W.O.L.F. Sanctuary Wildfire Mitigation Project

Project Overview

The WOLF Sanctuary Wildfire Mitigation Project will use hand thinning, slash piling, pile burning, and chipping to reduce forest density and mitigate wildfire risk on 38 acres of private land located between the communities of Red Feather Lakes and Glacier View Meadows, in Larimer County, Colorado.

After more than 25 years at their current location in Rist Canyon, the WOLF Sanctuary moved to a more sustainable location near the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch, and north of Larimer County Road 74E. This location, while ideal for the new facilities of the WOLF Sanctuary, is significantly departed from historical forest density levels, due to a century of fire suppression, early logging practices, cattle grazing, and other factors, which have contributed to far too many especially smaller diameter trees on the landscape. This increase in forest density leads to greater wildfire risk, potentially causing more intense wildfire behavior should a fire occur in the area, which could lead to significant forest canopy mortality, soil erosion and water quality impacts in nearby Elkhorn Creek, and threats to property infrastructure, animals on site, and nearby communities.

Because of this situation, the leadership of the WOLF Sanctuary desires to undertake a wildfire mitigation project that will reduce forest density, focusing on the smaller diameter “ladder fuels” that can carry a ground fire into the forest canopy, in order to moderate potential wildfire behavior and reduce possible negative impacts to the forest, the property itself and its associated infrastructure, the nearby community of Glacier View Meadows, and water supplies in the Cache la Poudre River watershed.

Project Background

The Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed (CPRW) applied for a Community Assistance Funds Adjacent to National Forests and Grasslands (CAFA) grant through the Colorado State Forest Service, and was awarded funding sufficient to treat the 38 acres most in need of wildfire mitigation on the WOLF Sanctuary property. CPRW works in this landscape as a partner in the Elkhorn Creek Forest Health Initiative (ECFHI), a collection of organizations that are actively involved in forest management and wildfire mitigation along Elkhorn Creek. Elkhorn Creek is a critical watershed for wildfire mitigation treatments, as it drains directly into the Cache la Poudre River, the main water supply for over 300,000 people in the cities of Fort Collins and Greeley, as well as agricultural use. The Ember Alliance, a forest and fire management nonprofit organization based out of Loveland, Colorado, and an active partner in the ECFHI, will complete the forest thinning and slash pile burning treatments on this project, and in the process, will train mitigation crew members in safe chainsaw use, slash pile building, and pile burning for fuels reduction goals.

The ECFHI is a planning unit subgroup of the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative’s Operations Committee, which plans and prioritizes wildfire mitigation treatments at a landscape scale across Northern Colorado. The Fireshed is an umbrella coordinating group of local, state, and federal agencies and organizations, dedicated to increasing the pace and scale of wildfire mitigation treatments across ownerships and boundaries, in order to provide a ribbon of treated ground protecting communities, water supply, infrastructure, and watershed resilience from the Wyoming border south to the Denver metro area. As such, the ECFHI has planned and implemented its treatments along Elkhorn Creek in coordination with larger Fireshed operational and strategic treatments in the area. These include the US Forest Service Magic Feather Collaborative Project, which will eventually treat more than 6,000 acres of private, state, and federal lands along Elkhorn and South Lone Pine Creeks, between Red Feather Lakes and Glacier View Meadows, as well as several other large USFS treatment area planning units in development in the immediate vicinity. The ECFHI treatments were designed and implemented to complement and enhance the Fireshed-level units such as Magic Feather, the USFS Magic Sky mitigation project to the north of CR 74E, and the Lonetree USFS treatment planning area just to the south of Elkhorn Creek. While no wildfire mitigation treatment is sufficient and effective unto itself, when these treatments are strategically planned and implemented at the landscape scale and across jurisdictional boundaries, the collective improvement in wildfire resilience to communities, infrastructure, and watershed values is considerable.

Finally, this project falls within the Glacier View Fire Protection District boundary, and has been identified as an area of priority wildfire mitigation through the Glacier View Meadows Community Wildfire Protection Plan update currently being completed by The Ember Alliance under contract. The WOLF Sanctuary wildfire mitigation project will involve direct integration with the fire protection district in treatment planning and implementation, providing the fire district enhanced situational awareness for firefighting if a wildfire were to occur in the area.

Project Goals

Reduce wildfire risk and potential negative impacts
Protect water quality
Improve wildlife habitat
Increase local forest and fire management capacity and training
Promote landscape-scale, cross-jurisdictional forest treatments and collaborative planning