By Mason Parker
Moved by the radiance of sunbursts bouncing between granite peaks, John Muir once called the Sierras the “Range of Light.” Now, a century later, millions of acres of Wilderness and wild forest in the Range of Light are under threat of reckless cutting and incineration at the hands of those tasked with guarding them. Threatened and endangered wildlife like the spotted owl, wolverine, and Pacific fisher are facing displacement and death based on shoddy fire science and manufactured panic surrounding wildfire and the climate crisis. The nexus of ecological crises that we live under are being weaponized to fuel misguided fear of fire and justify bloated wildfire budgets. The Sierra and Sequoia Prescribed Burn Project encapsulates the agencies’ endgame—Wilderness where nothing is wild and no fires burn unless the agency lights them. How did we get here, and how do we liberate Wilderness from the hands of its “stewards?”
In May of this year, the Forest Service released a draft decision, bringing them closer to thinning and burning up to 2.4 million acres of national forest in California’s High Sierra, including 800,000 acres across eleven Wildernesses including the Ansel Adams, Monarch, Golden Trout, Jennie Lakes, and John Muir Wildernesses. The Sierra and Sequoia Prescribed Burn Project would move forward in 5-year increments, seemingly in perpetuity, with no further opportunity for public comment. This burning and thinning would include chainsaw and helicopter use throughout Wilderness, as well as drones dropping incendiary devices and setting the forests ablaze. The project would mark a new and unprecedented era of human manipulation of Wilderness.
In 2022, the government spent over $6 billion on wildand fire management, with more than half of that going towards suppression. For years, this allocation of funding led to the damaging practice of “fire borrowing,” in which funds were diverted from other Forest Service programs to cover suppression costs. While a 2018 law largely ended this practice, the financial pressure it created left the agency vulnerable to new priorities, and the fix is set to expire in 2027. The Forest Service has to justify its budget in reports highlighting actions in terms of fires suppressed and acres treated. It is action for the sake of action, which is antithetical to the idea of Wilderness.
The Sierra and Sequoia Prescribed Burn Project is only the latest in a long line of projects that land management agencies have tried to push through under the umbrella of “conditions-based management” or CBM. Under the CBM approach, the Forest Service proposed a massive project area through a single environmental assessment, rather than a more robust environmental impact statement, foregoing any additional opportunity for public input. While the agencies claim that CBM is not a “get-out-of-NEPA-free card,” in reality this is exactly what CBM is. How else can one characterize a project that will continue into the future, seemingly forever, across 2.4 million acres, without any further opportunity for public input?
The agencies have created an internal system for wilderness management which pits elements of wilderness character against one another, justifying the trammelling of Wilderness using motorized tools and helicopters to “restore” Wilderness to a desired state of naturalness. But what does naturalness mean and how do you define it, especially in the age of perpetual and omnipresent human impacts? There is a fundamental contradiction in coercing Wilderness into naturalness—it is, by the very act of coercion, unnatural. Under the Burn Project, the Forest Service proposes to strong-arm Wilderness into a pre-global warming “desired condition” of naturalness, while in the midst of an ongoing climate crisis. At the end of the day, the agencies are simply using the idea of naturalness to justify any and all projects they wish to carry out for the sake of appeasing politicians and imposing managers’ desired conditions on the landscape.
Ironically, the Forest Service attempts to justify ecosystem-level manipulation of Wilderness by pointing to the nebulous boogeyman of climate change. I’m no climatologist, but my understanding of climate change is that it’s expected to get worse. Our models are increasingly unreliable because they are based on a planet that no longer exists. If at any moment you are adjusting your management approach to current climate conditions, your baseline will be out-of-date in a few short years. Unless the Forest Service has a crystal ball, or better climate modeling than anything we’ve seen up to this point, managing for climate change is like shooting at a target that’s not only moving, it’s invisible.
It is argued that in the anthropocene nothing exists beyond the thrall of human impacts, including Wilderness. Perhaps, but there must be spaces where we simply observe how the land adapts to climate change, while humanity tries to get its act together outside these small, important places. This understanding of Wilderness, as a control used to measure scientific research and management strategies, was highlighted repeatedly in the congressional records leading up to the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964; “The Bill sets up areas which can be used as yardsticks,” and Wilderness is “of irreplaceable value to science as sites for fundamental research and as check areas where none of the human factors being compared by investigators have been operative.” Aldo Leopold himself said, “A science of land health needs… a base datum of normality, a picture of how healthy land maintains itself as an organism…the most perfect norm is wilderness.”
