Yellowstone Park Fires

Many thanks for your editorial “Taking the Heat” (Sept. 1) on the rash of wildfires in Yellowstone National Park.

These huge fires emphasize how very critical the need is to continue or even accelerate the National Park Service’s prescription for the controlled burning program of the last few years.

As a result of a century of fire-suppression practices in the national parks, a substantial, unnatural organic-fuel overload has developed from man’s unfortunate interference with natural ecological processes.

Had there been a program of careful fire management these many decades, the Yellowstone fires would never have reached the intensity or the extent that they have this summer in the world’s oldest national park.

RUSSELL D. BUTCHER

California and Southwest

Representative

Natl. Parks and Conservation Assn.

Glendora