European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 8, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Firefighters in the air and on the ground battled last summer s fires in Yellowstone National Park. Not All fires bad Forest service says by  Washington posts a Good night Smokey. After decades of vigorous enforce cont of the fire suppression philosophy Long enunciated by its most famous creation Smokey Bear the . Forest service has endorsed the Virtues of fire. When the Federal task Force studying last year s firestorm at Yellowstone National Park issued its formal policy recommendations Forest service experts on the panel joined with representatives from other land management agencies in a report that strongly supports the idea of letting natural fires Burn in Parks wildernesses and wildlife refuges. The secretaries of agriculture and the Interior Parent agencies of the Forest service and Park service respectively Are expected to adopt that report As the basis for future fire management policies on Federal lands. That Means a sharply diminished role in fire management for the followers of Smokey Bear. Smokey stood for the View that All Forest fires Are bad and should be fought from the moment of first sighting. Today the Friendly Brown Bear still has a role to play reminding people that human caused fires remain taboo. But neither Smokey nor his human colleagues in the Forest service will continue to argue that the Forest fire is invariably evil. Today land managers take the position that fire is a natural part of any Forest s life Cycle. Accordingly last week s report said most natural fires those started by lightning should be permitted to Burn As Long As they remain within prescribed limits. That position known to its critics As the let it Burn policy fuelled considerable political heat last summer and fall when wildfires were raging through Yellowstone and threatening nearby towns. With Sparks flying on Capitol Hill the Reagan administration set up a fire management policy review team the task Force that issued the new recommendations last thursday. The task Force did t use the politically charged term  instead the experts adopted the Label prescribed natural  that refers to a fire burning in an area where Park or wilderness managers have determined there is no threat to lives or property. The recommended policy is that natural fires burning within prescribed limits should be allowed to Burn. When a fire spreads beyond the prescription it is to be labelled a wildfire and land managers will Start fighting it. The 10-member Federal task Force that produced last week s report suggested that strict adherence to the Smokey Bear policy exacerbated the destruction from this year s fires in the Yellowstone Basin. An attempt to exclude fire from these lands the Only you q for decades Smokey Bear was against All fires. Apap Park Ranger checks new growth in burned out area. Report said leads to unnatural changes in vegetation and wildlife from that which would occur without fire suppression. Creating fuel accumulation that can Lead to uncontrollable sometimes very damaging  if you have a Forest that is periodically burned explained Brad Leonard the chief Interior department official on the fire policy task Force you get a variety of growth patterns and species that can resist the spread of fire. But in Yellowstone with no major fires for All those years we had Large stands of Lodgepole Pine 200 years old or More. That s not a natural state for a Forest. That old growth is just waiting to go up when you have a big  the Forest service and the Federal government s other major Public land agencies the Park service the Bureau of land management and the fish and wildlife service have been moving toward this natural fire policy Over the past decade or More. The experts embrace of fire represents a return to traditional american ideas of forestry and a rejection of european tradition. Long before the White Man arrived native americans had reached an ecological View similar to the one that is now fashionable among foresters. Recognizing that fires play an important role in the life Cycle of a Forest the indians not Only welcomed fire but regularly set Forest fires themselves. But at the Start of this Century american Forest experts began to follow european scholarship which held that fire suppression was a key element of Forest management. Gifford Pinchot the father of the . Forest service and of its scholarly bulwark the Yale school of forestry Learned that lesson when he trained under German Forest scholars. Claude Wickard Franklin d. Roosevelt s wartime Secretary of agriculture stated the Pinchot View forthrightly in 1942 every fire in our Fields and forests is an enemy  fighting Forest fires became a patriotic act during the War As reflected in the world War ii Forest service slogan careless matches help the  Smokey Bear created in 1945, epitomized that position. Stephen j. Pyne an Arizona state University professor who studies fire history says the professionals current pro fire position represents a Complete  in the Early years Pyne wrote the consensus. Was that forestry would be impossible if surface fires were  but now foresters have asserted with equal conviction that forestry and land management would be impossible if prescribed surface fires were  sunday january 8, 1989 the stars and stripes Page 17