The goal of a wildland fire-use fire is to allow it to burn naturally, Campbell said.

"A fire-use fire is a success when it starts and ends naturally," he said.

The West Fork Ranger District and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is where the wildland fire-use program got its start in 1972, with the very tiny Bad Luck Fire in the White Cap River drainage. Before it burned itself out, the fire grew to all of 24 feet by 24 feet, but the wildland fire-use program was born.

Since then fire managers have dealt with fires of varying sizes and intensities, from the 40,000-acre Sweat-Warrior Fire in 1996, to hundreds of spot fires. All have played a role in creating a landscape where natural fire is a suitable tool for resource management, Campbell said.

However, if you describe the wildland fire-use program as the Forest Service's "let burn" policy, you'll be quickly corrected.

It's an honest mistake though, said Chris Ourada, incident commander for the Salmon-Selway complex, which is located almost entirely on the West Fork Ranger District.

He refers to Yellowstone National Park and the summer of 1988, when lightning-caused fires burned nearly 800,000 acres and changed the face of the America's first national park.

At the time, the park's policy was to allow naturally caused fires to burn. That meant they didn't really have any management options, Ourada said.

But in the wildland fire-use program, fire managers have the same options available as they would on a fire they would actively suppress, the only difference is wildland fire-use fire is used for resource benefits, he said.

It's an important but confusing distinction.

As an example, Ourada points to the Sentimental Fire, which is burning near the wilderness boundary on the West Fork Ranger District.

The fire began about a month ago and has been creeping around in duff, grass and brush ever since. It's on the leeward side of a ridge in the upper end of the Sentimental Creek drainage. On Tuesday, the fire was barely hot enough to show smoke.

But, if the fire were to cross the wilderness boundary, things would change.

"We have the option of going in there with our suppression tools," Ourada said.

They could either suppress the entire fire and just contain the portion that burned out of the wilderness boundary.

"That's an option we really didn't have in '88," he said.

Advances in the science of firefighting and fire behavior have allowed mangers to better predict what fires are going to do, Ourada said.

On his complex he utilizes infrared technology to gauge fire size, Web cams to monitor fires, and Geographical Information System maps to delineate fire boundaries.

Managers fly over the fires on a daily basis to check their progress and potential growth, while teams of firefighters are deployed to protect wilderness structures, like guard stations, lookouts and pack bridges, or even fight fire when necessary.

Just because a fire starts in the wilderness, doesn't automatically mean it's going to be a wildland fire-use fire, Campbell said.

Each fire is critiqued on its own merits: where is it burning, what are the fuel types, what is the potential for it to burn, and is it close to old burns?

For example, if a fire starts in late June near the wilderness boundary on the upper third of a slope with a southern aspect, which is exposed to the West Fork's prevalent southwest winds, then it will likely be suppressed.

A fire like this would likely burn out of the wilderness boundary by the end of the fire season in September, he said.

But because of the long history of fire use in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, fires have a better chance of being successfully managed as a wildland fire-use fire, Ourada said.

"Every one of the fires we have is manageable because it's going to burn into an older fire," he said.

An aerial view of the wilderness and its many fires demonstrates Ourada's point.

In some areas fires are burning intensely in thick stands of trees. Other areas, the fire is just creeping on the ground, consuming brush and grass, but leaving trees healthy.

Allowing fire to burn when appropriate in the wilderness gives the landscape this mosaic look, which is natural, Campbell said.

It's a much different ecosystem than the forest lands outside the wilderness, where fire has been suppressed, he said.

"That's one of the purposes of wilderness is to provide a baseline to compare to," he said.

Discussions focused on the possibility of applying the wildland fire-use program to areas outside the wilderness are happening throughout the Forest Service.

The Bitterroot National Forest is in the middle of revising its forest plan, which dictates how forest lands will be managed for the next 10 to 15 years.

One of the changes the agency is suggesting is to allow wildland fire use on all areas of the forest, except those designated to be managed for developed recreation, said Sue Heald, planning staff officer for the forest.

The change would give the agency a significant management tool, which it's never had, she said.

Ourada's home forest is the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho, which recently went through a forest plan revision process. Like the Bitterroot it suggests adding wildland fire use to its tool box for managing fires outside the wilderness.

The key aspect of the program that makes it workable is its focus on resource benefits.

In the wilderness, allowing natural processes to occur naturally is considered a resource benefit, he said.

Outside the wilderness there could be different resource benefits, such as habitat management and ecosystem health, Ourada said.

After 100 years of fire suppression, timber stands are overcrowded and large fires are becoming more common.

"A lot of people are starting to realize that the suppression efforts of the past are not going to continue to work," Ourada said.

He references fires like the Bitterroot in 2000 and Oregon's Biscuit Fire in 2002, which burned nearly 500,000 acres, as examples of large fires that totally resisted suppression.

But if the Forest Service were allowed to manage some fires for resource benefits and not actively suppress them, then the chance of large catastrophic fires could be greatly reduced over time, he said.

"If we slowly get this program going, like we're doing," Ourada said, "the fire-use program will actually decrease fire sizes."

And allowing wildland fire use outside the wilderness wouldn't mean just letting a fire burn, Heald said.

"I think outside of the wilderness we would tend to use it in conjunction with other tools," she said.

For instance, one flank of the fire could be suppressed to keep the fire directed in a specific direction. Making these decisions would be done carefully, she said.

"We'd look at each start and consider all the things that could go right and could go wrong," Heald said.

The agency would assess what values were at risk, such as homes, roads and land in the timber base.

"These are very conscious decisions we would make," Heald said.

But whether the wildland fire-use program is extended outside of the wilderness is still very much in the discussion phase, she emphasized.

The Forest Service has been holding public meetings to discuss its plan revision for the past few months and will have a preferred option available for public comment in October.

And like all other aspects of the forest plan revision, Heald is hoping the public continues to tell the Forest Service what they think about wildland fire use.

The wilderness fires of 2005 are proving to be monumental. Not in their size, but in quantity.

The Forest Service broke new ground recently when they crossed ranger district, forest and regional boundaries to form a large administrative area to oversee management of wilderness fires burning in Montana and Idaho.

The agency terminology for the area is maximum manageable area - fire officials call it simply the MMA. But this is the largest MMA ever, Ourada said.

It covers more than 4 million acres and includes the Selway-Bitterroot, Frank Church River of No Return, and Gospel Hump Wildernesses; as well as the Payette, Clearwater, Bitterroot, Nez Perce and Salmon-Challis National Forests. The MMA spans the boundary between Forest Service region one, which is the Northern Rockies region, and region four, the Eastern Great Basin Region. In all 79 fires are burning on about 8,700 acres.

It's a monumental effort, Ourada said.

"In the Forest Service, management actions across regional boundaries is almost never heard of," he said.

For Ourada and fire managers on the Bitterroot, this means more communication with other forests, which is an opportunity to learn more about fire behavior and wildland fire-use management.

It's exciting to be able to look at wildland fire use on such on such a grand scale, he said. The effort gives credence to the importance of wildland fire use in the agency, and the potential for that importance to grow.

"It's a huge program that's going to gain steam, especially as forest plans get updated and rewritten," Ourada said.

Reporter Greg Lemon can be reached at 363-3300 or at glemon@ravallirepublic.com

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