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The fire that changed conservation policy, 9. November 2009
Apparently there are still aspects of Mr. Roosevelt's and Mr. Pinchot's crusade to control and preserve wild places that are not sufficiently documented. Timothy Egan, who is a veteran chronicler of the West, shifts to the Northern Rockies to revisit the worst wildfire in U.S. history. Known as the "Big Burn," the blaze in 1910 destroyed three million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington and the author interweaves this catastrophe with TR's fight over forest reserves and the creation story of the U.S. Forest Service. He was working closely with Gifford Pinchot, a favored member of the Tennis Cabinet whom he had known since the 1890s. The two men were not at all such an odd couple as Mr. Egan sometimes suggests. The ascetic Pinchot perhaps didn't possess the universal experience and knowledge like TR, yet he had the right cultural credentials: Exeter, Yale, postgraduate study at the École Nationale Forestière in France, and research spells in the ancient woodlands of Switzerland and Germany. And he was, to Roosevelt's approval, a New England gentleman, rich and well-connected, with a strong social conscience. What the President especially liked was Pinchot's killer instinct, coupled with the fact that he fought cleanly. President and Forester, fighting together, were an adroit couple.
Roosevelt persuaded Congress in 1905 that forest care should be transferred from the Department of Interior to that of Agriculture. In the process, the Forest Bureau, run by bureaucrats, had become the Forest Service run by foresters and by Pinchot as their chief. Pinchot used his enlarged budget and semiautonomous powers to acquire control of grazing licenses, hydroelectric leases, and even police summonses, he stretched the meaning of the word "forest" so much that he created a wide range of foes from ranchers to Congress where members lobbied for felling entire forests before they could be protected. Many saw "Czar" Pinchot as at best "an impractical dreamer" and at worst a "rapacious, venal, petty despot"; his rangers were "cossacks" enforcing tyranny. To make matters worse, TR's successor, William Howard Taft, had little sympathy for conservation. In 1910 he fired Pinchot, and the newborn Forest Service, starved for funds on all fronts, appeared of dying in its infancy.
Right then, in the extremely dry summer of that year opens the book's second act which traces the Big Burn - "the fire that saved America" - according to the subtitle. Pinchot and Roosevelt cleverly used the Big Burn to barnstorm for the Forest Service, selling it as a brave band of firefighters that needed to be expanded and equipped to prevent a repeat catastrophe. The agency's budget soared, more forests were set aside. As Egan's research is deep and his details vivid, this should make for tense drama, but all too often he gives the impression of being slightly overwhelmed by the vast amount of information and seems unable to successfully dig for the real nuggets in all the archival dross. There are obvious heroes (the humble, selfless firefighters) and bad guys (the well heeled "gents" who refuse to help or who escape on trains intended for women and children). The fire was impossible to fight; there were too few men and too little supplies. The National Forest Service - only five years old at the time - was unprepared for the possibilities of this dry summer. Later the army was brought in to help fight the blaze. The fire was finally extinguished when a cold front swept in, bringing steady rain.
However, as Mr. Egan shows in the concluding chapter, this was not the fire that saved America's woodlands for the future - not even the near future. By 1920, Big Timber had more or less undermined the goals and ideals of the Forest Service, leading to industrial size clear-cuts. Egan writes, "The Forest Service became the fire service, protecting trees so industry could cut them down later."
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Two Stories, Much to Learn, Keeps You Longing for the Next Page!, 12. Oktober 2009
In "The Big Burn", author Timothy Egan skillfully weaves the story of a massive August 1910 forest fire in Idaho and Montana into the histories of the U.S. Forest Service and the conservation movement. The book begins with its two leading characters, Theodore Roosevelt and his close friend, forester Gifford Pinchot. The reader who is unfamiliar with either of these two will receive a superficial biography which enables him or her to understand their roles in the forestry and conservation contribution to the Progressive Era. TR was the outdoorsman who strove to preserve natural resources and wilderness areas for future generations. Pinchot was the wealthy heir who invented the forestry profession and made it the cause of his life. It was Pinchot who taught TR how to protect virgin timber from the lumber industry. This book illustrates the forces and personalities which contended over the issues concerning the preservation or utilization of America's timber resources. Among those opposing TR and Pinchot were President William Howard Taft and timber interest defenders, Montana Senator William Clark and Idaho Senator Weldon Heyburn. The conservationists' disputes were not all fought against industrialists. Pinchot, who favored wise use of the forests, would even clash with his mentor, John Muir, who preferred uncompromising preservation.
After laying out the tale of the conservation efforts, Egan switches to stories of the settlers and Forest Rangers who fought against and live through or died in the Big Burn. These are stories of heroism and tragedy, survival and death.
The title says that this is about "Teddy Roosevelt & The Fire That Saved America." As I was reading about the fire, I wondered how he was going to tie this back into the saving of America. Egan brings the preservation of the Forest Service into the story by pointing out that the Big Burn made heroes of the Rangers, thereby increasing public support for funding and defeating the efforts of the industry and its political agents to destroy the Service which stood in the way of unfettered exploitation of the timber lands.
The writing is excellent. This narrative moves seamlessly from one story to another. You will always be longing for the next page.
Whether you are a devotee of the history of the Idaho-Montana region, Theodore Roosevelt, the Conservation Movement or the Progressive Era, this is a valuable addition to your library. Among my interests are Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era. Although I already knew much about those subjects before I began this book, I learned many new things and deepened my understanding. However familiar you are with these topics, you will learn much from this work.
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