By W. WALLACE COVINGTON

We cannot bury our heads in the sand any longer. Los Alamos, Flagstaff, Storm King--western forest landscapes and human communities have been ravaged by preventable catastrophic fires. Does it matter whether the fires were prescribed, accidental, or caused by lightning? Is that the issue? Not really--in fact arguing about who starts a fire is unproductive. All of us caused the fires. We caused them by allowing our forests to become so overstocked with trees that they exceeded the carrying capacity of the land. The real question is: How do we overcome the barriers that prevent the restoration of western forest landscapes, especially in our increasingly vulnerable ponderosa pine and lower mixed conifer forests?

Two myths contribute to the current situation: (1) that we do not have sufficient information to act, and (2) that we must achieve consensus on restoration treatments before we act.

Despite the first myth, in fact we know a great deal about how to accomplish restoration. Abundant scientific knowledge has resulted from research begun in the 1890's that continues today. We have solid information about presettlement forest conditions, changes in fire regimes, and ecological responses to thinning and prescribed burning.

As for the second myth, total consensus among conservation professionals, environmental activists, and scientists is not possible--never has been, never will be. As we wait for consensus and perfect information, the forest becomes more vulnerable. This is unforgivable. We have the knowledge to protect these magnificent forests. We just need the courage and will to implement solutions, and to learn something while we do it.

Our dry, western forest ecosystems, once dominated by open, park-like stands of ponderosa pine and mixed conifer, have become increasingly vulnerable over the past 149 years. Symptoms of their vulnerability were apparent to local residents, conservation leaders, and scientists such as John Wesley Powell and Aldo Leopold. Native plants, animals and landscapes started disappearing shortly after European-American settlement of the West in the late 1800s. Overgrazing eliminated herbaceous surface fuels and caused native biodiversity to crash. Park-like forests with diverse grass, shrub, and wildflower understories were invaded with pines, firs, junipers and other woody vegetation. Be the 1940s, enough trees and surface fuel had accumulated to allow fire to return--but not the natural, low-intensity surface fires that had shaped these ecosystems over millions of years.

The fires that began in the 1940s burned through tree canopies. At first the fires were small (a few hundred acres) and a small proportion of that area burned severely. By the 1950s and 1960s fires were larger and more severe. Beginning in the mid-1980s we was sudden leaps in fire size, severity, and destructiveness, not just to ecosystems but also to human lives and property. Such leaps are often observed when complex systems fail.

Ecologically based forest restoration is the most effective way to reestablish the ecological integrity, or completeness, of the forest while protecting human communities. This approach is informed by science and establishes as its primary goal the restoration of fully functional ecosystems that are linked to sustainable use by humans.

For more that 25 years the faculty, staff, and students associated with the recently designated Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University have been working with federal and state land management agencies, tribes, state and local governments, and nongovernmental organizations to develop and test scientifically and ethically sound forest restoration treatments. This merging of managers, scientists, and communities to accomplish restoration is the basis for what Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and US Senator Jon Kyl (Arizona) have recently called "The Flagstaff Plan." The restoration approaches developed by the Ecological Restoration Institute--working with governmental and nongovernmental organizations at Mt.Trumbull and in Flagstaff--are the basis for defining an socially acceptable series of restoration treatments to protect the threatened community of Flagstaff and its surrounding forests.

Unfortunately, there are barriers to success. One is funding; this barrier, while not trivial, is relatively easy to overcome when the will exists. The other barrier is inaction caused by obstructionism and perfectionism. Some people prefer inaction and attempt to stall progress by using legal challenges, bureaucratic entanglement, and unrealistic demands for perfect knowledge. Ironically, in degraded forests this inaction becomes an action that leads to more degradation and increasingly severe crown fires that lead to loss of critical wildlife habitat, loss of homes, and, most importantly, loss of human lives. The consequences of obstructionism are tragic.

Time has run out. Knowing what we know now, we must act, and we must act now. To do otherwise would be an abdication of our responsibility to future generations.

Dr. Covington is Regents Professor of Forest Ecology and director, Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. The article appeared in the August, 2000 issue of Journal of Forestry, and was called to our attention by Dr. J.E. Carothers, a professor of forestry at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.