S. Forest Service (commanded by Chief Forester Henry Graves) adopted "fire control" as the "principle duty of the agency" (Fowler). However there was plenty of opposition to Pinchot's strategy of suppressing fires, both from state and federal agencies that supported "light burning" and "Indian fires" policies. By 1910, Fowler writes in the Forest Encyclopedia, the Forest Service began experimenting with "prescribed fires" but concluded that prescribed fires were more "destructive' than useful. In 1924 Congress passed the Clark-McNary Act that allocated money to states to develop their own fire-fighting capabilities. The Smokey Bear fire-fighting campaign was launched in 1944, "teaching two to three generations of Americans that all fires are harmful to forests" (Fowler, FE). In fact, prescribed burning was "banned on many public lands in the South" for over 50 years. It wasn't until the 1960s that the Forest Service began "moving into fuel management" (Gorte, 1995). One technique in fire science that has been employed recently (besides prescribed burning) has been "salvage timber operations" (removing "woody materials from the forest"). Another strategy, launched by the Forest Service in the 1970s, is a "let burn" policy; still another is called "least-cost-plus-loss" which promotes the idea that "fire control is only justified by the damage prevented" (Gorte, 1995).

In other words, if a wildfire rages across the western wilderness, but does no damage to homes or other structures, little or no fire control is "economically justified" (Gorte). Meantime, fuel management can be justified "only when the treatment costs are less than the benefits," Gorte writes in the CRS Report for Congress ("Forest Fires and Forest Health"). Those who promote forest health activities "often assert" that reduced fuel loadings can reduce the costs of fire control and reduce damages, Gorte writes. "This...

But what is clear, from the literature available, is the Native Americans pretty much had it right when it comes to fire science, and the Europeans who settled in North America had it wrong for many years -- up until just recently.
Works Cited

Fowler, C. (1999). The Period of Fire Suppression and Other Fire Regimes (1890s to 1980s).

Forest Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 29, 2009, from http://fire.forestencyclopedia.net/p/p843.

Fowler, C. (1999). Human Use of Fire in History (1540s to 1900s). Forest Encyclopedia.

Retrieved April 29, 2009, from http://fire.forestencyclopedia.net/p/p136/p790/p841.

Gorte, Ross W. (1995). Forest Fires and Forest Health. CRS Report for Congress. Retrieved April 29, 2009, from http://cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/Forests/for-5.cfm.

Pyne, Stephen J. (2007). Problems, paradoxes, paradigms: triangulating fire research.

International Journal of Wildland Fire, Vol. 16, 271-276.

Williams, Gerald W. (2002). Aboriginal Use Of Fire: Are there Any 'Natural' Plant

Communities? USDA Forest Service. Retrieved April 30, 2009 from http://www.wy.blm.gov/fireuse/pubs/aboriginalfireuse.pdf.

Williams, Gerald W. (1994).