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Show A-10 The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, August 29-September 1, 2020 Continued from A-8 The People’s Choice is back for 2020! Voting starts st September 1 Future of wildfires Fires in riparian areas along the Colorado River could spell the end of some cottonwood stands, which require flooding levels for regeneration that might no longer be realistic. And as the Pine Gulch Fire rages north of Grand Junction, there are concerns that drought could impede the regrowth of the pinyon-juniper habitat. “We might be getting to a situation today where the climate may not be the same as it was when these woodlands were established,” Kennard said. “Those are going to possibly go through a type conversion to a different type of system.” One major fear is that as changes in the climate inhibit the regeneration of natural vegetation, invasive species could start to take over in certain areas. In Colorado, one nonnative species causing trouble is cheatgrass, a highly flammable weed that can significantly impact native plants. The grass potentially could fill in traditionally barren areas that rely on fuel breaks in the landscape to keep fires at bay, creating more contiguous fuels and larger fires. And once the natural vegetation is dead, it might never return. “The grass comes back right away and even better after a fire,” Kennard said. “That means that those other species can’t get ahold. Once you get cheatgrass in an area, it increases the fire frequency and the fire size, and it makes it so much harder for other fuels to come back. It turns into an annual grassland that could burn every couple years. … “Climate change, I think, will be the overarching factor increasingly as we look forward to future wildfires because it will keep getting hotter and drier. But especially in Western Colorado and drier areas, climate change coupled with nonnative invasive species has a synergistic effect where we could see fires that are bigger than they would have been otherwise.” A history of wildfire suppression over the past 100 years is also taking its toll on many modern forests, which were not allowed to burn naturally resulting in massive fuel loads capable of creating larger fires. Colorado residents have seen the results already. In 2002, the Hayman Fire northwest of Colorado Springs became the biggest recorded wildfire in the state’s history, burning more than 137,000 acres, 133 homes and costing about $40 million to suppress. In the Forest Service’s case study on the Hayman Fire, officials said it burned in rich and dry vegetation, resulting from the exclusion of fire over recent years, and called the blaze an “example of a consequence of what is wrong with current forest management policy in this country.” “Repeat photography after more than a century or so of lapse shows tremendous changes in vegetation,” Finney said. “The trees in the forest are so dense now, and there’s complete coverage over large parts of the terrain that at one point burned (frequently) enough to have a patchy structure to it. … “We’re well beyond the point where we can get a head start on this. Looking back to something like the Hayman Fire, it was a direct consequence of having landscapes for tens of miles with very little management.” Rethinking our relationship with fire While turning the tables against climate change is an endeavor further down the line, officials have begun to reshape the way they think about land management. As with modern day firefighting, creating a more positive future outlook on wildfires relies heavily on proactive solutions. Fuels reduction projects along the wildland-urban interface have become more commonplace over recent years and will continue to be one of the more important tools officials have to combat fires near developed areas. But some are calling for more cooperation from local, state and federal agencies to take a broader view in building resiliency across larger landscapes. “There are so many areas that need treatment that we need to stop saying this is private land or state land or federal land,” Korb said. “We need to work across all lines to determine how we’re going to manage our landscapes. So when we’re talking about tackling these issues in the future, it’s really about forming this collaborative and working together to look at larger landscapes — not 1,000- or even 10,000-acre parcels, but 100,000 to half-million acres — to determine how to manage that to have the type of fires we’re willing to live with.” Korb emphasized that resiliency might look different for varying types of forests and ecosystems and that there is not a one-size-fits-all prescription. In other words, the topography, fuel types and other factors in certain forests might call for more widespread human manipulation while others might be best left alone. While fuels are really the only major component of natural wildfires that humans have some direct control over, it makes sense to prioritize treatment projects as we look to the future. But officials also say that not all treatments necessarily have the same impact. Tree harvesting and the mechanical removal of fuel sources certainly have their place, but those treatments don’t do much to remove finer fuels like grass and brush from the forest floor. Instead, some experts are pushing to allow more wildfires and prescriptive burns to create forest maintenance benefits. “You can use chain saws and modern logging methods, but that doesn’t really remove the fuel that wildfires depend on,” Finney said. “And once you’re done thinning, then fire is the only way of maintaining fuel conditions and keeping the ecosystem running. One thing we know for sure is that fire plays an essential role in most of our ecosystems in the West, and there’s just no substitute for it.” But large-scale land-management overhauls and prescriptive fires are solutions easier said than done. In areas that already have embraced changes to management policies, officials say the funding to conduct the desired work is often difficult to come by. In other areas, where the strategies have been slow to take hold, officials say they’re still fighting a cultural war to inform the masses of the benefits of fire. “This culture — which consists of the public, elected officials, media and the fire agencies — all come together in reacting to wildfires and determining what the acceptable responses are,” Finney said. “And they tend to react in a very predictable way: to try and put the fire out. “When you try to change the appropriate response to fires, such as doing more prescribed burns or not putting a fire out, then the culture tends to react negatively to that. … We have to change how we look at fires. The science is well developed. The obstacle to using that knowledge in a proactive fashion is almost entirely cultural.” Please see Outlook, A-11 INTERMOUNTAIN MORTGAGE COMPANY As a local Parkite, I am here to help you purchase your dream home in our beautiful community. Presented by: Sponsored by: POTTER CLARK Potter has 14 + years of lending experience including in commercial real estate where he was a Vice President at a large regional bank. He also worked in business lending for several years after receiving his degree in Economics from Chapman University. He was fortunate enough to grow up in beautiful Park City, Utah and has seen the area transform into a world class resort destination. Potter enjoys successfully helping people purchase their dream homes in our beautiful community. He is an avid skier, loves the outdoors, enjoys mountain biking, golf, fly fishing, and traveling. INTERMOUNTAIN MORTGAGE COMPANY LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED WITH NATIONAL LENDING SOURCES SINCE 1992. 435.649.6660 greatlender.com 2029 Sidewinder Drive, Suite 200 NMLS #74889 |