Cross-Boundary Pile Burning Will Reduce Wildfire Risk in the Poudre Watershed

by Daniel Bowker, Forests Program Manager

During 2023 and 2024, the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed (CPRW), the Larimer County Conservation Corps (LCCC), and The Ember Alliance (TEA) partnered on an ongoing wildfire mitigation project on the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in northern Larimer County, just west of the community of Glacier View Meadows. Funds for this project were awarded by Great Outdoors Colorado, which receives a portion of Colorado Lottery proceeds, to the Colorado Youth Corps Association for use by accredited conservation service corps. Great Outdoors Colorado also provided funding for the TEA saw crew on this project. The goal of the program is to employ crews throughout the state on critical outdoor recreation and land conservation projects in partnership with local governments and open space agencies.

Crew members from the Larimer County Conservation Corps (Photo credit: LCCC)

Pile burning is a type of prescribed fire that helps remove woody debris from the forests, reducing the potential of more impactful, unplanned fire activity.(Photo credit: US Forest Service).

The youth corps saw crew cut and piled 21 acres of overly dense forest on the Scout Ranch, while TEA treated another 16 acres, adding to the 1,000+ acres already treated in the area. One unique aspect of this treatment unit is that it falls within the projected footprint of the Magic Feather Collaborative Project, which is a cross-boundary prescribed fire project led by the USDA Forest Service, totaling over 5,500 acres of national forest system lands, as well as almost 800 acres of private and state lands. The Magic Feather project will burn across the federal land/private land boundary on the Scout Ranch near Elkhorn Creek, enabling the Forest Service to complete a more effective prescribed fire treatment than would be possible if the fire had to be stopped at the private land boundary line.

This treatment unit is within the Magic Feather burn boundary and an agreement was already in place between the Forest Service and the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch’s owner, the Adventure West Council of the Boy Scouts of America. So, just a few weeks ago, the Forest Service was able to use federal firefighting resources to burn the slash piles created by the youth corps and TEA crews, before the planned broadcast burn later this year. Burning these piles removes the cut fuels from the landscape before the broadcast burn gets underway, and completing this cut/pile/burn treatment will help the Forest Service to better achieve its treatment goals during the broadcast burn operation.

With slash piles now burned, this landscape will soon be ready to receive prescribed fire as part of the Magic Feather project (Photo credit: Daniel Bowker).

This combination of mitigation treatments will help CPRW and the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative understand the benefits of following up an initial entry chainsaw treatment with a second entry treatment utilizing broadcast prescribed fire. While the cut and pile prescription focuses on smaller diameter ladder fuels and does not remove larger diameter trees, following this treatment with broadcast fire will hopefully lead to some beneficial mortality of trees over 6” diameter, helping to disconnect tree groups and open up the canopy more than the initial thinning could do on its own. In addition, completing the cut and pile treatment beforehand will help to preserve the larger fire-resistant trees on the landscape by removing the ladder fuels around them before the broadcast burning happens. We will be watching closely to understand the results of this combination of treatments over the next several growing seasons. Stay tuned to learn more!