Every summer, controversy swirls around management of forest fires in the West. The controversies are incongruous because the outlines of a reasonable policy that focuses on protecting life, property and the natural ecology of the forest are not only easy to describe but also easy to implement.
Clear policy is needed because large fires cannot be avoided. Large fires are driven by climate and weather, and we can no more control them than we can control earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes or floods. The illusion that we can control large fires stems from our success at controlling small ones.

Any sound forest- and fire-management policy should protect lives and property, protect and restore the ecology of the forest and protect taxpayers. No policy should subsidize any activity that degrades the taxpayers' forest "portfolio."

Is such a policy really possible? Yes.

Protecting lives and property primarily requires implementing fire-wise techniques within a few yards of human habitations and developing site-specific firefighter access. Distant forest thinning will not protect lives or property.

Protecting the ecosystem after fires means primarily aggressive practices to conserve soil in the parts of the forests crisscrossed by roads. The extent of chronic erosion and the risk of catastrophic erosion are magnified by the effects of a fire, so that the period following a fire represents the time of greatest risk, and conversely the moment of highest need for soil conservation and watershed restoration.

Protecting the taxpayer requires both eliminating hidden subsidies and critical examination of the effectiveness of yet-unproven forestry techniques.

In practice, the forest can be treated as consisting of three large zones. First are roadless areas and wilderness. In this zone, fire exclusion is neither possible nor desirable. These areas have burned and recovered, burned and recovered, since time immemorial. Many of their fish and wildlife values benefit from and depend on wildfire. They don't need our protection, and they are harmed not by fire but by salvage logging.

The second zone consists of forested areas with extensive road access: the forest outside of wilderness. This is the zone where chronic erosion from the road system can be aggravated by wildfires, leading to increased and sometimes catastrophic erosion (mudslides) and essentially permanent damage to the watershed. Proper watershed restoration can cost-effectively minimize this risk. Salvage logging is not part of the prescription because such logging and the associated roads dramatically increase the risk of erosion at the moment it should be minimized.

The third zone is the inhabited forest, where people have built houses in fire-prone areas. Here, the policy should concentrate on firefighter access and managing vegetation and fuels immediately adjacent to structures. The responsibility for implementation of this policy will frequently need to be shared between the federal government and the affected private parties.

Western forests are going to burn, just as the ground is going to shake in California and hurricanes are going to come ashore on the Gulf Coast. But when they do, lives and property can largely be protected and catastrophic erosion minimized if we set aside the controversy and concentrate on what actually needs to be done.

David Bayles is executive director of Pacific Rivers Council, a nonprofit environmental group.