Federal forest land burns differently then state forest land. Here’s why.
Aria Marizza | Colorado State University Journalism
As many of us know, there are a multitude of factors that play when it comes to wildfires. How they start, how they grow, and what can make certain forests and areas more prone than others. We might know some of these factors to be drought stricken areas, hot climates, or even areas with a large termite population, but federal lands versus state lands probably didn’t come to mind.
Surprisingly enough, forests that are managed federally burn much worse than forests that are managed by the state.
Becky Bolinger, an assistant state climatologist at Colorado State University, helps us understand some of the factors that play into wildfires, and really diving into why federally owned land tends to burn differently.
In Colorado, what do you think our climate might look like in the future?
In Colorado, we have a lot of confidence that we will continue to see warming temperatures. That is something that we have experienced over the last 50 to 100 years, with the most significant warming occurring in the last 25 years or so. We have a lot of variability in precipitation in Colorado, which makes predicting it more uncertain. However, something we do know is that we are located in a region that will experience an increased frequency of droughts, so regardless of the overall pattern, it is likely that we’re going to experience more periods of drought that are more intense and longer.
With these climate changes that are happening in Colorado and all across America, what do you think it’ll mean for the future of wildfires?
Wildfires have a couple of different components. We really rely on looking at what the longer term pattern is and how that dictates wildfire behavior and activity, alongside the short term weather. We know that with our warmer climate, we have extended the length of our warm season and thus we are shrinking the length of our season where there’s snow consistently on the ground, which essentially shuts down any sort of wildfire activity. When that snow starts to melt and the ground is exposed, now you are at the beginning of when there’s wildfire risk for the forests in our higher elevations.
As we know, in our mountains forest fires are a natural part of the ecosystem. It’s something that helps regenerate, and not something we want to completely suppress. However, we do know that in the context of climate change, there’s that greater risk for wildfires to get bigger and out of control.
Yes, having contained wildfires is really beneficial for clearing up the forest floor. Do you think that the parks services should also help with cleaning debris and trimming?
Our state is really big and a lot of it is federal forest lands. Presidents can send people in there to sweep up the forest floors, but to know how much land there is, it’s really hard to know how to tackle it. However, at the state level, I know that a lot of the state park services have been working on trimming. For example, in 2020 the Cameron Peak Fire had less burning in the areas that are state protected, and the areas that are federally protected burned completely out of control.
State managed lands have done a lot of work to mitigate when a fire does occur, it’s not quite as unmanageable or uncontrollable. I think we have the tools, but do we have the capacity? There’s a lot of federally forested land that that needs to be gone through, but I think that’s something that we’ll need to look at in the future: knowing that there’s going to be fires, but making sure that they are not totally uncontrollable.
That’s really interesting. I did not know that federal forest land acually burned worse than state forest land.
Yeah. I saw a great example for it in when I did a drought tour in Northwest Colorado last year. We met in Steamboat and drove out to a reservoir where you could see the difference between federal forest lands and the state forest lands that came up to the reservoir. In the federal forest land, the pine trees were very dense, and you could look at that and see how quickly a fire can just pass right through there. On the other end, the state land had thinner trees with more space between them, and there were a lot of activities that the state was doing to ensure that they’re better prepared for fires.
I asked the federal forest ranger about it, and he said that there is so much land and we don’t have the capacity to tackle that. If you’ve ever been deep in the Colorado Mountains, you know there’s incredibly rugged terrain and locations that are probably almost impossible to reach. Even if you could get to that spot, how are you gonna have the tools there to trim all those trees?
Wow. Do you think there’ll be a push in the next decade or so towards trimming in federal forest land because of climate change?
I would hope so. There’s a lot of federal activities that could happen, a lot of work in mitigating the impacts of climate change. Whether we’re talking about our forests, our water, or the wildlife, there’s all sorts of different areas where the federal aid could and should be there. Part of it is a little political in nature, and comes down to who is making these decisions regarding federal forest land. My hope is that we continue to have leaders in administration who are ruling those federal dollars and can say that climate change is a real issue and it’s affecting us now, and we need to be providing money to the resources to help mitigate those impacts.
We’re not going to be able to just stop climate change in its tracks, so putting into place tools we need to prepare for changes is super important. I think the forests are gonna be a major part in that, and hopefully we continue on the track of being proactive in how we manage the forests and make some more changes.
Well, thank you so much for your time, that was super interesting and I learned a lot about things I didn’t realize were so important.
Good. I’m glad you found it interesting. Thank you so much and have a great day.
