Fuels Reduction on Public Lands
United States Forest Service Hazardous Fuel
Reduction
 The
USFS
treated 670 acres in 2001, 20 acres in 2002 and 10 acres in 2003.
They started planning and preparation work for the 17,000 acre North
Uncompahgre Project and the 3,000 acre Dominguez Project in 2003.
The very small spring burn window makes some years difficult to
implement prescription burns. Smoke management regulations have
limited the amount of burning when a window is present. Overall
the budget dictates how many mechanical acres can be treated.
Bureau of Land Management Hazardous Fuel Reduction
 BLM
is focusing their work in areas they see as particularly high risk
in Mesa County-these include Glade Park, Unaweep Canyon and Plateau
Valley-almost all of which is in pinyon juniper woodland and sage
grass. They are working toward a five-year action plan, which is
still underdevelopment. The areas chosen for work are intermixed
with private, BLM and USFS lands and were identified through a risk
assessment process. BLM does not used prescribed fire in these WUI
areas but has a Fire Ecologist that is in charge of prescription
fire and wildland fire use for fuel treatment outside the WUI areas,
mostly in the mountain shrub vegetation type. Unaweep Canyon has
treatments in progress now. They have identified many sites through
their risk assessment work and they are getting ramped up to address
them. WUI projects are evaluated based on WUI conditions, the fire
management plan zone, fire ecology, project access and resource
consideration. Local support and partnerships with matching funds,
adjacent planned efforts, multi-agency partnerships and the likelihood
of meeting project deadlines also is taken into consideration.
Smoke management has been one of the biggest challenges
for the USFS and BLM. They have had to convert some projects from
prescribed fire to mechanical treatment because some permitting
requirements have been difficult to meet, like weather monitoring.
While mechanical prescriptions are more expensive, they end up having
much more control. "You can get it done and also you have a
lot less risk" said BLM's Fire management Officer Tim Foley.
It is increasingly difficult and expensive to get a "burn window"
that will meet weather and fuel moisture prescriptions as well as
the smoke management limitations (not to mention the availability
of qualified personnel). Often prescribed and managed fire prescriptions
will be met at the same time fire suppression activities are occurring.
The "challenge" of explaining to the public why you are
lighting and allowing some fires to burn while suppressing others
is one federal land managers are "treading lightly" with.
In FY2002, BLM had four WUI projects scheduled
for implementation and 2,724 acres were treated. 2,560 acres were
planned for treatment and 1,232 were treated. 500 acres of the proposed
treatment were for prescribed burns that could not take place. In
FY2002 there were nine hazardous fuels projects or non-WUI projects
and 3,638 acres were treated. 5,210 acres were planned for treatment
and 1,819 acres were treated successfully. In FY 2003 4,190 acres
were treated mechanically in both WUI and non-WUI settings. Three
WUI projects were scheduled for FY03 and two were carried over for
a total treatment of 1,657 acres. 727 out of the 1,328 acres not
treated in FY02 were treated in FY03. An additional 750 acres of
new projects were planned and completed in FY2003. In FY 2003 there
were two non-WUI projects scheduled for implementation and seven
carryovers. 3,856 acres of carry over projects were completed along
with 300 additional new acres.
The BLM hired "fuels planning teams"
to keep project progressing through the NEPA process as well as
categorical exclusions. The success they have had in treatment is
due in part to the interest by non-fire resource specialists in
seeing vegetative treatments done that have benefits for fuel reduction
and their functional resource specialty. This has kept projects
in the pipeline and involved more people with the workload.
BLM ends up using contractors when they need heavy
equipment. For instance if the work involves a Hydroaxe or roller
chopper, then they will contract out. Contract request for quotes
(CRQ) are sent to a list of qualified operators. Contracts are awarded
to the low bid. Most of the awards are to relatively local contractors
in south Fork, Grand Junction, Silt, Paonia, Delta, and Norwood.
There are only two mechanical operators in Mesa County that consistently
present competitive bids.
BLM is starting to do maintenance treatment
on areas that were treated in the past, primarily with prescription
fire. They have just hired a fire use module, between 5-8 people,
that will be shared all around western Colorado, but based in Grand
Junction. They will be able to ramp up their treatment work because
this group will be utilized to do prescription burning and wildland
fire use for treatments.
