Nature Conservancy offers alternative to aggressive fire suppression
Nature Conservancy offers alternative to aggressive fire suppression
01 June 2013
published by www.denverpost.com
USA — JAMESTOWN A team combining ecological know-how with hotshot firefighting is being deployed in Front Range forests to try to address Colorado’s wildfire predicament: needing the purge of fire but not wanting it.
The team members, assembled by the Nature Conservancy, carry the axes and chain saws used to fight fires.
But they also light fires 47 controlled burns over the past four years.
And now, as pines and firs thicken in the mountains west of Denver, the team is mechanically reshaping forests to reduce the likelihood of ruinous mega-fires.
“This is way too thick for what it naturally would have been,” said squad leader Tim Borgman, perched on a 40-degree north slope above a house near Jamestown this week. Over 90 minutes, he and five partners cut, stripped and diced about three dozen trees, reducing fuel loads and letting in sunlight.
Such forest thinning the team has cleared 12,000 acres since 2008 is intended to bolster natural destructive forces that have been disturbed as people and houses encroach on the forest. It’s an approach that recognizes a role for wildfire comparable to animal predators. Just as lions prey on weak impala, lightning-sparked wildfires can cull weak, overly dense forests.
But the Nature Conservancy team’s acceptance of fire as a tool clashes with notions of fire as an enemy.
“We all come from suppression backgrounds, but when we are allowed to, we use fire for the benefit of resources,” said Tom Edwards, deputy team leader. “We realize how difficult it is to try to implement fire in people’s backyard. You have to take small steps.”
Federal land managers along Colorado’s Front Range where super-dense forests last year produced the catastrophic Waldo Canyon and High Park fires favor aggressive suppression, quickly dispatching traditional firefighters to snuff flames.
“I could see us managing a few fires but not around any homes at all. Safety is our No. 1 priority,” said Willie Thompson, regional director of safety, fire and aviation management for the U.S. Forest Service. “I see a lot of the Front Range as mainly suppression because of the safety of our communities, the safety of firefighters. We also need to protect the infrastructure we have our watersheds, powerlines and roads.”
Letting fire play its role outside wilderness is generally too risky, she said. “We’ve got too much fuel on the ground.”
So while the Nature Conservancy team thinned and contemplated future controlled fires, the Forest Service’s Monument Helitack Crew last week was preparing to deploy on short notice to suppress fire.
This crew, stationed north of Colorado Springs, races to an average of 30 wildfires a season. After hearing an alarm, team members need only 10 minutes to be airborne in a high-altitude helicopter. Lightning ignites most of the fires they suppress. A contract pilot typically drops off firefighters close to flames. The helicopter also tows a 144-gallon bag that scoops water from ponds and drops it on the fire.
“We can get into the smaller places if there’s no road access,” assistant foreman Tom Kenny said. “Our whole idea is to catch it quick and small.”
The contrasting priorities of the two teams reflect needs that are both diverging and intensifying along Colorado’s heavily populated Front Range, where more than 25 percent of the population lives in potential burn zones.
On one hand, Colorado, like other Western states, needs wildfire so that deteriorating forests can receive sunlight, seeds and nutrient-rich soil. On the other, Western land managers face growing pressure to put out even the tiniest wildfires so that housing and commercial development aren’t threatened.
The Forest Service nevertheless has been trying out the Nature Conservancy approach on a limited basis, contracting for the forest-thinning work on federal land near Jamestown. The tiny Boulder County town of 300 residents is in one of Colorado’s high-risk wildland-urban interface areas, where more than 500,000 houses have been built.
When Nature Conservancy leaders formed the team in 2008, they anticipated forming several more, said Tim Sullivan, Colorado director for the worldwide land-conservation group.
That hasn’t happened.
“The emphasis, since last year, has shifted toward much more aggressive suppression,” Sullivan said.
Indeed, the bulk of federal-wildland spending is budgeted for fire suppression.
Yet with super-dense forests increasingly producing mega-fires, the team’s diverse skills are ideal “for getting ahead of the problem,” Sullivan said. “A significant part of the problem we have today comes from suppressing fires we should have let burn.”
All 10 members of the paid crew worked previously as elite hotshot Forest Service firefighters. Some then earned advanced degrees in environmental sciences and forestry.
At their base in Loveland, they begin most days with physical training. They also delve into nuances of silviculture, such as the merits of letting standing dead trees stay as habitat for woodpeckers and flickers.
Their heavy trucks haul items such as fire shelters, hard hats and first aid. The crew members carry gear and supplies for up to a week of camping in forests. They have satellite phones and devices for monitoring moisture all aimed at applying the latest science to forest restoration.
It is the sort of approach that is attracting attention in Congress. Next week, senators are to hear from experts on how to improve wildfire management.
A new Northern Arizona University report, to be presented at the hearing, supports tree-thinning and controlled fires to make forests more resilient and prevent mega-fires.
Letting wildfires burn where possible “is an inexpensive way to manage forests,” said Diane Vosick, policy director at the university’s Ecological Restoration Institute.
And where controlled fires cannot be lit, thinning forests, though expensive, will significantly reduce costs of damage and loss of life from wildfire and post-fire flooding, Vosick said.
“We’re not thinning sufficiently,” she said. “It is prudent to invest more in thinning.”