The Wilderness Act was not an attempt at returning to some idyllic, pristine past—it is a forward-thinking document that sought to minimize human impacts on these lands from the moment of their designation on, creating living, breathing, experiential textbooks that can teach us about evolution and adaptation—but we have to let them. All the while, the Forest Service shows no sign of letting up in its culture of large-scale fire suppression. It seems the ideal world for managers is one in which no fires happen unless they are the ones setting them, completely eradicating the wild from wildfire and Wilderness.
All of these factors have created the circumstances under which a project like the Sierra and Sequoia Prescribed Burn could exist, ultimately culminating in a full-on attack on wild nature and the defining character of Wilderness: its wildness. We are all bothered when the agencies disregard the ban on motorized equipment by using chainsaws and helicopters rather than non-motorized tools, and Wilderness Watch will do everything we can to prevent it, but this presents a new paradigm in which agencies can throttle Wilderness through endless ecosystem-level manipulation. It is more than a violation of the Wilderness Act, it is an attempt to tame the essence of Wilderness.
Mason is Wilderness Watch’s Wilderness Defense Director.
Photo: Ansel Adams Wilderness by René Voss
120 Comments
Human beings are not qualified to control everything. Here is an example of where we should let nature alone.
Very valid points . Your opinion and ideas are greatly appreciated. The wilderness needs more champions with a clear vision of what Wilderness is and means.
Let wilderness alone or by definition it is not wilderness!
Please! For the Wild!
The Wilderness Act was not an attempt at returning to some idyllic, pristine past—it is a forward-thinking document that sought to minimize human impacts on these lands from the moment of their designation on, creating living, breathing, experiential textbooks that can teach us about evolution and adaptation—but we have to let them. All the while, the Forest Service shows no sign of letting up in its culture of large-scale fire suppression. It seems the ideal world for managers is one in which no fires happen unless they are the ones setting them, completely eradicating the wild from wildfire and Wilderness.
I own a large forest in the Sierras and speak from personal experience gained over the last 35 years. The perception of wilderness varies from person to person. The Native Americans managed the forests before the Europeans arrived, principally by using fire. When wildfire did occur the fire was of low intensity. Since the Europeans arrived the forests have largely not been managed. When fire does come through the result is a high intensity, very destructive fire. My forest is managed and I’ve had 2 large fires in the last 10 years. My forest is largely intact but the surrounding non managed forests are destroyed. My forest is full of wildlife and continues to operate as a healthy, intact ecosystem while the unmanaged forests are a moon scape. Just information to think about in this debate.
How could anyone think this is the right thing to do
Leave our designated Wilderness alone. Let the designated Wilderness manage itself without man’s intervention.
Insanity! What’s happening here is that the Forest Service is admitting they don’t know how to manage wilderness areas without monetizing them. The FS should be servicing the forest not destroying it. Wilderness areas have managed themselves for thousands of years without our misguided intervention. It would be nice to think the US Forest Service would be making rules that supported and maintained wilderness, rather than finding excuses to avoid existing laws that were intended to do that. This is completely foolish!
I really do not know where to start besides stating that the term WILDERNESS in itself speaks of its value and use. WILDERNESS is designated as a non-motorized, non-commercial area. WILDERNESS is also designated as a place to be left natural, its species, plant and animal to be protected. Humans may only use it for peaceful exploration. Do not ruin it or its designation, we have future humans to think of not just ourselves.
T-Rump & his Wealthy Fossil Fuel Ind. Behemoth Pals don’t care about Animals or the Wilderness. They only care about more & more $$$$$$$ for Control! They’ll be well taken care of; so, they don’t give a fig about the rest of us; or, the beauty we love!
Humans claim to be the most “intelligent” species on the planet. Yet we continue to demonstrate (at an alarming rate) that we are the ONLY species on Earth that is willfully and systematically destroying it’s own habitat.
