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FEDERATION OF WESTERN OUTDOOR CLUBS







No. 20
MODIFY NEW WILDERNESS FIRE MANAGEMENT POLICY


               
The U.S. Forest Service recently released a draft environmental statement to change its fire management policy in designated wilderness areas.

Heretofore, with minor exceptions, the Forest Service policy has been to plan for and allow natural (lightning-caused) fires to burn in wilderness areas, to the extent that they didn't endanger life or property within or outside the wilderness areas.

The new policy is to authorize Forest Service personnel to start fires (planned ignition) and do prescribed burning in wilderness areas to eliminate excessive fuel buildups and restore a more natural condition.

The Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs is gravely concerned that if this new wilderness fire management policy is adopted and applied throughout the West, it is likely to get out of hand, and to result in the ultimate destruction of the wilderness resource itself.  There may be chaparral, fire-prone areas where prescribed burning may be essential, but in the timbered areas of the West, human intervention will bring about an increasingly manipulated resource that less and less resembles wilderness.

If the new policy is applied throughout the West, special interests, such as state wildlife managers and sportsmen, will promote more planned ignition in wilderness areas to maximize forage and big-game populations.  Livestock interests will demand burning to maximize grazing, and water developers will push burning to maximize water production.

The political force of these special interests would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Forest Service officials to resist their demands.
            
Therefore the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs requests the Forest Service to modify its new, high-risk policy of setting fires in wilderness and fully implement its valid program of allowing natural fires to burn in accordance with preplanning.


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