Mitigating fire risk — Pole Creek timber treatments imminent
BUFFALO — The Bighorn National Forest will kick off its 15-year Pole Creek Vegetation Management Project any day now.
The plan, for which a record of decision was signed in late November, includes commercial timber harvest, non-commercial thinning and other fuels treatments and aspen and riparian habitat restoration.
It also includes provisions for pile burning and temporary road construction for logging and fuels treatments.
The total Pole Creek project area spans 92,000 acres, which is potentially the largest fuels project on the forest to date. The U.S. Forest Service is targeting this area 20 miles west of Buffalo to create a diversity of tree size and age, according to previous Bulletin reporting.
The project is part of a larger trend toward more proactive forest management practices to minimize a potential wildfire’s severity by reducing available fuels. The Forest Service has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to reduce risks associated with wildfire.
Matt Rathbone, the forest’s timber program manager, said that the Elk fire, which burned nearly 100,000 acres of forest in Sheridan County this fall, demonstrates the need for this project in this particular area.
“You get a lightning strike in the Cloud Peak roadless area or the Rock Creek area up to the north, and it’s just just an ocean of solid trees that could blow through a matter of days and be off the forest and headed to private land, ranch land and homes,” he said. “I think we’ve just got to be more serious about being proactive and trying to get some fuel treatments in place before these fires happen, instead of just kind of hoping that they never do, because that’s just not a viable strategy.”
Still, local recreationists and environmental groups have voiced their concerns about the plan based on potential impacts to cross-country ski trails, wildlife and scenic values in the area.
Through the National Environmental Policy Act process, the forest received and responded to 13 objections to the plan. No major changes were made between the objection period and final decision.
Forest officials have made changes to the plan since its inception in 2022, based on public comment and engagement with the local Powder Pass Nordic Club, which uses ski trails within the project area.
Initially, 750 acres that comprised the area’s Nordic ski trails were included in the plan. After some input from local skiers, the plan included a 200-foot buffer around the trees that, the plan says, will keep sunlight and wind from degrading snow conditions on the trail system. The decision document says officials also considered scenic values along U.S. Highway 16 in excluding the acreage.
Acting Powder River District Ranger Matt Enger signed the final record of decision. The plan was first under the purview of former ranger Thad Berrett, who resigned in October.
Past logging prescriptions and an absence of wildfire from the landscape have created monotypic stands in the Pole Creek area, which are primarily lodgepole pine between 130 and 140 years old. According to the project’s environmental assessment, just 1% of the lodgepole pine trees in the area are at an early development stage.
“These conditions have the potential to facilitate uncharacteristic fire behavior and pose a risk to forest resources and communities,” the decision document says. “In addition to increased wildfire risk, the lodgepole pine forests of the area exist at a very high-risk level from potential large-scale mountain pine beetle mortality.”
The plan also cites conifer encroachment on riparian areas, which diminishes natural fuel breaks and damages wildlife habitat. It also cites a societal need for wood products.
“Growth rates within many forest stands are stagnant or have slowed to unacceptably low levels which no longer support the development of timber resources for future generations,” the record of decision document says.
The proposal
The Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station recently published a report on forest treatments and fire in the Mountain West. It’s based on a review of more than 40 case studies where wildfire burned into areas with previous forest treatments.
Researchers found that thinning, coupled with prescribed burning or pile burning, can reduce future wildfire severity by more than 60% relative to untreated areas, the report says. Areas lacking previous treatment experienced greater fire severity compared with areas that had been treated.
Rathbone said that the research supports the decision to carry out a similar plan for the Pole Creek area.
As part of the Pole Creek project proposal, the Forest Service plans to accomplish 1,800 acres of “pre-commercial thinning” (intermediate treatments made to improve the composition, structure, condition, health, and growth of forest stands by cutting and felling a number of the trees present, the agency says) and 7,700 acres of timber harvest. That treatment includes clearcuts larger than 40 acres.
It also includes thinning within the wildland-urban interface near Pole Creek on 5,400 acres, in addition to prescribed burning. The goal outlined in the plan is a mosaic of mixed fire severity effects to increase fire resiliency. Aspen and riparian restoration will include removal of conifers to be replaced with aspens, which are a sort of natural fuel break because they don’t burn easily.
