FIRE!

 

America’s First Family of Wilderness

FIRE!

What Mission Statement?

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

              (At least) 80,000,000 of the 193,000,000 acres of federal forest are in such dreadful ecological condition that it will burn to the ground before Congress will shut down the litigation machine that is destroying the nation’s federal forest heritage.

            Jim Petersen, Founder, Evergreen Foundation.

            America’s First Family of Wilderness

            The memory of the fire that burned the south face of Mogollon Baldy in the ‘50s was framed by the discussion of members of Trinity Presbyterian Church at Cliff. Sunday night services had concluded, and everyone had stepped out front of the little white Club House that served the congregation before a permanent home was acquired. The flames of the fire were clearly seen.

            You can bet some of the Shelley boys are up there tonight.

            Those referenced were the descendants of Peter McKindree Shelley who had come to Grant County in 1884, 15 years before the Gila had been designated a Forest Reserve, and 21 years before the United States Forest Service even existed. Up until 1944, the entire upper Mogollon Creek Basin including where that fire was had been Shelley country. That changed. During the beef shortages of WWII, a power hungry, unelected federal administrator arbitrarily ordered their grazing permit terminated and evicted them.

            It had been the Shelley lifestyle, hospitality and their use of their vernacular, Wilderness, referencing that range and basin country north of what even today is known as the High Divide that had caught the fancy of a young forester who came into the Gila in 1922. His name was Aldo Leopold, and it was he who crafted a regional office administrative directive declaring the Gila Wilderness two years later.

            Twenty years later, the Shelley’s were evicted from everything they referred to as wilderness. That action, which can only be described as gross abrogation of private property rights, was done by a career bureaucrat the great majority of the world will never know much less remember.

            Two things remain apparent.

First, his actions reek of uncontested administrative vindictiveness. The letter of May 18, 1944, describes Shelley lands along Mogollon Creek to the south as the rationale of his denial of restocking the wilderness (the wilderness had been destocked to pay debts accrued in the Depression and settling the estate of Peter Shelley). During their request, the criticized range was stocked whereas the wilderness of intended restocking was not. Second, his underlying intentions mirrored conservative group think with an idea of lands untrammeled by man. Those words were to be imagined, invented, and later inserted into the Wilderness Act of 1964 attempting to elevate lands with wilderness characteristics into mystical strata.

            He pulled it off, and, with it … one of the greatest American family tragedies of the 20^th Century West.

            What Mission Statement?

            Try to find the original Mission Statement of the United States Forest Service these days and you’ll be confounded.

            From the congressional directive in 1905, though, its charge was simple. Federal land reservation was for watershed protection and timber production. Shortly thereafter, though, Gifford Pinchot took over the reins and soon declared he could manage forests as well as the European elite and fires would be eliminated. The stockpiling of kindling began.

            Fast forward to the present and the restatement of the current Mission Statement of the agency reads like a nursery rhyme:

            To sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. For more than 100 years, the Forest Service has brought people and communities to answer the call of conservation.

          The suggestion of assuring an enduring and bountiful water resource or maintaining a timber base for the nation is long gone. It isn’t there because in 1985 (and other hallmark years), the agency started adopting rapidly evolving policies that included the expansion of allied forces that, if they couldn’t actually spell untrammeled, liked the sound of it whispered over wine and hors-d’oevres.

            City stupidity and its affiliated custodial duties fully replaced the customs and culture of sustainability endeavors. Timber production went the way of livestock, and both migrated in mass to private lands of the Southeast. Mining was squeezed to the point of strangulation and the fires only burned bigger. They burned, not because of global warming, but because those Western depositories of kindling have been stacked with fuel to the point spontaneous combustion has replaced all semblance of adult supervision in the federal forests and grasslands.

            FIRE!

            I remember dad packing for it (the fire on Mogollon Baldy hereinabove). He was packing six mules by himself. The forest service had a camp where the road crossed (Mogollon) creek. He would get there before daylight and load mules and (ride) to Bud’s hole then over and up West Fork and come out on Lookout Ridge to the fire camp (on the fire). Unload the mules and down Lookout Ridge to Bud’s Hole then on to the house and it would get dark on him coming off Lookout Ridge. Back to the house and the same thing the next day. They had 300 men on the fire. They would eat everything he would bring. He did that for 14 days and they finally got him some help with some more mules.

            Terrell Shelley, Owner and Patriarch of the 137-year-old 916 Ranch

               The fire of seven decades ago was but a sliver of the fire that is now burning on the mountain and the surrounding Gila drainages. The current fire, the Johnson Fire, is burning at a gain rate of about 7,000 acres a day. It’s obviously big. It represents almost 16% of the nearly 600,000 acres of the largest and most dangerous fires across the West. At this point, there is no hope for control until the monsoons arrive. There are implications galore, but, like the fire of 1953, there are Shelley boys up there. In the extreme heat while they still can, Terrell’s son Jerrell has been gathering their cattle up to the High Divide. Asked what he sees of the fire’s character, Jerrell said:

Where the cows graze the fire just creeps along burning all the deadfall. Where the grass is tall (ungrazed) in the brush, the fire (is) so hot it incinerated everything completely to the ground. Not even a stump left standing … moonscape.

So, much for left untrammeled by man, eh?

The truth is the severity of the Johnson Fire is direct result of Forest Service management. Suppressing fires and doing everything in their power for too many years to limit any fuel removal in a plant community that evolved in a periodic fire regime is far from being untouched by man. It is an artificial, contrived attempt to impose an unsustainable manmade concept on a landscape that will eventually correct itself.

At best, pristine is a temporal condition.

The truth is the entire footprint of the original Shelley allotments would be infinitely better off today if cattle had been allowed to remain. Just like any skill, craft, or industry the business of livestock has evolved. Better practices, the installation of infrastructure, and improved knowledge have led to many things that have changed and improved dramatically.

With and through its all-powerful agencies, our government has invested too heavily in concepts that must become contrary to constitutional, citizen sovereignty. It becomes a matter of their survival, but it’s a plan that simply doesn’t work.

In this case, fire and litigation are the only two growth components. It joins the ultimate American tragedies with...far too many chapters and verses. 

 

Stephen L Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. "What took place by agency politics and bureaucracy of these public lands is the roadmap to the end of the American model."