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Blinded by the Environmental Light
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11815 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1994 |
1,372 Words |
| Author
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Brian McCombie
Brian McCombie's reviews and essays have appeared widely,
including in Newsweek, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. |
FIRE IN PARADISE
The Yellowstone Fires and the
Politics of Environmentalism
Micah Morrison
New York: HarperCollins, 1993
253 pp., $22.00
In the summer of 1988, Yellowstone National Park experienced its worst fires in more than eighty years. Nearly 800,000 acres were burned, with over $120 million spent fighting the many blazes. Millions more dollars were lost as tourists were evacuated or stayed away of their own accord. National monuments like Old Faithful were threatened. And as television and newspapers brought the story of these fires to the nation, people began to wonder why, with the money and manpower available, America's premier park was ablaze. Poor planning? Bad execution? Or were the fires a natural force that could not be stopped?
Although nature certainly had its say, the more definitive answer lies with human arrogance, intellectual tunnel vision, and bureaucratic incompetence. All these factors are expertly detailed in Micah Morrison's fine book, Fire in Paradise: The Yellowstone Fires and the Politics of Environmentalism. The facts that, once begun, the fires were allowed to burn. Later attempts to quell the flames, while often heroic, were at first halfhearted, then uncoordinated, and, finally, too late.
The Yellowstone fires began in July 1988 as "eight small, lightning-caused `let-burn' fires." The let-burn designation reflects the philosophical and scientific stance of Yellowstone's staff, who believed that areas like Yellowstone were self-regulating ecosystems that were largely self-contained. In their view, the park should be "left alone by humans. Nature . . . could find its own `balance.'" In such a system, Morrison explains, fire is seen as good and necessary because it "clears away diseased trees, replenishes the soil with nutrients, creates new habitat for wildlife, and regenerates flora." When asked to explain why the fires were not being extinguished, the Yellowstone mantra became "the forests need fire."
This philosophy is essentially preservationist, but, like all philosophies, it is an intellectual construct that requires human effort to become a working reality. Here, that effort was conducted by the bureaucratic apparatus known as the National Park Service. In the bureaucrats' view, their mission was to allow the Yellowstone ecosystem to operate on its own. When
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