Imagine the fire next time
Published 5:13 pm Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The politics of forest ecology sounds as nonsensical as the civics of biology. Ecology is science and politics is, well, a fluid tangle of governing, power, and human behavior.
The Taylor Bridge fire, which has devastated parts of Cle Elum, is an example of politics and forest ecology sizing up the other, finally embracing the value of meeting halfway (personifying science delivers a face we can at least recognize.)
Yes, the Taylor Bridge fire is political insofar as humans played a role. The problems include a mix of poor timber practices and the terrible beauty of Kittitas County, which attracts families to what was once known as the “urban-wilderness interface.” Some timber practices were abjectly selfish (over-harvesting) and some were profiles in good intentions gone bad (extinguishing fires natural to the ecosystem.) Ironically, the more politically charged question of climate change is not a salient factor.
Four decades ago, Roger Contor, the first superintendant of North Cascades National Park, experimented with a novel, science-based notion to allow natural fires to burn. The farsighted choice, however unpopular with seasonal firefighters, aligned with the natural ecosystem of the North Cascades. The counter-Smokey-Bear ethic (granted Smokey was spot-on about human-made fires) continued until the 1988 Yellowstone Park blaze that reignited a partial fire-suppression strategy.
Snohomish County residents watch the heartbreaking news of the Taylor bridge fire and murmur, “There but by the grace of the wet side of the Cascades go I.” Westsiders will need more than mountain grace to guard against future blazes, however. In 1951, Forks, rain capital of the rain peninsula, was slammed by a 33,000-acre forest fire. In 1922, Eastern King County was hit hard. More significantly, as residents continue to move closer to wild lands, wild impacts follow. Just like residents living on floodplains (you know who you are), families who elect to live in fire-prone regions shoulder a sunk insurance cost.
The politics of forest ecology grows more complex when issues of smart-urban growth are advanced. Smart growth, with denser cities, limited sprawl, and healthy, close-in farms, theoretically minimizes climate-change gases (scientists wisely rebranded “global warming” climate change. Any kind of warming doesn’t sound bad to most Northwesterners.)
So, we meet halfway. The Taylor Bridge fire was a product of the Antropocene, a newfangled term for the era of human environmental impact (essentially the Industrial Revolution until today.) Politics plays a role because there are certain things we can control, from forest practices to curtailing carbon emissions. And we can be good. We can help our fellow Washingtonians by donating to the Inland Northwest Chapter of the American Red Cross: www.redcross.org
