Arizona had a busy fire season this summer. Now, with many of the fires out, communities are beginning to look at their wildfire risk.
And many are at a high risk — last year, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management did a wildfire risk assessment of more than 500 communities.
It found that about 85% of Arizona’s communities are at moderate to high risk for wildfire.
The wildland-urban interface grows as more people move West. The trick, conservationists say, is to learn how to live with fire.
Researchers say that one way to do this is to thin fuel.
In the desert, that means brush and invasive grasses, like buffelgrass, fountain grass, or red brome. In the high country, that means ponderosa pine.
"Now in our forests, 200 years ago, there were fires every three to five years in the ponderosa pine," said Rob Marshall of the Nature Conservancy. "And they were surface fires. They were fires that were consuming the grass, and burning the bottoms of trees where the bark is four inches thick and the trees can withstand it, and there were 20 trees per acre. Now, we have 200 to a thousand trees per acre, in our forests. They’re way too dense.”
He says that fire can sometimes be used to thin the forest, but not in dense forests. Those fires burn too big and hot and turn into what’s known as catastrophic fire.
“But there’s only so many acres that you can apply fire to because there’s so many acres where there’s just too many trees, and you put fire in and it’s going to be catastrophic fire and you’re going to lose the forest, and so we’ve gotta get in there and thin the trees,” Marshall said.
Arizona has been battling this fuel buildup for decades on the local, state and federal level.
On the local level, Community Wildfire Protection Plans can help. Those programs, known as CWPPs, outline a plan of action and can help secure funding for thinning projects. But not everyone gets the message. People move to Arizona to enjoy the state’s scenery. For some, that includes trees.
“Another thing that we have seen, is that when you have a lot of residents in an area that are new to the area, and they like their trees, it can be hard to communicate effectively the need for reducing fuels, because that’s part of what drew them to the area,” said Melanie Colavito, of the Ecological Restoration Institute.
Colavito said these programs require a lot of work on the local level. They also require persistence on the part of local volunteers. There is evidence that Arizonans are beginning to understand the importance of thinning.
The state began a massive thinning project after one of the largest wildfires in the state burned about half a million acres. It was called the Four Forests Restoration Initiative. 4Fri for short.
There are two ways to thin the forest. One is to cut trees. The other to burn them. 4FRI wants to do both. But only fire has succeeded on a large scale. Since 2010, prescribed fire and managed wildfire have thinned about 600,000 acres of forest.
That’s the kind of grand scale that 4FRI envisioned. Mechanical thinning is behind schedule. That’s because there is not much of a market for small diameter trees that thinning targets.
“You have to do something with those trees," Marshall said. "You can’t just cut ‘em and stack ‘em somewhere, right? So you’ve got to be able to process those trees.”
"You have to do something with those trees. You can’t just cut ‘em and stack ‘em somewhere, right? So you’ve got to be able to process those trees." — Rob Marshall of the Nature Conservancy
Henry Provencio, of Coconino National Forest says the state is getting closer to establishing those markets. He also says that 4FRI has had some successes in restoring watersheds.
“There’s been a lot of springs restored. Like I said, we’ve introduced fire back into the landscape in a lot of different areas,” Provencio said.
He hopes that future thinning efforts will be more successful as new proposals take shape.
“We’re still trying to crack that nut, on the mechanical treatment side, and I think we’ll get there as long as everybody continues to stay at the table, and is focused,” he said.
Colavito says that preparation can make communities resilient when fires occur.
“There’s mounting evidence that communities around the United States and around the world must learn to live with fire," she said. "In the western U.S. we’ve seen fires increase in size and severity over the past few decades and this trend is definitely going to continue due to climate change.”
That’s why planning is so important.
“I think really with collaborative planning and preparation for these fires that are inevitable, can help to create communities that are fire adapted and resilient,” Colavito said.
