Face Off audio clip: “This is Ted Kennedy. Was the forest right to adopt a “let it burn” policy in Yellowstone Park last summer?”
This is a recording of the radio program “Face Off” where Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Wyoming Senator Alan K. Simpson debated the “let-burn” policy following the Yellowstone fires of 1988.
Face Off Audio clip: “Destructive forest fires that ravaged large areas of one of our greatest treasures.”
The Yellow Lake fire located in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest was the largest on record for the [2024] season. Sierra Holstrom, deputy fire co-op specialist for the Intermountain region of the Forest Service, says the conditions were unique and allowed this fire to grow large late into the season.
“We were receiving almost no moisture and we were seeing conditions that we normally see in July. 90 degree temperatures up to 70 mile an hour winds red flag warning conditions extremely low humidity as well as extremely stressed vegetation that are conditions that are very rare and are prime for what would be considered a perfect storm for wildland fire,” Hellstrom said.
Brad Washa, assistant professor of Wildland Fire Science with USU extension, says the fire was a human caused fire and therefore a full suppression fire but said the burning isn’t all bad.
“There were many benefits to that fire as far as setting back some of those forest health issues and reintroducing fire into those ecosystems so there were benefits– it wasn’t all detrimental,” Washa said.
Suppression and let-burn tactics are utilized when area fire officials see fit, but there are also programs that help communities prepare and defend themselves against fire in what is called the wildland-urban interface.
Face Off audio clip: “The debate involves the overall management of those crown jewels.”
As a public information officer on wildfires for the Forest Service, Hellstrom says they work closely with the State of Utah to provide programs such as Firewise and Living with Fire.
“Where fire is a natural part of our public lands, it's healthy and necessary for our national forests to propagate so we cannot suppress all fires if we want healthy forests but it’s how we can live with these fires in a healthy natural way and that the community can help do their part to make their homes defensible and protect their own properties so that when a fire starts because it will that their homes are more defensible and it will help the firefighters have better success in preventing any loss of structure in a wildland fire,” said Hellstrom.
According to Hellstrom and Washa, the State of Utah provides millions of dollars a year to help fund these programs.
“The state doesn’t want the money, the state wants you to use that assessed value to do things like having chipping programs or training people and developing community wildfire protection plans and that sort of thing for the community,” Washa said.
What once was a debate between whether to suppress wildfire or to let it burn is now more a matter of how best to balance ecological needs and human needs and support communities within the wildland-urban interface.
