Sports Group Inks Deal With Omaha Productions, Launches Original-Con...

16/10/2025

A Historic Precursor? FIFA, HBS, DAZN Offer an Inside Look at Production of FIFA Club World Cup 2025

A Historic Precursor? FIFA, HBS, DAZN Offer an Inside Look at Production of FIFA...

16/10/2025

Prime Video Offers Sneak Peak at New NBA on Prime Studio

Prime Video Offers Sneak Peak at New NBA on Prime StudioThe massive 13,000-sq-ft, two-story studio features a LED regulation half court and hoopBy Jason Dachman...

16/10/2025

SVG Remote Production Forum Draws Record Crowd for Visit to PGA TOUR Studios, Deep Dive Into REMI Workflows

SVG Remote Production Forum Draws Record Crowd for Visit to PGA TOUR Studios, De...

16/10/2025

BitFire's Ben Grafchik on How Growing Cloud Workflows Are Impacting the Live-Sports World

BitFire's Ben Grafchik on How Growing Cloud Workflows Are Impacting the Live...

16/10/2025

CultureCon Uncut' Video Podcast Returns for Season 2 With Host Imani Ellis

In 2017, Imani Ellis launched CultureCon, a conference that's become a must-attend event for more than 10,000 diverse creatives and Black professionals to c...

16/10/2025

Fresh Spins on Holiday Standards: The 2025 Spotify Singles Have Arrived

It might still be a little early to break out the tinsel and mistletoe, but Spotify's already queuing up some holiday magic. This year's Spotify Singles...

16/10/2025

Spotify to Publish First Independent Author Releases Through Audiobook Selects, With More Planned Ahead

Earlier this year, our in-house publishing imprint, Spotify Audiobooks, put out ...

16/10/2025

L3Harris Integrates VAMPIRE Aboard GM Defense's Infantry Squad Vehicle

VAMPIRE has been integrated onto GM Defenses Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), providing a mobile solution to effectively and affordably counter small drone threat...

16/10/2025

Unseen and Unmatched: L3Harris Marks a First in Infrared Tracking Technology

The AgilePod mounted on the host aircraft....

16/10/2025

Consumer attitudes toward in-car entertainment and media preferences highlighted in new Gracenote automotive report

60% say infotainment systems are a critical purchasing or leasing consideration,...