Dispute Flares Up Over Proposals for Site of Spectacular 1910 Forest Fire : Environment: Many want the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Great Burn as wilderness. Loggers want to harvest the lodgepole pine there.

The timber industry and environmentalists are at odds over whether to preserve the Great Burn, a virgin forest in Idaho and Montana that burned 80 years ago and now is a natural laboratory for observing the effects of wildfires.

Preservationists say the Great Burn, teeming with wildlife and offering spectacular views, is proof that naturally occurring wildfires like those in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 play a proper and natural role in the forest.

“It’s superb elk habitat,” said Mike Medberry of the Idaho Conservation League. “There’s a superb drainage. There’s some history to be learned here about how fire works in the ecosystem.”

Medberry and other environmentalists want Congress to order the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Great Burn as wilderness, where roads and logging are not allowed.

But loggers want to harvest the lush stands of lodgepole pine that sprouted in the Great Burn after the 1910 fire. They and government officials say it’s only a matter of time before severe wildfires hit the Great Burn again and destroy the commercially valuable trees.

“We just feel there’s enough wilderness,” said Mike Dugger of the Clearwater Resource Assn.

“We’re trying to protect jobs and families,” said Dugger, who works for Potlach Corp., a major wood products company. “I hate to see a resource that’s not being utilized.”

Wildfires in August, 1910, burned 3 million acres of forest in Idaho and Montana and were among the most spectacular in the nation’s history, killing 85 people and destroying an estimated 7 billion board feet of timber.

In comparison, the 1988 fires in Yellowstone--where logging is not allowed--affected an estimated 974,000 acres.

The 260,000-acre Great Burn is one of the few ecosystems affected by the 1910 fires that is still untouched by mining, logging and development. It is 300 miles northeast of Boise, Ida., and 70 miles southwest of Missoula, Mont.

It is accessible only by foot or horseback, and those who travel to the Great Burn are most impressed by its mosaic of starkly different habitats.

Healthy trees soar in most of the forest, but elsewhere are stands of big cedar trees killed in the 1910 fire and in successive infernos.

In a testament to the durability of cedar wood, the dead snags still stand on otherwise barren mountainsides or in lush meadows. Beaten white by the weather, no one knows how long the snags will withstand the elements before they finally decay.

The Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department, has recommended that Congress designate the Great Burn as wilderness and is now managing the area as a “roadless area”-- de facto wilderness.

But, for political reasons, the Great Burn has yet to be designated as wilderness, and in the meantime there is no guarantee the Forest Service won’t change its mind and allow roads and logging in the Great Burn, also known as the Hoodoo wilderness.

Congress tried to add the Montana portion of the Great Burn to the national wilderness system in 1988, but President Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill.

Infighting prevented passage of Idaho wilderness legislation throughout the 1980s, though new negotiations are under way in both states between environmentalists and industry.

Medberry said the Great Burn is one of the “non-negotiable” areas in both states.

“As I look out on this, I hope it looks exactly the same in 20 years,” Idaho hunting outfitter Mike Stockton said as he gazed on the Great Burn, which is part of the government’s Clearwater National Forest in Idaho and the Lolo National Forest in Montana.

But officials agree changes are coming to the Great Burn, whether dictated by Congress or from a fire-starting lightning bolt.

“Most of us would like to think this will stay this way forever. It won’t,” Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Keith Carlson said in an interview along Kelly Creek, one of Idaho’s best cutthroat trout rivers.

Whether the Great Burn is managed as a roadless or wilderness area, Carlson said more and more people will come to fish and hunt, or just to view the mixed mosaic of forest.

Changes in the area could occur if biologists determine endangered gray wolves and threatened grizzly bears are living in the area, as they are rumored to be. Logging could be outlawed to protect grizzly and wolf habitat.

Members of the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Assn. generally favor plans to designate the area as official wilderness in order to protect the good hunting and fishing.

But Gary Peters, an outfitter from Corvallis, Mont., said: “In a way, I’m scared wilderness will draw a lot of people into an area you want to keep pristine.”

Timber and environmental activists say management of the surrounding roaded forests will have a lot to do with the Great Burn’s fate.

“You’re looking at a total system here,” said Kent Henderson, an Idaho Wildlife Council member from Lewiston.

“We have to look at the whole forest as one forest,” added Stockton, the outfitter. “Clear-cutting 700 acres down there will affect us up here.”

Management plans set timber harvest levels and have become the source of great controversy, numerous appeals, and lawsuits in the Northwest.

The Clearwater Forest’s 1987 plan called for an annual timber harvest of 173 million board feet from the non-wilderness areas--a figure environmentalists called wildly unrealistic and politically motivated.

The Forest Service now admits it can’t handle that level of harvest and is shooting for 120 million board feet per year. But competition for the timber is increasing as supplies dry up elsewhere in Northwest forests where the spotted owl has been declared a threatened species.

The downsizing of the Clearwater Forest’s timber sale program, Henderson said, is part of a revolution in the Forest Service in which the agency’s traditional timber-first mentality is being abandoned in favor of a more balanced approach to managing the public’s land.