All one needs to do is take a look at photos of Earth taken from space as recently as 25 years ago and compare them to the same photos taken recently. Or, ask an astronaut who has been on a shuttle mission or spent time on the space station what the most remarkable thing they saw while looking down at the planet whiich we call our “home”. They will tell you that they were shocked at the vast areas of deforestation that seem to increase at an ever increasing rate.
We are being ruled by a group of greedy, short-sighted, information-proof fools who are not even the least bit CURIOUS as to what their anti-environmental “policies” are doing to our planet. They should be all sent to Venus to see firsthand what is in store for thier progeny.
@ Bill Hughes
If you were to look at the Earth before humans started destroying it with agriculture (10-12,000 years ago) and look at it now, you would see that humans have already destroyed the Earth. Humans fit the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the Earth, and have so for a very long time. The large majority of the terrestrial land on Earth should be forest, but no longer. Agriculture is the physical root problem here, though the real problem is much deeper, rooted in lack of mental and spiritual evolution.
Excellent article. Thank you! I live adjacent the Prescott National Forest in Arizona. It is astonishing to me how boondoggled people are about what is really going on in the forest. People persist in believing that PNF/USFS are the good guys doing the right thing for people and forests. Articles like yours could go a long way toward dissuading people of such naive, misguided views. I hope it is widely circulated.
wilderness needs to be left alone no burning! how stupid, stupid, stupid! that’s what wilderness means! stop it now no burning!!!
Oppose the Sierra and sequoia prescribed burn. Very interesting than an administration who denies climate change is using it to support the project which will only worsen climate change and destroy our public lands. This administration only wants to profit from public lands not to protect them or to make them available for the public.
I recommend someone quiet time in wilderness. Get to know it. Doing so will help you get to know yourselves. Once you do, you will treasure and preserve both.
Forest Service: Back off on your dangerous proposal to set fire to wilderness areas as a way to manipulate and control the environment. That tactic is NOT conservation. It is arson. Plant seeds instead. Protect the wildlife that live in wilderness areas. Respect and honor the Wilderness Act rather than ignoring it and developing tactics designed to permit our nation’s forests to be invaded with chain saws, helicopters, and arson. God save America.
Are You suing this regime? I hope so!!!
Why can’t humans just leave well enough alone?
I couldn’t agree more.
All U.S. Forest Agencies of whatever function should tenaciously adhere to the tenets of the 1964 Wilderness Act. That means leave the wilderness alone. Stop trying to manipulate wilderness.
DO your JOB! Take care of what WE gave you to care for!
Keep nature natural.
Nature needs to stay natural.
I so agree. Wilderness can never go back but since 1964 when the act originated we have had an opportunity to enjoy and to see how left alone the systems in nature progress. Change is constant All the disruption since the 60’s have displaced animals and our human psyche. The need for the untrammeled space is more than ever needed. I cannot stand the FS acting like god. Surely trees and ore will die, yet they will become something as as seen by all the life forms on a rotted stump, actually very alive.
Just today’s prescribed burn is se of me. Wildfires happen as do floods as do other acts of nature. As the lower elevations have these « controlled » chemical burns the mts are not imbalance. I wish I had power to really address the forest that I do need and love. Where are the biologists?
Thank you.
Excellent comments throughout!
I learned about overzealous fire suppression being the root of the proliferation of raging wildfires in my forestry & natural resources classes as far back as a half-century ago! Many Republicans have actually pointed this out (although while nonsensically parroting climate denial propaganda), yet this right-wing regime exacerbates this further. To think the US Forest Service hasn’t even now adapted to knowledge we had so long ago is, well, unfortunately emblematic of how our scientifically ignorant government has been acting for all these decades.
What’s far worse is the reckless assault by this regime against the natural world, ruining the future for all.
So upsetting to hear that the administration is showing no respect for the environment or the law. Just shows that we need to stand strong for the Wilderness Act!
Granted, we are going through climate change, but this isn’t the first time the world has gone through this——-and survived. When you attempt to manage what are supposed to be wilderness areas in the United States, man actually does the damage that the fire would have done! I’ve seen what fires do to a forest, and how devastating they are to wildlife, so it’s important to allow nature to run its course and to heal itself. After all, this is wilderness, so the human factor, for the most part, is not involved. Please allow the forest to manage itself!
