Tending Fire: Coping with America's Wildland Fires

  • Stephen J. Pyne
Shearwater: 2004. 226 pp. $25

Major wildland fires are spectacular to look at, and the drama continues into their political and social fallout. It is a truism that fires shape the nature of ecosystems and biodiversity, but they can also shape human institutions and values. This is the central thesis of Stephen Pyne's latest book, Tending Fire, in which he attempts to get to grips with fire not only as a biophysical problem, but also as a socio-political one.

Pyne argues that the United States' problem with fires is symptomatic of a deeper clash over the values that society places on its wildlands. The problem is exacerbated because the public institutions traditionally involved in managing fires are not capable of dealing with this debate. Part of Pyne's solution is a call for a greater input from the humanities into the study of wildland fires. An understanding of the history of fire policy and management, and of the psychology and art of fire, among other things, could help those responsible for fire management to function with more self-awareness, he argues.

The public ownership of wildlands will endure, Pyne surmises, because there is an implicit consensus about their value as ecosystems that have been spared the worst ravages of exploitation. But the debate will continue about the appropriate level of intervention and institutional arrangements needed to manage fire. The monolithic control of fire policy and management on public lands by “imperial” institutions (such as the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service) is starting to unravel. Pyne foresees an era of cooperative devolution, in which localized decision-making and hands-on action is shared among public and private players. He highlights as a model the role of the Nature Conservancy in the United States, which is both an active manager and a community-level broker of fire management ideas and solutions.

Tending Fire is a condensation of general themes and arguments — a summation of Pyne's larger works. It focuses on the great public wildlands of the western United States, which are the scene of catastrophic wildfires wrought in equal part by nature and by the putative failings of the people charged with their management. The “pyric transition” — the switch from ‘natural’ biomass fire to the industrial use of fossil fuels — is briefly recapitulated. Pyne recounts its progression from “free-running” fire, experienced by indigenous peoples, to European colonial exploitation (including overgrazing, clearing, logging and mining), the creation of reserves, and the advent of bureaucratic command and control.

The core of the book is an account of the four fundamental pillars of fire management: suppression, ‘let burn’, prescribed fire, and fuel treatment. Pyne counsels that relying on any one alone is doomed to failure, as history has shown. They all have their place in solving the fire problem, but in what particular mix? Beyond noting that different mixes are likely to be required in different ecosystems at different times and places, Pyne offers no comprehensive solution.

His vision, focused on ponderosa pine forests, is heavily qualified. Forceful arguments, such as the need for mechanical thinning and the re-introduction of surface fires, are tempered by caveats. For example, wildfires are inevitable and serve useful ecological purposes, and anyway, the best solution depends on the locality, as crown fires may be required in chaparral and high-altitude conifer forests. At times the juxtaposition of solutions is breathtaking: devolution of planning responsibility to the community on one hand, with increased government regulation of urban design on the other. Pyne does, however, paint a slick picture of climate change and the consequences of burning fossil fuels, and of the international pressures that may be brought to bear on US fire management to reduce emissions.

Ultimately, Tending Fire succeeds as a visceral and widely accessible account of the problem of wildfires. Pyne does not solve it but lays it out in all its maddening, self-contradictory splendour. His attempts to sketch a way forward, although useful, amplify the paradoxes and the choices available. Wisely, he counsels that, at best, both art and science can illuminate the consequences of differing choices but are not surrogates for decision-making.

The book concludes with a call for a biological theory of fire. This is a noble effort but the sketch offered is disappointing. The nostrum that fire is a by-product of life (biomass) is useful, but falls short. Fire is frustrating because we do not properly understand how it works at the spatial and temporal scales at which we confront it. Physical and ecological knowledge is shackled within micro-scale, reductionist paradigms that are inadequate for understanding fire and its consequences on a larger scale. Coping with fire is about understanding and manipulating forms of heterogeneity and biophysical feedbacks that we have barely grasped and that are not amenable to ‘bottom-up’ scientific enquiry. It is about recognizing that fire poses both risks and benefits at several levels. Compromises and trade-offs must be engineered accordingly, but the functional knowledge required for effective management is lacking. Fire is a transcendent phenomenon in both biophysical and socio-political senses. Tending Fire contributes to our awareness of this, but there is a long road ahead.