227 



In summary, subject to the conditions and policies outlmed in 

 this report, the general rule of thumb on grazing management in 

 wilderness should be that activities or facilities established prior 

 to the date of an area's designation as wilderness should be al- 

 lowed to remain in place and may be replaced when necessary for 

 the permittee to properly administer the grazing program. Thus, 

 if livestock grazing activities and facilities were established in an 

 area at the time Congress determined that the area was suitable 

 for wilderness and placed the specific area in the wilderness sys- 

 tem, they should be allowed to continue. With respect to areas 

 designated as wilderness prior to the date of this Act, these 

 guidelines shall not be considered as a direction to reestablish 

 uses where such uses have been discontinued. 



Wilderness Firje Management and Insect & Disease Control 



Fire has been shown to have played an important role in the develop- 

 ment ot many forest and rangeland ecosystems in North America. If 

 we are to achieve the wilderness obiectives of allowing ecosystems to 

 develop without human interference then fire must be permitted to 

 play its natural role. In some cases this will merely involve mstituting a 

 "let burn" policy where natural fires are simply monitored and allowed 

 to burn themselves out. 



In other cases, years of fire suppression have allowed fuels to . 

 accumulate to unnaturally high levels and, should a natural fire occur, 

 its heat and intensity would sterilize soils, causing severe soil erosion 

 and downstream water quality degradation. It would also be difficult 

 to prevent the fire from spreading beyond wilderness boundaries. In 

 such cases fuel levels can be gradually reduced to natural levels by a 

 series ot prescribed or "planned-ignition" burns; once conditions have 

 been restored to what they are believed to have been before the 

 exclusion of fire, the area can be allowed to evolve without further 

 interference, relying only on random natural-ignition fires. Care and 

 vigilance is needed, however, to assure that planned-ignition fires are 

 used only to achieve this clear and limited objective and are not used 

 to manipulate ecosystems to create certain specific vegetation pat- 

 terns. For instance, prescribed burning should not be used in wilder- 

 ness as a substitute for felling trees for the purpose of increasing 

 populations of game species. 

 ■* The Wilderness Act and subsequent legislation clearly permits th^ 

 suppression of wildfires within wilderness if they present clear threats 

 to public health and safety Suppression may also be justified to 

 prevent fires from crossing wilderness boundaries and destroying 

 property or resources on surrounding public or private lands. Sup-« 



* 