The gross over management must stop. When the Forest service somehow justified changing the land line by bringing in heavy equipment, and allowing motorcycles, and over vehicles. Ridiculous.
this administration will not stop until it destroys anything natural and desiccates the earth. As global warming creates stronger acts of destructive nature, this group of morans denies that global warming exists and furthers activity to remove any source of calming that natural destruction.
The Forest Service should be servicing the forest not destroying it. Wilderness areas have managed themselves for hundreds of years without our misguided intervention.
Support the Wilderness Act and leave them alone.
“Citizens United brought us government by bribery. This the result of that.
This started with Buckly v. Valeo. Citizens United just made it worse.
Burning is not a rational decision. Save the wilderness.!
LEAVE OUR WILD LAND INVIOLATE!!!
Follow the Wilderness Act. Leave all wilderness areas alone! Do not cut, do not set prescribed burns, do not bring in noisy equipment.
This plan, Sierra and Sequoi Prescribed Burn, is what should be burned…..before it pollutes the atmosphere with heat and smoke….not to mention this illegal negative impact on Global Warming resulting from the loss of so many, many of our country’s trees.
Our historically great Forest Service is better than this.
I live in the forest and have been saddened for more than 50 years as silvicultural principles are thrown aside in pursuit of profit. Basically what’s happening here is that the Forest Service is admitting they don’t know how to manage wilderness areas without monetizing them. Sad.
Come on America, Common sense!!!
Please manage only burns of the wilderness, don’t use mechanized methods to initiate a burn.
Keep the Wilderness Act strong and effective!
Wilderness should stay just that -wild. No roads, machines, or burns.
protect wilderness
To put it simply, wilderness should be kept wild. I have been fortunate enough to have spent time in the mountains of the west and the idea of making it less wild should be anathema.
It would be nice to think the US Forest Service would be making rules that supported and maintained Wilderness, rather than finding legal excuses to avoid existing laws that were intended to do that.
Is USFS shilling for forest industry? Probably a rhetorical question – it’s pretty clear that its current managers think about how to allow extractive industries to do their business in the People’s wilderness.
Please stop!
The proposed plan for fire safety in the Sierras and Sequoiis is unsafe and destructive. I oppose this plan.
trump should NOT desimate forests that are older than time and no killing of animals that live there as it is their home.
Do everything you can to prevent this. Please send us action alerts to sign and send to ‘the powers that be’. Thank you for all your heroic efforts to date.
This is a national treasure area and should not be used politically…
or in any other way that to save for future generations
Bravo well stated! ! ! Hope that we and the our government is listening!
Without helicopters, chainsaws, drones or accelerants, native peoples of California pre-colonization burnt 4-5 million acres per year to create the “natural” characteristics the USFS describes as their goal. We could employ thousands in doing the work necessary with tools and techniques already allowed in Wilderness. Doing so would be beneficial to the people and communities doing the work and reconnecting with these lands, rather than conducting a scorched earth logging and drone fire bombing campaign as described by the USFS plan.
I absolutely appose this project.
Seems completely senseless! Let it be and protect the wildlife that lives there.
Who comes up with this s…
Leave it up to the government to take something this beautiful and set it on fire so that it doesn’t catch fire. Immediately defund and disban the US Forest Service, try to rehabilitate their minds, because right now, they are unfit to work at a fast food restaurant. Imprison all upper management of the forest service, and all middle management and below desperately need to be fired. Let them find work they are much better suited for, such as picking up garbage on our beaches, rivers, and streams. Put them on large boats, on the ocean, and let them start picking up the tons of plastic floating on our oceans. Then these idiots will be exactly where they belong, because thay truly are, a ship of fools. Leave our beautiful forest lands alone, and if you really feel the need to light something on fire, start with yourself, and the idiots that come up with these insane ideas.
When humans try to manicure Nature, it creates many ripples of destruction to the natural balance. Other living beings have the same right to be here as we do. Humans taking taking taking without regard is the problem, it is a house of cards.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything Mason says and how he’s saying it. Keep up the great work. Thank you.
The Sierra Mountain wildernesses must remain wildernesses not cutting ground for the timber industry!!!
Do not burn or log in Sierra Nevada wilderness areas and the “Range of Light”. My daughter is named after that mountain range for its beauty and ruggedness.