BLM plays important role in fire mitigation

Chris Otto, Fire Management Specialist with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), was at the Sierra Madre Fire Mitigation meeting on September 9 to explain the BLM’s role in fire mitigation.

Otto explained there is not a lot of timber relative to the United States Forest Service (USFS) lands on BLM land, but they have had two commercial timber sales in the Encampment River Watershed area in the last seven to eight years.

The timber sales took place in the Teddy Creek area of Jerry Accord Road and another timber sale took place at Cow Camp on Power Line Road up above Water Valley.

“We were able to take advantage of the timber sale in cooperation with the Silver Spur,” Otto said.

According to Otto, Silver Spur had private land that needed to be cleared, which made the buyer interested.

A small timber sale at the northern tip of the Sierra Madre Mountains was also held west of Jack Creek Road.

“It was a project that was proposed to us about seven or eight years ago working with the Forest Service doing some cross boundary treatments,” Otto said.

The timber sale was completed so any material of value could be removed prior to conducting a prescribed burn according to Otto. The burn and preparation treatments are funded through the hazardous fuels program. The prescribed burn has not taken place yet as it is in the planning stage, Otto said.

BLM also coordinated with the Wyoming State Forestry Division for a timber sale in Barrett Ridge. It is difficult to sell the wood sometime in the smaller areas, Otto said. This particular section has been put out to bid three times as a firewood sale and they still can’t sell the wood out of it. On and off social media, people have said to log it, graze it or watch it burn.

“It is not as simple as that,” Otto said.

He said it is difficult to get some of that timber out and have someone utilize it.

BLM land is also used for grazing, Otto said. “There is not a bit of BLM ground that is not under a grazing permit or lease.”

Barrett Ridge has been on a priority list for the BLM for quite some time, Otto said. The agency started prescribed burns around 2005 to 2007 in mostly wildlife habitat areas, crucial winter range and burn through mountain shrubs in the spring. Because of the sage grouse habitat and the cheatgrass, BLM has switched from prescribed burns to mechanical treatments.

BLM also creates slash piles to burn in a controlled area rather than a prescribed burn over a wide area of land. The federal agency works closely with the Saratoga Encampment Rawlins Conservation District (SERCD), a work agent for BLM. The SERCD subcontracts work, trying to keep it local, at least in state. Sometimes it is not possible, Otto said. But between the SERCD and the Little Snake River Conservation district, the BLM has put in a lot of money towards a lot of local contractors in fuel mitigation.

A lot of the work is removing products which are not sellable, such as juniper or sage brush, to remove it from the landscape. That is what fuel mitigation is, Otto said. BLM looks at alternative ways to reduce the fuel by creating fuel breaks on government land. These are called Shaded Fuel Breaks. According to Otto, a running fire may not necessarily stop at these lines, but firefighters can use them to anchor in and use indirect tactics or burn out fuels between the fire and the fuel break.

Using this method, the goal is not to remove all vegetation, but to develop a line where firefighters can work to control a fire. One of the areas to protect is the Encampment River Watershed.

“If a major fire breaks out, a part of the watershed is going to go,” Otto said. “We’re not going to blow smoke and tell you the watershed is not going to be affected.”

What the BLM wants to do is manage how much of the watershed goes.

Cheatgrass burns like gasoline, Otto said, so one of the main focuses is to reduce the amount of cheatgrass from BLM land. What cheatgrass does is converts good habitat and forage into fire prone vegetation that is not valuable or used by livestock or wildlife, Otto said.

Not all people agree, he said, because they think grass is grass. The cheatgrass outcompetes the valuable native vegetation on its own and removes native vegetation by burning so easily and often, Otto said.

According to Otto, BLM has done a lot of work in the Encampment River Canyon, Purgatory Gulch, Barrett Ridge and Prospect Mountain.

The BLM is using a new herbicide that is available. BLM and other cooperatives have been using other herbicides for five to ten years in the Big Creek South, the Beaver Creek Fire area, the Encampment River Canyon and Purgatory Gulch. The new herbicide will be used on these areas and is more effective and allows for less retreatment. According to Otto, a lot of the taxpayers money is going into mechanical treatment and chemical treatments for fuel mitigation programs.

The USFS and the Mule Deer Foundation have identified the Encampment River Watershed as a top priority and BLM is now studying how to work with their partners to mitigate hazardous fuels and hopefully break up the area enough so that a wildfire does not affect the entire watershed, Otto said.

The BLM has several projects in the works to ensure that fuels are treated. When driving on some BLM land, it feels like the vehicle has square tires, Otto said. He explained later that in order to remove timber from some of these areas, extensive road building or improvement would be necessary to get the timber out.

“The volume we have to sell makes it tough to get anyone interested in the sale,” Otto said. “It doesn’t pencil out in a lot of cases where there are significant costs involved in getting the product off the site and to the mill.”

Next week, the Saratoga Sun will finish up the series with a public LaVa monitoring field trip which occurred Wednesday.