Collaborating for More Resilient Forests: Burning across federal and private land boundaries in Northern Colorado

By Daniel Bowker, Forests Program Manager, Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed

As a member of the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative, the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed works with many organizational and community partners to increase the resilience of our forests and our watershed to major disturbances like wildfire. Part of this effort is reducing the density of forest fuels, so that when an area does burn, it doesn’t burn as intensely. This way, we can help minimize the negative effects of wildfire, such as erosion into our waterways and degradation of wildlife habitat, and allow fire to do its beneficial work of reducing fuels, improving diversity and habitat, and stimulating the regeneration of fire-dependent species.

In the summer of 2024, CPRW and the Larimer County Conservation Corps 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. 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.

Using this Great Outdoors Colorado grant, the youth corps saw crew cut and piled 21 acres of overly dense forest on the Scout Ranch, adding to the 1,000+ acres already treated in the area. One unique aspect of this year’s 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.

Because this year’s 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, the Forest Service just this week was able to use federal firefighting resources to burn the slash piles created by the youth corps crew, 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.

This combination of mitigation treatments will help CPRW and the 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, while completing the cut and pile treatment beforehand should also 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!