LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The forests must burn

THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The letter by Bill Neece (``No intentional fires'' - May 28) was laughable. He complained about smoke from forest fires while wondering how the forests were managed before the U.S. Forest Service.

The short answer to that query is that they burned - and frequently. Given that the Star regularly publishes articles about the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, informed Tucsonans know that tree-ring data tell a consistent story of frequent, low-intensity ground fires that burned in the past throughout Southwestern coniferous forests.

However, such fires have been rare since the late 1800s, probably because of the advent of grazing and the improved effectiveness of fire suppression since the mid-1900s. As a result, many Southwestern forests have been diagnosed as ``unhealthy'' because their current form (numbers and types of trees, fuel loading) and function (frequency and intensity of processes like fire) are not what they were in the past.

The Forest Service uses prescribed burning as one of many management tools for rectifying this situation. Unfortunately, where there's fire, there's smoke. Indeed, poor air quality resulting from prescribed burning is one of the most vexing issues associated with that management tool. Perhaps it's intractable: The forests will (must) burn, but we don't like smoke. There is no easy answer to this dilemma.

Paul Sheppard