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By Matthias Petry
One of the country's foremost experts on wildfires and fire management suggested three narratives for fire problems in a speech Wednesday at USU. Dr. Stephen J. Pyne, an Arizona State University professor and author of 16 books, called the first narrative the industrial one, "the story we share with everywhere else on the planet. We've all gathered fire." However, the second one, the imperial narrative, is shared by a much smaller group of countries, which include Russia, Canada and Australia. "All of these share a colonial history which results in the reservation of large chunks of land as a public commonwealth," he said. "We have extensive wildfires in the United States because we have extensive wild land," Pyne believes. The third narrative is the national one, which deals with the individual way the United States has tried to manage wildfires. "Fire doesn't listen; it really doesn't care," Pyne said. "It speaks a language of wind, mountains and fuel and unless we speak to it in those terms, we're not effective." In his one-hour presentation, "American History with Fire in Its Eye: Wildfires in the West" he talked about the history, ecology and management of fire and about his opinion on fire management in the future. Pyne, a professor in ASU's biology and sociology program, is an internationally recognized authority on wildfire. He has spent over 15 years in fire crews in various national parks, including Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone, and he has published books about various fire-related issues -- his most recent one titled Smokechasing. Pyne has also traveled literally all over the world in relation to his work on fire management. He started his journey through the history of fire management with the year 1880 by pointing out that the "fire epicenters" of that time were around the Great Lakes and in the southern and western part of the United States. Pyne also explained the history and work of the United States Forest Service, which was established at the turn of the last century and has become the premier leader in wildfire management. Shortly after its founding it had its first serious defeat, the "Big Blowup" in 1910, a series of wildfires in the northern Rocky Mountains that burned nearly three million acres and killed 78 firefighters. However, it was not until the 1930s that that the government provided some basic infrastructure for systematic fire prevention. One of the strangest fire management measures before that time were probably the Dixie Crusaders in the 1920s, people who traveled the country, as Pyne explained, "evangelizing against wood burning". However, Pyne stated that he did not believe that the Forest Services as the main fire-management organization in the country had a future and that the change from public to private forestry could be recognized worldwide. "State-sponsored forestry is dead . . . It's about making it happen and I think that's were policy failed," he said.
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