We’ve heard a lot about what the federal government and its various disjointed arms may have done wrong in fighting the Bircher Fire. Whether or not we can ever manage to sort truth from rumor about the decision-making process, there’s no doubt about the fact that large, widely dispersed agencies are less efficient than small ones.

Let’s consider this from another angle, though. We keep hearing that without federal interference, the Bircher Fire would have been extinguished quickly. Whether or not that’s true, it was inevitable that a big fire would sweep through Mesa Verde National Park sooner or later. Smaller natural fires, which would have reduced the fuel available for a catastrophic wildfire, have been suppressed. The vegetation that grows in the park has evolved in an environment that includes a natural fire cycle. Every summer we have a weather pattern that involves numerous lightning strikes in remote areas. This summer has been even drier and hotter than most.

Perhaps it didn’t have to happen this time. Eventually, though, lightning would have struck tinder-dry vegetation in an area where it wasn’t immediately noticed, winds would have fanned the flames, and it would have grown quickly.

When that happened, what would we have done without the resources of the federal government to aid in controlling that fire?

What if we had no public lands, if everything that’s managed by the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe was privately owned? Much of that land is in the public domain because it wasn’t attractive to homesteaders, who were perceptive enough to realize that eking a living from those rough acres would be very difficult indeed. In other words, if all that land were in private ownership, the tax base might not be any wealthier than it is now.

Without the federal government in the picture, Montezuma County would have been responsible for fighting that fire. Imagine the challenge of mobilizing a large force of firefighters without a federal agency to provide and manage them. We would have had to pull hundreds of able-bodied but untrained adults from their homes and occupations to fight the fire, and then even more to handle communications, food and other support services. Who would supervise the effort? We have able commissioners and county employees, but they’re hardly trained for such a fire.

We would have needed to find a way to equip the firefighters with safety gear, including protective clothing and communications equipment, and then find firefighting equipment for them. Montezuma County does not maintain a fleet of helicopters and slurry bombers. We have some fire trucks, but they’re mostly the sort designed for fighting structure fires and small brush fires, not for battling huge wildland conflagrations.

A grim picture begins to emerge.

As much as southwestern Coloradoans sometimes resent the federal government, and as much as we wish we had more local decision-making power when events such as the Bircher Fire crop up, we’re very fortunate to have a large organized firefighting force available to us when we need it. We’re lucky that we don’t have to maintain such a firefighting capacity, year after year, waiting for the rare occasions when it becomes necessary.

We’re also fortunate that we don’t have to foot the bill. It’s rightly being borne by all the citizens of the United States, who share in the burden when Mesa Verde burns just as we share it when wildfires consume parts of other western states. It’s the same philosophy that allows for a federal military and other cooperative efforts.