As summer yields to fall, rural communities across the West continue to purge skinny, fire-prone trees from overcrowded forests and remove potentially hazardous brush from around homes. But with thousands of homes poised at the forest's edge -- and many more being built -- keeping the risk of wildfire at bay is an increasingly daunting task.
While much of the focus on reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been on the West's vast swaths of federal forest lands, private lands encompass some of region's most at-risk forested areas. Many private forest lands are found at the "urban-wildland interface," where houses abut forests and where the potential risk to lives and property is the greatest.
Yet much of the fuel treatment work done thus far has focused on federal forest lands -- even as more houses are built in private forests.
According to a recent Forest Service report, "Forests on the Edge," more than 44 million acres of private forest nationwide -- about 11 percent -- are expected to see increased development within the next 25 years. Most of the boom will be in watersheds in California, the Pacific Northwest and the eastern United States, the report says.
While about 60 percent of the West's forests are in federal hands, about 25 percent of forest land in the region is privately owned, not including industrial forest lands, according to the journal American Forests.
In the federal effort to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, private lands are an important part of the equation, federal officials say.
"Fire doesn't know any boundaries," said Heidi Valetkevich, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service. "That's part of the challenge of reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire."
With each individual landowner managing their own plot of land, reducing wildfire risk on private lands is a complex undertaking requiring considerable funding and far-reaching public education efforts. But federal programs to address the problem have emerged in recent years, and thousands of local efforts to treat at-risk acreage have been implemented.
According to information included in the Forest Service's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006, more than 12,000 communities received federal funding for hazardous fuels reduction projects in 2004.
But funding for such efforts appears to be on the wane. The president's budget for fiscal 2006 allocates $50,334 for state fire assistance under the National Fire Plan, which includes funds for fire preparedness as well as hazardous fuel reduction, down from $73,099 in fiscal 2005.
Partnership tackles fuel reduction on private lands
One group in northern Arizona offers an illustrative example of the benefits and challenges of taking on the task of reducing the risk of wildfire across a checkerboard of private lands. The Rural Communities Fuels Management Partnership, which includes the Arizona State Land Department, Kaibab National Forest, the University of Arizona, Coconino County and the city of Williams, provides thinning services for landowners who otherwise would not be able to afford such treatments.
Since the group came together in 2001, the Rural Communities Fuels Management Partnership has thinned more than 350 acres of private property in Parks, Sherwood Forest Estates and Williams. Another 350 acres or so remain to be treated.
"Our goal is to treat as many properties as possible to make our communities safer," said Art Matthias, coordinator of the partnership.
That goal should be helped along by the group's recent win of a national Rural Community Assistance Award from the Forest Service, which Matthias hopes will attract more funding.
In fact, finding enough money to do all the work that needs to be done is the biggest challenge of the group and others like it, said Jacqueline Denk, a fire information officer for Kaibab National Forest.
Treating just 1 acre can cost almost $1,000, she said. "It's a lot to expect people to pay," she added.
Typically, the landowner contributes some money -- usually about $250 an acre -- and the partnership picks up the rest, Denk said.
The partnership saves some money by employing a group of low-risk inmates called the Winslow Fire Stompers, who receive training in both thinning and fire suppression techniques.
Still, program administrators are finding it difficult to keep their coffers filled. And the grants the group relies on are increasingly hard to come by, Denk said. "There are a lot of grants out there, but it seems like there's more and more competition and less and less money in these grants,"
Denk said.
Despite the challenges of community-based fuel reduction efforts, more groups like the RCFMP are forming across the West. Similar groups have also sprung up in Oregon, New Mexico, California and several other Western states.
Some communities have gone so far as to mandate hazardous fuel reduction on private lands. The village of Ruidoso, N.M., for example, has passed a series of ordinances that requires landowners to get rid of brush and thin trees on their property based on a set of fuels management standards. If the landowner fails to do so, the city will send a crew to do the work. The village provides grants to help offset the cost of clearing flammable vegetation on private property.Land Letter