To complete these treatments, the Forest Service will construct roughly 5.3 miles of new road for temporary use. These will be closed to the public and will be reclaimed after the project, according to planning documents.
Local perspectives
Several objectors to the plan cited impacts to recreation as a concern with the Pole Creek plan, including Bill Novotny, who commented on behalf of the Johnson County Commission.
While the forest removed from the plan some thinning areas within the Nordic area, it added treatments in another area popular among cross-country skiers, Powder Pass 449.
“Thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of recreation dollars have been invested in this area,” Novotny wrote. “Degrading the recreational experience by removing the timber is unwise and counterproductive.”
Aaron Kessler, president of Powder Pass Nordic Club, similarly said he has persistent concerns with the plan, namely that the club is still uncertain exactly what areas will be impacted and when.
“We are a season-specific club, and if you’re going to use roads as logging roads, that is exactly where the ski trails are. There’s a giant conflict,” he said. “We would hope that before the actual removal of trees actually happens that the interested parties – the ski club and others – would be informed before any large changes actually take place.”
Jennifer Walker, a retired fire ecologist, engaged with the vegetation management plan and submitted comments to the Forest Service from a scientific perspective, and as a recreationist who skis both the established and remote trails in the area.
In an interview, she said she concurred with the agency that this treatment needs to happen based on past logging prescriptions that have left behind fuels buildup, and that “you can’t go wrong” with creating age and size diversity in timber stands.
“The best way to treat fuels is with fire; but if we can’t use fire, then we just have to do mechanical treatments,” Walker said. “I would love to have seen more fire, but I think they’re balancing what they can really do with recreation in the community would like to see, because certainly they don’t want to burn anything that has timber value.”
While clearcutting, which will be a treatment tactic used in the plan, can be controversial for its environmental impacts and scenic value, Walker said that in lodgepole pine stands, the action can mimic a natural stand replacement fire.
There is debate about what’s best for wildlife. Walker noted that elk and pollinators enjoy grasses and forbs that grow after a clearcut.
In its comments, the Bighorn Audubon Society emphasizes the perils for the American goshawk, a sensitive bird species that stands to lose 40% of its habitat on the forest to timber treatments. The forest ultimately issued a finding of no significant impact of the treatments on wildlife habitat.
Rob Davidson, president of Council for the Bighorn Range, a local environmental organization, called for the forest to complete a more in-depth environmental impact statement instead of the more cursory environmental assessment, though that request was ultimately denied.
Davidson said the council’s main issues were with the extent of wildland urban interface thinning treatments, road construction and use and wildlife monitoring.
Those concerns go back to another Forest Service fuels project, the Buffalo Municipal Watershed project, and the fact that roads used in that project have not yet been reclaimed. Comments on other projects on the forest are considered outside of the scope of the project at hand in the NEPA process, though Davidson said it’s important to consider past projects.
“You judge them on past performance,” he said. “If it’s naturalizing roads, you say, ‘Hey, you’re not doing your job here on the Buffalo Municipal Watershed project.’”
When it comes to thinning that is said to protect the wildland urban interface, the council cites research that shows just 200 feet of treatments is necessary to create an adequate fuel break. That way, trees can maintain snow on trails. The Pole Creek plan has a one-third mile break.
For Davidson, the ideal plan includes aspen treatments to enhance riparian habitat and thinning to protect structures and other infrastructure, “but not to the extent that’s being planned.” He also noted that cabin owners should do their own mitigation on their properties to protect themselves in the event of a wildfire.
Rathbone said that the Pole Creek project is well positioned to slow down an ignition to the west based on prevailing winds that move fires in the area either west, southwest or northwest.
“You only have to go 6 or 7 miles in that direction and you’re at the forest boundary, and the forest boundary is just covered with homes at this point,” he said.
“We’ve all got to embrace the idea of taking proactive forest management more seriously if we’re going to avoid another Elk fire scenario,” Rathbone added. “I think, personally, the best time to have done this project would have been 20 or 30 years ago. But the second best time is now.”
This story was published on December 12, 2024.