Montana’s national forests: burning an empire
Posted: March 28, 2016Source: Forest Business Network
Photo courtesy of Justin Sullivan / GettyImages
By: EVERGREEN MAGAZINE
In this special Evergreen report, we profile the sorry state of affairs in Montana, a state that relishes its reputation as “the last best place,” a phrase coined by William Kittredge that became the title of his anthology of Montana writers, published in 1988 by the Montana Historical Society. At the time, Kittredge was teaching creative writing at the University of Montana in Missoula.
“Montana’s National Forests: Burning an Empire” draws its name from the late Stewart Holbrook’s “Burning an Empire,” which chronicled America’s greatest forests fires – events that had much to do with the creation of the congressionally designated Forest Reserves that became part of the National Forest System when the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905. Back then, conservation meant management, not preservation.