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CSFS Prescribed Burning
While the largest prescribed burns
CSFS
has managed have been on the CSFS-Grand Junction district
it has not recently done a lot of prescribed burning because
of the risk involved and the recent development of cost-effective
mechanical treatment options (e.g. the Hydroaxe). Because
of unresolved liability issues and funding the Grand Junction
District of the CSFS recommends to counties against allowing
natural ignition burns to cross from federal land into private
or state owned lands and vice versa. "Some people like
to talk about the cost-effectiveness of prescribed burns,
but I guess I've seen it both ways. It can be cost-effective
if everything goes right, but it can be not very cost effective
if things go wrong". Moreover, prescribed fire in the
WUI interface is difficult to carry out. Mechanical treatments
are easier because they can be done at any time of the year
and actually cost less money per acre, especially if you count
all the false starts on a prescribed fire, the contingency
planning and the smoke management plan. For instance, the
projected costs for the prescribed fire that caused the Cerro
Grande Fire in Los Alamos in 2000 was $324 per acre for a
100-acre area. It was this prescribed fire that escaped, burning
235 homes and 47, 650 acres and costing many millions of dollars
in damages. Due to their vegetative types, Mesa County can
do mechanical fuels treatment for less than $324 per acre.
Colorado State Forest Service Wildfire Suppression Role
Colorado State Forest Service assists the
county sheriff in his role as fire warden for the county.
CSFS assists by providing fire training, equipment, technical
assistance, funding, facilitates interagency mutual aid agreements
and annual operating plans. CSFS maintains sixteen fire trucks
within the Grand Junction CSFS district, and 140 statewide,
that they assign for fire suppression. These engines are assigned
to fire cooperators (mainly fire departments and sheriffs),
and are specifically designed for wildland firefighting. These
engines fight fire not only in their assigned area, but statewide
and nationwide. CSFS main strategy is to get landowners to
participate in their own planning, mitigation and rescue.
This means the landowner must buy into the belief that there
is a problem and this is their biggest challenge.
Wildfire Hazard Reviews and Wildfire Hazard Area Mapping
Mesa County operates under Wildfire Hazard
Planning Standards, which were adopted in 1999. CSFS is the
designated state agency by HB 1041 to review wildfire hazards
upon request by the county. Mesa County has regulations that
call for defensible space on new subdivisions. However, CSFS
reviews only one or two of these plans a year because not
much subdivision development is happening in wildfire hazard
areas. During 1997-1999, Mesa County contracted with CSFS
to do wildfire hazard mapping. In theory this should be keeping
subdivision development out of the more hazardous areas, but
this is not happening in practice. In the cases where they
do have someone building in a wildfire hazardous area, the
CSFS stipulates what must be done for mitigation. Houses on
35-acre parcels or larger are exempt from these policies.
In Mesa County and statewide there is a disconnect between
county planning regulations for wildfire hazard reduction
and the enforcement, and especially the maintenance of fuels
reductions. Recently State Farm Insurance has issued a warning
to those they insure in the urban interface in Colorado. They
will have 3 years to do fuels mitigation to the CSFS 6.302
standard or face losing their coverage. It is this kind of
incentive that is most effective in getting fuels reduction
done.
CSFS Wildfire Mitigation Specialist
Pete Blume was hired by the CSFS under a
grant from the BLM to promote wildfire hazard mitigation efforts
on private lands in the WUI through information, grants and
coordination of adjacent federal lands fuel treatments. Blume
works primarily through fire protection districts, homeowners
associations and contact and coordination with federal, state
and county government. Blume's job is more as a coordinator
of cross-boundary, on-the-ground wildfire mitigation than
just education and outreach. Blume will work both sides of
the fence, literally and figuratively, and represent both
the federal need and the State Forestry private lands need.
He will talk to the homeowners about CSFS's 50-50 cost-share
grant for wildfire mitigation defensible space work. Blume
had been housed at BLM Headquarters in Grand Junction, where
he used to serve as the area FMO. As of 2004, Blume has moved
to the USFS office in Grand Junction.
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