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American Morning

Interview with Stephen Pyne

Aired June 26, 2002 - 09:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush, yesterday, declared the fire ravaged parts of Arizona a disaster area upon that visit yesterday. He told about 30,000 evacuees to -- quote -- "hang in there." That monster fire just about one of 20 burning in nine different states right now.

Altogether, they've charred two and a half million acres. That is more than double the annual average. It is the burning season.

Let's put the fires into perspective, now. The historian of fires, Stephen Pyne, joins us from Eagar, Arizona. Sir, good morning, to you. I should say professor from Arizona State University. Good to have you with us.

STEPHEN PYNE, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, thank you.

HEMMER: You offer a very interesting perspective on the strategy, right now, for fighting these blazes. You say, as a country, we take them on like it's warfare, military strategy. Explain that if you could.

PYNE: Well, we've always used a military metaphor, and in many ways, firefighting is nicely adapted to a kind of paramilitary approach. The problem is that a big fire fight, like we're seeing now, is really the equivalent to a declaration of marshal law. And under these circumstances, a crisis, that's what you need. But you can't rely on that as a way of governing the landscape, if you will. Otherwise, you just go through these cycles of fire booms and fire busts. And, frankly, that's been recognized for some time. Even the federal agencies, for several decades now, have recognized that this approach, by itself, is insufficient. The problem is that we've not been able to advance...

HEMMER: Go back, Professor, if you could go back to my answer, just to be a little more specific here. Your suggestion is that we're throwing people and machinery at the problem, is that right? Helicopters and essentially firefighters, troops on the ground?

PYNE: Well, that's right. But, at this point, there's not much else you can do. Although I do think, you know, in a sense, we're sort of fighting a Cold War-type battle, and maybe there's a chance to think innovatively about using some other techniques. Combining, if you will, specially trained groups, smaller groups, finding other high-tech -- other countries have been able to do this. Particularly Canada has not had the money, and they've been - they've been fairly aggressive at rethinking it.

But it's not - you know, at the moment, there's nothing else you can do. They're doing exactly what they ought to be doing. They're doing it with all the power they can muster. But we do recognize, long-term as well, that that is not a strategy to -- for success.

HEMMER: Put it in a perfect world from your perspective then. How do we change it? What do we do better?

PYNE: Well, basically, you have a couple of options. You can change the landscape into something that's less combustible. You can do the burning yourself, and you can try to continue to fight it, which you will need to do when these outbreaks occur. But you're talking about really redesigning the context of fire. Fire integrates its environment. And you've got to reshape that. You've got to create, if you will, a habitat for fire so that the wildfires will -- we have the chance to control them. At the same time, we can introduce tame or ecologically benign fires that many of these landscapes need. We've got to ...

HEMMER: Your Governor, your Governor, Jane Hall, has said that proper force management is absolutely required here. Also reading some comments from you in an article you wrote, you say, "Grassy lands are critical." Join the two of those thoughts there, and give us a better explanation.

PYNE: Well, what has been lost in Arizona and indeed, in much of the West that's now at high risk is grass. Historically, the whole process of disrupting these fire regimes began with very intensive grazing, because that stripped off those fine grasses and forbs that have carried fire, that made very frequent, relatively light fires possible, that it made controlled burning feasible.

We've lost that. We've shifted it into all kinds of woody material, living and dead. The target ought to be to get the grasses back in, and instead, we keep deflecting it into the "l" word, logging. Are we going to log? What does that mean then? I would like to see the debate shifted to getting back to the conditions that will allow the right kind of fire we need.

HEMMER: And for those of you who believe the thoughts that you have there, there probably is not a better case example than what we've watched and witnessed in the past two weeks, and not just in Arizona, but also in the state of Colorado.

Jack Cafferty also has a question for you, as well. Jack, go ahead.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: We were talking here, professor, a couple of days ago about a story that the Apache Indians, out in that part of the desert southwest, had apparently requested to do some controlled burning a year or so ago with the idea of perhaps heading off a catastrophic wildfire of the kind we have out there now, and that they were discouraged from doing that because, apparently, some of the residents were not willing to deal with the smoke that that might engender. Is there any truth to that report? And, if so, what's wrong with this picture? Those people have had a few hundred years' experience dealing with that climate and that terrain out there.

PYNE: Well, I have heard the same story. I can't confirm it one way or another. But, you know, I mean, that is part of the problem. If you really want to change those environments and do this, you're going to alienate every imaginable constituency out there. You're going to have people in wildlife, people who are interested in trees, people who are concerned about smoke. There is no one who is not going to be affected by the change. And everyone admits, seems to admit, that fire is a crisis, but they all want to use the fire to advance some other message. You know, it's time we looked at fire. Fire, as the problem. Fire, as a potential solution, and use that to bring us together toward some kind of common -- common strategy.

HEMMER: Quickly, here, in the time we got left. You're a fire historian.

PYNE: OK. Yes.

HEMMER: Tell us, how will we remember the blaze of Arizona?

PYNE: Well, I think it's too early to tell. It's a big fire. But big fires aren't necessarily politically or socially important. They have to engage the society. So that's yet to come.

HEMMER: Hey, thanks. Stephen Pyne, biology Professor ...

PYNE: OK.

HEMMER: ... Arizona State University. A fire historian watching things burn again there in Arizona. Thank you, sir.

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