As far as “managed wilderness” in the west, it’s possible. First, one has to realize there are two types of forest fires in the wast. The first is the more usual, a fire which burns only the undergrowth and fallen limbs. They will char the bark on the larger trees but tend to rejuvenate the ground under the trees. The fact that there are many, many trees that are 100, 200, 300, four and five hundreds of years old attests to that. And these fires clear out that which would fuel larger fires.

Those fires can be managed if the Forest Service hasn’t allowed houses to be built in the area. And managed they tend mimic the unmamaged conditions, where fires burned from time to time.

The other type is a fire in an area which has not allowed fires, which has stamped them out as soon as possible. In those areas the tinder and fuel builds up and builds up until it fuels a massive fire which spreads to the crowns and kills the trees.

Those fires are truly wild. Once it spreads to the crown it can jump barriers, moves very fast, and it dangerous as all hell. People 1/2 a mile away from the fire can find themselves surrounded in 3 minutes.

So, it’s best to “manage” the smaller fires rather than suppress them, and let them go. And mankinds encroachment has prevented that.

Thanks again for the low and wetland perspective.

Unfortunately, we’ve had gradually worsening droughts throughout my lifetime, and the wetlands have been either drying up, or deliberately filled in, drained or paved over. We are getting more and more frequent fires, and they are worse in their effects. Most of our commercial forests were cut down long ago, so our land use is more for development than for timber harvesting. And in Florida, just like California, the drought is very real. Less water is falling on the state, we’re draining and pumping more of it out, and paving over or planting in the natural reserve and recharge areas. We’re mining our water, and then we are just dumping it at sea without really using it for any useful purpose. As a friend of mine in the environmental biz likes to put it, “We live in a swamp and we’re running out of water.”

Out west, there is a lot of commercial pressure to “manage” wildlands to maximize timber reserves and promote recreational or sports use, or to protect badly thought out development. This means spotting smaller fires early and putting them out quickly has been a priority, which as you point out, have created conditions that make the inevitable large fires more devastating and harder for the land to recover from.

Enlightened forestry pros long ago recognized how short-sighted our land management practices were for the long-term maintenance of renewable forest resources. Managing for short-term profit will eventually cause losses in the long run. Sound familiar? And its not just forests we’re talking about either, similar situations occur in agricultural and fisheries contexts, flood control and land reclamation, and development in general. When I lived in Silicon Valley it struck me that some of the most productive agricultural land in the Santa Clara Valley had been paved over for commercial and residential use; offices and homes which could have been placed anywhere. California’s great semi-arid Central Valley used to be America’s Serengeti, vast grasslands covered with huge herds of herbivores preyed on by the wolves and bears (like the extinct one on the state flag now). It is now intense corporate farming, mechanized agriculture made possible only by fossil water, internal combustion engine transport and “illegal” immigrant labor.

This debate goes way back, all the way to the conflict between the John Muir and Gifford Pinchot schools of how wilderness should be managed. But it seems to me, “managed wilderness” is an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms we could afford when there was so much of it all around us. But not any more, or as much. It doesn’t hurt to piss over the side of boat, but dumping the town sewage in the river is something else again. I love the wilderness, but I’m not sentimental about preserving it at all costs at the expense of human welfare and at the cost of human suffering. But utilizing the land for public benefit is NOT the same as exploiting it for private profit. But we CAN do both! If we’re smart about it, we can have our cake and eat it too, just not all we want, not all at once, and not all the time.