The goal of this project is to restore the ponderosa pine and mixed conifer stands to a more natural state, including reducing surface and crown fuel loading across the landscape, retaining and encouraging old-growth qualities, and improving wildlife habitat.

Prescribed fires take the hands of many to plan and complete successfully. An “all hands” approach is needed to plan meetings, study forests, create maps, process paperwork, test fuel moisture, analyze weather, measure perimeters, dig fire breaks, and ignite drip torches.  

Last week, members of the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative helped lead congressional staffers on a field trip to the Clear Creek and Boulder Ranger Districts within the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forests. The multi-day tour touched on many issues that impact public and private lands within the Fireshed boundary, including the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, recreation, prescribed fire, Farm Bill housing authority, the Great American Outdoors Act and mixed land-use issues.

These four stages of readiness produced by CFRI, provide a roadmap for how collaboratives can grow from new partnerships into long-term, landscape-scale implementation efforts.

The moment a prescribed fire is ignited is just the tip of an unseen iceberg of research, partnership, and preparation, stretching back months or years before drip torches are lit.

After the Cameron Peak Fire, the incident management team created this video to describe how fuels treatments around the communities of Red Feather and Crystal Lakes helped firefighters to confront the Cameron Peak Fire.