Three years and 11 months ago, as the horrific Hayman Fire roared southwest of Denver, government agencies, environmentalists and other interest groups squabbled over who was to blame for the flame-prone conditions in our Front Range forests.
Fortunately, the U.S. Forest Service got the feuding groups to talk about how to reduce the obvious and alarming fire risks. This week, a joint plan was made public by the 30 federal and state agencies, local governments, environmentalists, municipal water providers and university experts involved in the Front Range Fuels Partnership Roundtable.
Most important, the group set priorities so the most urgently needed projects will get money first. The top, interrelated goals are to protect communities and to restore the natural ecological balance in our local forests. The problems have festered for more than a decade but could prove particularly dangerous this summer due to continued drought.
However, the plan still needs to be properly funded. Gov. Bill Owens took an important step when he signed legislation creating the state’s first permanent fund for wildfire preparedness. The $3.2 million a year for firefighting equipment and similar efforts is a good down payment. Yet it’s a fraction of the $15 million needed each year for 40 years, or a total of $600 million, to clean out the dangerous build-up of deadwood, non-native plants and sick trees in our foothills and mid-elevation forests. The funding will more than pay for itself. Every dollar spent on preventing wildfire saves $5 to $7 later in firefighting costs.
Congress also needs to ante up. For at least five years, Uncle Sam has spent more than $1 billion annually putting out wildfires, yet provided only one-third that sum to prevent such blazes from occurring.
The dearth of government dollars doesn’t excuse private inaction, though, as private land accounts for 60 percent of the area where fire hazards most need to be reduced.
The roundtable’s other goals include using more controlled fires to clear out the build-up of wildfire fuel. Scraggly trees and other unhealthy plants will be cut down and removed, leaving larger, flame-resistant trees in better condition. The group says schools and other institutions should use the “biomass” waste to heat their buildings. The legislature, school boards and counties should implement these ideas.
Most important, local governments must limit development in the “red zones.” The risks are such a public worry, after all, precisely because so many projects have sprouted in the midst of fire-prone forests.
