"Fires fuel urgency to restore forests to more natural state" by Susan Montoya Bryan | Associated Press, June 15, 2012
ALBUQUERQUE - As firefighters battle blazes in New Mexico and Colorado that have forced evacuations and destroyed hundreds of structures, the US Forest Service chief is renewing his call to restore forests to a more natural state, where fire was a part of the landscape.
Experts say a combination of decades of vigorous fire suppression and the waning of the timber industry over environmental concerns has left many forests a tangled, overgrown mess, subject to the kind of super-fires that are now regularly consuming hundreds of homes and millions of acres.
The Forest Service is on a mission to set the clock back
to zero and the urgency couldn’t be greater, Tom Tidwell said. The plan
calls for accelerating restoration programs - everything from prescribed
fire and mechanical thinning - by 20 percent each year in key areas
that are facing the greatest danger of a catastrophic fire. This year’s
target: 4 million acres. The budget: About $1 billion.
In southern New Mexico, a lightning-sparked fire raced across more than 37,000 acres in recent days, damaging or destroying at least 224 homes and other structures in the mountains outside of the resort community of Ruidoso.
Officials say the Little Bear fire, which has scorched 58 square miles in the Sierra Blanca range, has been 40 percent contained and firefighters continued building lines to contain the fire Thursday. But they note that sunny, dry weather will result in more active fire behavior and an increase in visible smoke.
Hundreds of residents have been evacuated but some have begun returning home.
The Colorado blaze, about 15 miles west of Fort Collins, was still spreading....
The fire has canceled shows by Bruce Hornsby and others at an amphitheater in the evacuation area and forced a revision of the final leg of the Ride the Rockies tour. Because of concerns about smoke, cyclists will be given the option of taking a shuttle to the finishing line on Friday in Fort Collins.
The accelerated restoration effort is focused on several landscape-scale projects, the largest of which is a 20-year plan that calls for restoring 2.4 million acres across four forests in northern Arizona. The Forest Service recently awarded a contract to start thinning the first 300,000 acres.
A similar project is planned in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, where a historic fire ripped through 244 square miles and threatened one of the national’s premier nuclear laboratories last summer.
Another concern is the 8.6 million acres of standing trees killed by beetle infestations. Restoration projects from Oregon and South Dakota to Colorado are aimed at tackling that problem. One of those, the White River National Forest collaborative project, is expected to result in more than 190,000 tons of biomass through thinning....
In an era of tight budgets and taxed resources, forest officials acknowledged that restoration will be a challenge.
Ever notice there is always plenty of money for wars and Wall Street?
They said part of the solution is setting priorities and forming more partnerships with states, municipalities and even water utilities given the impacts catastrophic fires can have on watersheds. Some 66 million Americans rely on drinking water that flows from the nation’s forests.
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Also see: Stiff winds fuel Colo. wildfire; looting a concern
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Next Day Update: Hot winds fan wildfires in West
Further Update: Progress reported in efforts against Colo., Calif. fires
