What can LaVA do for you

Since 2018, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has been working on the Medicine Bow Landscape Vegetation Analysis (LaVA), which includes most of the Snowy Range and the Sierra Madre Range. The effort is to mitigate fires burning at a high heat intensity when and if a forest fire begins in the Medicine Bow National Forest (MBNF).

This is a formidable task, since LaVA includes vegetation management for more than 360,000 acres.

For the past nine years, the USFS has participated in timber sales, prescribed burns, fire, mechanical and hand treatment.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been involved in removing vegetation for fire mitigation from their areas of responsibility also.

At the Sierra Madre Fire Mitigation meeting in Encampment on September 9, the two entities shared what they have been doing for the past nine years. It is estimated, according to the LaVA analysis, it will take up to 20 years to complete the project.

Driving the forest roads, the mechanical treatment is obvious, with stacks of wood forming slash piles. In other places, timber is stacked for commercial sale.

Heavy fuels have saturated the MBNF since the beetle kill epidemic earlier in the century.

Potential Operational Delineation

PODs is an acronym for Potential (wildland fire) Operational Delineation and is a fire management and planning control feature which uses road and natural barriers where a fire risk has been identified.

POD boundaries are typically a network of linked linear control features which could be leveraged for fire containment during a wildfire or prescribed fires, according to a powerpoint program shared at the Sierra Madre public meeting September 9.

Typical POD boundaries include a combination of roads, rivers, major ridges, barren areas, waterbodies, major fuel changes and other locations that facilitate control.

During the meeting, USFS Supervisor Jason Armbruster said in the past the USFS has been accused of random acts of restoration.

“We’ll admit it, there are some random acts of restoration.”

Armbruster said there is a plan, which is mapped out on the POD line.

“They’re not bulletproof, but they are a starting place.” Armbruster said.

PODS were initially designed for firefighters to suppress a wildfire.

Several years ago, the USFS—along with cooperating agencies—worked together to map out the PODs. The purpose is to help slow down the fires by changing or treating the landscape in the forest. Maps were provided to where fire mitigation in one form or another has been done or will be done in the future. The black lines in the map indicate the POD lines to help and agency to identify where to take suppression action.

Jeremy McMahon, The Center Zone Fire Management with the USFS, reiterated the POD lines are used to help stop fires.

“This is not if, but when a forest fire breaks out,” McMahon said.

The recent fire on Pennock Mountain, north of Saratoga, was a prime example of what the entities do when a fire starts in the MBNF.

“Total suppression, we squashed it.,” McMahon said.

He went on to explain a lot of resources are currently committed to fire mitigation, which was evident by the panel present at the meeting on September 9.

“Wyoming does a good job of spreading out resources,” McMahon said.

Armbruster said the USFS is able to work with the state in areas like Aspen Alley using the Good Neighbor Authority. While the aspen needs to be cleared, they are not necessarily good for commercial timber sales. The commercial timber sales are created from the lodgepole pine trees. With the Good Neighbor Authority it does allow the USFA and the State Forestry Division to work together to remove the dead aspen to help with fire mitigation.

McMahon went on to explain PODs are used to keep the fires from being at a high intensity to a moderate to low intensity.

McMahon worked with Carbon County Fire Protection District Fire Chief John Rutherford in identifying areas which would need to be worked on to protect the Encampment Watershed.

Fuel, oxygen and heat are what start fires, McMahon said. Taking out the fuel is the easy part, but it takes time and costs a lot of money. He reinforced personal responsibility in the public by helping with fires by cleaning the areas around their property and reducing fuel.

“We don’t want to send a firefighter into a more dangerous situation,”McMahon said.

Encampment River Watershed

Citizens in Encampment expressed the protection of the Encampment River Watershed. McMahon explained it was an eight month project.

The layout is completed for the hazardous fuels mitigation project in the North Fork of the Encampment River Watershed, Armbruster said by email. This means the foresters and fuel specialists have identified commercial timber sales and noncommercial fuel treatments on the ground. The next step will be to package the work in a contract and put it out for bid.

“Implementation will take place after a contract is in place,” Armbuster said.

Next, the Saratoga Sun will report on the responsibility of the Bureau of Land Management’s role in fire mitigation.