A Landowner's Viewpoint

The following letter was written by Carl Baldwin, who owns a ranch near the Kootenai Creek Fire.

Having been in production agriculture all of my life, it would seem to me there is a better way of taking care of our forests than the new policy of “Let it Burn”. Also, I thought there was a different policy for wilderness that is dozens of miles from civilization and wilderness that is close to communities.

We have been told by Dan Ritter and Bruce Windhorst in the papers, at public information sessions, and on TV that it was always their intention to put out the Kootenai Creek Fire. But, their response to local property owners tells a different story. When asked what they were going to do if the fire reached the top of the canyon headed into Brooks Creek the response was, “Well, the Brooks area is full of trash and needs to be burned.” When asked about Larson Creek a similar answer was given. Also we were told that it cost $5500 to use a helicopter for an hour and it didn’t warrant that kind of expense. And, as usual, they used the excuse that they didn’t want to get anyone hurt on this dangerous hillside yet, after two months of burning, they sent a ground crew on the same slope beside and ahead of the fire to dig a “token” line from the creek to three quarters of the way up the mountain leaving the last quarter of mile of the ridge to be slowly consumed by the creeping fire. During August we had two inches of rain and it actually snowed on St. Mary’s Peak on Aug. 16th. There was plenty of help from Mother Nature if they had really wanted to put the fire out at that time. When the winds came on Saturday September 19th the inevitable happened, the fire raged to life.

People love the Bitterroot Valley because of its beautiful mountains. There has to be a better way to preserve them than what we just witnessed. Why not tend the forest like the large garden that it is? Why not remove the merchantable timber so loggers have jobs and mills keep operating? Why not thin out the ladder fuels and make bio-mass for use by the schools for their heat source or send it to the paper mill so it can keep operating? And then, when the moisture comes and the weather is favorable, use controlled burns to clean up what is left. All of the above will create jobs and keep our forests tended as they should be. In the 80’s the Forest Service would offer pole sales on Larson Creek to those who could use them and there were many more to be harvested but for some reason that practice was stopped. Now a majority have been burned in the Larson Creek fire. That is such a waste of a valuable resource. It seems the old philosophy of trying to make America profitable and independent with her renewable natural resources has gotten lost in this extreme environmental attitude.

Some other questions come to mind:

a. The people own the forest, not the Forest Service. Where does the people’s use of their forest come into the equation when days of hiking on the beautiful Kootenai Creek trail, horseback riding and camping in the Bass Creek area are lost?

b. If the California philosophy of having only big, beautiful, older Ponderosa pines live in the forest with no smaller, younger trees to replace them continues, how can the forests survive?

c. The Forest Service likes to refer to the 1910 fire but how many people lived in the Bitterroot then? Now 26,000 people call this valley their home. When does their health come into consideration?

After the rain came and the weather cooled the men were breaking down their camp at Bass Creek. One of our local Forest Service officials was thanking everyone who helped with the fire and made the following remark, “In a strange sort of way, it’s been sort of fun!” and then laughed. I saw no one else in the meeting laughing. I’m wondering if those ten weeks were fun for the people whose personal property was threatened. Was it fun for those who had to move animals to safer ground? Was it fun for those who packed their most prized possessions and waited each day to see if they were going to be evacuated? Was it fun for those of us who own the “open spaces” with haystacks of thousands of bales getting showered with embers? Was it fun for the small children who had to be hospitalized because their asthma got so bad due to the days of smoke? I think not!

I have deep respect and untold gratitude to the Incident Command teams lead by Mike Fritsen, Mike Goicoechea, Jay Wood and Steve Reed and the local Forest Service ground people who had the philosophy of “Put the Fire Out”, who put dozers on the ground to make fire lines, called in the helicopters and put crews on the mountains day and night to get the fire under control. These foresters were tested on the south side of Kootenai Creek to be able to hold this fire to the Larson Creek drainage. They set their minds to stop the fire, prepared the site and physically prevented it from advancing any farther to the southeast. I also thank the rural firefighters who gave many hours of their time ready to protect the private property that was threatened and calm the resident’s nerves. I guess I will always wonder what our lives would have been like those few weeks if these people had been in charge when the lightening strike happened on July 12th instead of the “Let it Burn” group.

Can we learn from this? Can we have a different policy for wilderness that is close to communities?