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WASHINGTON – The San Juan National Forest is receiving $5 million to restore forest health on 3,000 acres of high-risk fireshed near homes outside Durango.
The Wildfire Risk Reduction and Restoration Project will mechanically treat 3,000 acres of forest in the San Juan National Forest, enabling an additional 9,000 acres of future prescribed fire treatment.
This project is located between Falls Creek and Durango Hills subdivisions, which are northwest and northeast of Durango, respectively. The treatment will be done in areas where the forest meets homes, called “wildland-urban interface,” said District Ranger for the Columbine ranger district of the SJNF Nick Glidden.
The treatment ranges from thinning the trees out so fires spread slower to mechanical brush mastication, which is mulching of vegetation using heavy equipment. The funding is a part of a larger investment from the Biden administration to prepare forests for wildfires.
“A healthier forest is more resilient; it's also easier to address fire in that landscape once it's healthy,” Glidden said. “And so this money is really the precursor to doing a lot of that prescribed burning in our forests here.”
This project is important because healthy forest fires restore the forest by cleaning up dead material in the forest and increasing soil nutrients, Glidden said. In the past, the USFS has focused on fire suppression. Now, the agency’s wildfire crisis strategy places an emphasis on restoration by reducing the available fuels.
“The last you know, 125 years or so, the forest service has done a great job of putting out fires, and those natural processes haven't been able to occur because we were suppressing the fires,” Glidden said. “So a lot of this work is to get back to where we can reintroduce fire onto the landscape and let it play a more natural role.”
Healthy fires improving the forest is not a new concept.
On the SJNF, fire managers are striving to work with what they call “good fire.”
Pat Seekins, fuels program manager for the SJNF told The Durango Herald last year that the SJNF needs “30,000 to 40,000 acres of prescribed fire” annually to restore lands. Glidden said this number would allow the forest to catch up to full restoration, but the USFS is prioritizing areas that are close to homes with this newly funded project.
To put the funding in context, the USFS burned 9,528 acres in the SJNF from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023.
“We are really trying to be strategic about where we do this work that takes this big investment,” Glidden said.
Glidden said the project was looked at by working groups in the community, such as the 4 Rivers Resilient Forest Collaborative, and “did not receive any objections.”
The project also includes biomass removal from the forest. The USFS is also looking into ways to use the waste material, such as adding it to compost. The logs generated from thinning support a program called Wood For Life, where logs are brought out to local tribes to help heat their homes.
“We developed a program that we actually make deliveries out to known set locations for the tribes, so that they can then come get wood to heat their homes with,” Glidden said.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet visited the SJNF in 2021 to talk with tribal leaders and community members.
Bennet posted on the social media network X: “SW Coloradans shouldn't have to fear wildfires overtaking their communities. That's why I'm glad to see another $5M investment from @forestservice to reduce wildfire risk and restore the health of 3,000 acres of the San Juan National Forest.”
Maria Tedesco is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at mtedesco@durangoherald.com.
