FOREST FIRE Among the many stories which will come from the current, continuing and costly wildfires in Arizona and California, is one from which we can all learn a much needed and valuable lesson. It would certainly pay us to give more attention to keeping our forests in proper condition.
By "proper", I mean keep them useful to man as he harvests their treasures and does so under conditions which encourage and maintain Nature's dominance.
One California resident in the fire stricken area has been clearing his property regularly for years, he has eliminated exessive undergrowth and cut those trees which were close enough to torch his home if they chanced to burn. He kept the trees trimmed as much as possible and even planted some new, varied ones set sufficently apart from his home to add variety and make it all more beautiful.
For doing all this, he has been scorned by his neighbors; even sued in the courts for "destroying the natural habitat" of several specified wilflife critters found throughout the entire area.
After the fire, which burned homes all around, but did not touch his, he became the only resident of the area who has living specimens of the various threatened biolocial and zological species on his property. They sought, and some of them actually found, sanctuary from the steadily approaching walls of flame.
When, one might ask, are we going to come to understand the importance of foresty care and maintenance. It is not a matter of simply refusing to use the forests at all and to allow them, even force them, to fall back into a chaotic state we call "wilderness." That is the foolish way out of the predicament in which we have placed ourselves
and one which does not solve any problems at all. Rather, it increases other dangers we must confront in years to come..
Living in the wilderness is a harsh setting for Man. It has always been so, and wild life as well. Our artists and poets describe a totally different paradise than the wilderness dweller usually found he had to conquer or die. The dominent form of life takes over in any specific area and the rest have a rough time of merely staying alive - much less prospering.
We have been victims of excessive and often hollow-headed enthiusiasms related to the serious subject of envionmental control. It has been warped into a social values thing far removed form the actual needs of a constantly changing state of being one in which Nature thrives at its best, for the moment. To think of the environment as being a packagable, bounded, concrete, pre-determined set of perfectly constant little compartments is sheer idiocy. It is time for us to begin to learn how wrong our attempts to rein Nature into our idea of what we think she ought to be. We must learn to us our natural resorces and not allow ourselves to be blinded by emotional considerations which are, at best, ever costly to both man and beast. We need to use our forests rather than to push them to disuse and ruin.
A.L.M. December 5, 2005 [c531wds]
