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Fire Coverage

Northwest Montana is a big place with miles of trails, rivers, lakes and mountains in every direction

By Kellyn Brown

When the first large wildfire of the season erupts, there are various opinions about the underlying cause and how news organizations should cover the event. There are those who prefer that attention shift to the costs of fires and litigation’s role in preventing proper forest management. Others stress the importance of fires to rejuvenate an ecosystem. And still others think fires garner too much negative media coverage and deter tourists who might otherwise be planning a trip to Montana.

Regarding causation, Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke said June’s Glacier Rim Fire in the North Fork, which has since been doused, is further evidence of poor forest management. The same terrain burned in 2003 and Zinke said, “The Forest Service was not able to conduct a salvage operation for fear of lawsuits, among other reasons.”

Environmentalists counter that warmer and drier weather is the obvious culprit and increased logging has little impact on how a fire burns.

Citing the 2013 Rim Fire in California, Chad T. Hanson, an ecologist with the John Muir Project, and Dominick A. DellaSala, chief scientist at the Geos Institute, wrote in a recent op-ed that “commercial logging and the clear-cutting of forests do not reduce fire intensity” and “allowing more fires to burn in backcountry areas will help restore our forest ecosystems.”

To many, why a fire erupted is less important than how the impact of the blaze is communicated to a larger audience. If someone searched Glacier National Park online over the last week, they were greeted with dozens of headlines and photos showing the woods ablaze.

A young tourist, who recorded a dramatic video of the fire quickly moving toward his family’s vehicle, was interviewed on NBC Nightly News’ national broadcast. None of this sits well with business owners who rely on the summer season to buoy their respective bottom lines.

For us, when the fire grew from a 2-acre burn to a 1,000-acre blaze in just five hours, we scrambled to publish information as warm winds pushed flames toward popular east side locations Rising Sun and St. Mary (the Baring Creek Cabin was destroyed).

As we responded to the fluidity of the story, those in the recreation and tourism industry stressed the importance of explaining that fires are typical in Montana, the park is still open and most areas are not affected by smoke. This is all true.

In this organization, we nearly always lean toward publishing news oriented to our local audience first. Thus, our focus was on the Glacier communities being evacuated; the size of the blaze; and the amount of resources responding to contain it. That makes sense to a newsroom, but so too does the argument that focusing on a large fire in a small portion of a large region can give the false impression that the whole state is on fire, which it’s not – not even close.

We’ve covered this fire the same way we covered previous ones. What differentiates the Reynolds Creek Fire is its location. Glacier National Park is such a treasured place that it has 10 times the reach of a story originating from, for example, the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Soon, to accompany the fire stories, we began to publish a list of what is open in Glacier. Those planning to visit this area should check it out online. Or visit the Park Service’s website, or Glacier Country’s website, or the various local visitor bureaus. You’ll find Northwest Montana is a big place with miles of trails, rivers, lakes and mountains in every direction. And nearly all of them are open.