Woodland Park Healthy Forest Initiative

Our Forests, Then and Now

Woodland Park around 1900, notice how open the forest on Gold Hill in the background is. (Photo courtesy of the Ute Pass Historical Society)

Most of the people who move to the forest do so for a number of reasons. Most often cited is the desire to live in a natural environment or something similar. To most folks the term natural means whatever the forest looked like the day they moved in.

Chances are that the forest in your front yard is about as natural as A Rod’s physique.

This is because your forest is supposed to burn about every 20 to 30 years but it hasn’t burned for a century. When ponderosa pine forests like those around Woodland Park burned frequently there wasn’t a lot of fuel build up between fires. Heat from fires on the ground pruned the lower limbs so that there was no fuel ladder to take the fire into the tree tops. Frequent fires also thinned the forest so that the trees were widely spaced. In the open forest with little fuel fires were cooler and tended to stay on the ground. Large trees with their thick bark weren’t harmed and younger trees were thinned, so the forest remained open.

After a century of fire suppression your forest is unnaturally dense, loaded with combustible fuel and unhealthy to boot. In such a forest a fire will quickly move from the ground to the tree tops and become an unstoppable inferno just like the Hayman Fire.

Woodland Park today. This photo was taken from the same spot as the previous one. Note how the openings on gold hill are gone and the trees have become more dense.

For example compare the two photographs of Woodland Park taken about a hundred years apart. Aside from the obvious differences of how our downtown has changed, look at gold hill in the background. Notice that the trees on Gold Hill are a great deal less dense, and that there are obvious openings in the trees in the old photo. This is the result natural result of frequent fires. In the modern photo the large opening on the left side of the photo has completely disappeared. A fire on the hill today will have a great deal more fuel and will be more intense.

Thus leaving the forest as you found it isn’t leaving it natural. Thinning the suppressed and unhealthy trees returns your forest to the natural open condition. In addition to reducing the threat of severe crown fires, the tress become less susceptible to attacks from bark beetles, wildlife habitat improves, property values increase, and the forest looks better.

Divide Slash Site Opening Soon!!!!

THE Slash Site is set to open Friday April 17th

And new this year, we are debuting a website for the Divide Slash Site 

www.divideslashsite.com

Please forward this link to anyone who might be interested!!

Also, click here to check out our slash site brochure: slash-site-trifold

We need everyone’s help!

The WPHFI is wonderful partnership of key stakeholders from the Woodland Park area, and it is a great opportunity for the community and surrounding area. The objective of the Initiative is to thin the densely stocked ponderosa pine stands surrounding the community in order to make the area more resilient to catastrophic wildfire. These forest treatments would not only make the forest more resilient to catastrophic wildfire, but would also improve the health of individual trees, making them more resistant to bark beetle infestation, and more resilient to drought. As an additional benefit to the treatments, the Initiative is endeavoring to remove and chip as much of the forest thinning as possible, then utilize this woody biomass as a source of renewable energy. I’m excited about the prospects of what can be achieved, but the Initiative’s partners can’t do it by themselves: we need your help! We need single landowners and subdivisions to get engaged. We need a community effort! It’s a great opportunity to help our forest.

Bob Leaverton

Forest Supervisor, Pike & San Isabel National Forests
and Cimarron & Comanche National Grasslands

Cutting trees

OK, call me crazy. Last night I started humming Led Zepplin’s good times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share, but the words going through my mind were good trees, bad trees, you know I’ve known my share. This really is a bit crazy, I admit. But it’s also true that me, a treehugger at heart, now looks at trees differently.

We just bought a new place off Teller 1, and when I look at the trees around it, I see a whole lot of them that need cutting. There are the three old pines up against the house, and the one tangled in the electrical wires. There are the ones on the hill that are blocking the little winter sun that we get. And there are the ones that are bunched in a draw, far too tight for their own good. There are the ladder fuels from firs and spruce, that definitely need trimming up a ways, and the dead aspen set up like pick-up sticks among another tight bunch of pines. Our forest isn’t healthy, and so are trees aren’t all good.

I still love trees. I really do. And I love our forests. They are beautiful. They provide services to us, ranging from holding the soil to capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. They provide habitat for our wildlife. And they can heat our buildings, and make electricity. How can you not love trees? But loving them doesn’t mean never cutting them.

Carol Ekarius
Executive Director,
Coalition for the Upper South Platte
www.uppersouthplatte.org