How the Forest Service was saved -- and shaped -- by fire

There was a great interview on NPR's Fresh Air recently, with author and journalist Timothy Egan, on his new book, The Big Burn.

The book examines the largest forest fire in American history: in 1910, some 3 million acres of forest in Idaho and Montana, an area the size of Connecticut, burned in just a few days, killing 70 people.

The fire also saved the fledgling U. S. Forest Service, which was on Congress' chopping block. It also, though, argues Egan, shaped the future of the Forest Service, turning it into what he calls "the Fire Service." Today, half the Forest Service's budget goes toward "the fire industrial complex," he says.

It also, though, he argues, saved the modern conservation movement, and made it possible for the Forest Service to go from the brink of extinction to expansion, including the creation of National Forests in the East.

The story, though, is deeper than that, and is filled with drama and adventure, including tales of how the black Army forces, the Buffalo Soldiers, came in to help save day and were met with racism; of how Forest Service employees went from objects of scorn -- sarcastically called "Teddy's Green Rangers" -- to heroes in the eyes of the country; and how because of a complete ignorance of how to fight forest fires, both those heroic parties really just "became fuel" for the fire.

That 1910 fire still resonates, Egan argues, since today more than 20 million people live within a few miles of a National Forest.

You can read an excerpt from the book and listen to the interview on Fresh Air here.

You can also read an interview with Timothy Egan about The Big Burn in Smithsonian magazine here.

Supreme Court decides case argued by Durango attorney

This from the Western Environmental Law Center:

The U.S. Supreme Court [on March 3], in a very limited 5-4 decision, reversed the lower courts’ findings that had overturned a Bush administration rule that denied citizens the right to have a voice in the management of national forests. (Summers v. Earth Island Institute). However, the Court rejected the Bush administration’s attempt to create a broad ruling that would have severely limited citizens the right to challenge any unlawful government regulation.

The argument in Summers v. Earth Island Institute was argued before the Supreme Court in October by Durango attorney Matt Kenna. The suit was a legal challenge against the Forest Service's attempts to exclude public input and environmental reviews from timber sales. Matt had been involved with the case for more than five years when he was selected to make the argument after the Supreme Court accepted it in Dec. 2007. The case had been brought by Earth Island Institute, Heartwood, Sierra Club, Sierra ForestKeeper, and Center for Biological Diversity.

“We are disappointed that the Court reinstated these harmful forest regulations,” says Kenna. “However, the Court’s ruling was narrow in scope and did not accept any of the government's broad theories that would have precluded citizens from challenging a federal regulation except when applied to a specific project.

"This was the most critical issue at stake- if the government had prevailed on its theory, citizens would have had to file thousands of individual suits to challenge harmful regulations on a case-by-case basis while the government could continue to apply the regulation even in the face of multiple court rulings finding the regulation unlawful.”

Summarizing, Kenna said, "It was very close- 5-4 with a concurrence by Kennedy. It was decided on a narrow basis that will not cause too much bad precedent for the future, which is good, but it would have been nice to have won!"

Read the decision here.