|
|
|
Leon Fager
Livestock Grazing Disrupts Natural Fire in Western Forests
An early interest in hunting and fishing led native
Arizonan,
Leon Fager, to pursue a career in natural resource management. Mr. Fager earned a bachelor of science degree in range and wildlife management at the
University of Arizona in 1965 before joining the
Nevada Game and Fish Department as a wildlife biologist. After subsequent employment with the
US Soil Conservation Service he joined the
US Forest Service in 1976 as a wildlife biologist on Arizona’s
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Mr. Fager transferred to the
Black Hills National Forest
(South Dakota) in 1978 and subsequently completed a master of science degree in public land policy at
Michigan State University. Mr. Fager went on to serve in the
Rocky Mountain Region as a regional fisheries biologist, and in the
Southwest Region as a wildlife program manager and then as the endangered species program manager. He retired from the Forest Service in December 1997.
Shortly after his retirement, Mr. Fager wrote a much-publicized
letter to then Forest Service chief,
Mike Dombeck, in which Fager criticized several policies of high-level managers within the Southwest Region.
Leon Fager tells how decades of livestock grazing in forests of the American West have disrupted natural fire patterns and, as a result, have changed the very structure of the forests in ways that make them more prone to catastrophic fires.
Recorded in September 2004.
|