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VERNON — Last year, 101,280 acres were burned by wildfires in Utah, and nearly 600 days of work were collectively put in by firefighters to combat the flames in 2015.
These statistics are what usually gets the attention when discussing wildfires, but there are other stories about what goes on after the blaze is put out.
“The exciting stuff no doubt is the flames and the fire and the immediate danger, but what (people) are missing is the operation that takes place two or three months afterward," said Tyler Thompson, Utah's watershed program director for the Division of Natural Resources. "That’s us, mobilizing to put seed on the ground and chain those areas making sure that we’re protecting it."
He and his team are the state's response group that gets Utah’s public land back into shape after a wildfire. Thompson said they take a look at the land and decide what’s the best way forward. Every fire is different, and sometimes terrain can be a limiting factor, forcing them to use a plane or helicopter in the reseeding efforts. If the terrain allows, crews will also use bulldozers to help in the process.
“We’ll take two large bulldozers with a giant anchor chain strung between them and that kind of rolls across the surface in a diagonal motion, and it helps cover that seed and plant it into the ground,” Thompson said.
In early September 2016, a lightning strike ignited part of the Sheeprock Mountains just west of Vernon. The Western Government Fire torched the area, causing damage to over 4,000 acres of public land. U.S. Forest Service Ranger George Garcia said it was a mixed intensity fire where only 2 percent burned at the highest levels and 88 percent was moderate or low intensity.
“The remaining amount, about 10 percent of it, were islands within the fire that did not burn,” Garcia said.
Before the fire, recreators and grazing cattle would enjoy “a good mix of sagebrush, standing juniper, native grasses, forbs, and wildflowers,” Garcia said. But after the fire, the land was “mostly bare and black ashes.”
Relics of the fire, such as burned pieces of juniper, stood in contrast to the green seedlings and flowers beginning to sprout from the ground.
Using a drone, one could see the progress of the fire and where it ended. When it comes to rehabilitation, Garcia said every agency does things a little differently. The state and Bureau of Land Management are very “aggressive” in its rehabilitation efforts, but Garcia said things are different at the Forest Service, where they will sometimes “let Mother Nature take its course.”
However, he said money was saved for monitoring the land because it’s important to keep invasive species, like cheatgrass, out so native species have a chance to thrive.
Ultimately, Garcia said it will take at least two years before the land is recovered to the point where cattle can graze the land again — and two years is a short time in comparison to other fires.
It took five years for the slopes near Alpine to recover after the quail fire burned over 2000 acres in 2012. Forest Service water and soil project manager Charlie Condrat said most of the Quail Fire burned at low and moderate levels, but some of the major effects of the fire weren’t felt until after a strong rain.
“Depending on the storm intensities, you can still get runoff that will go down through the main drainages and have material come out of them,” Condrat said.
He said the vegetation and mulch that originally held down soil was damaged during the fire and with nothing to hold the soil in place, it's easy for soil to runoff.
Barriers had to be put in place to help protect homes from debris flows coming out of the canyons in the area. Condrat said the Forest Service found an increase in the amount of sediment in streams in the area but did not see substantial growth of the channels of those streams.
“(The streams) have recovered,” Condrat said. “It's all grassed in or there’s shrubbery that’s in there now.”
Condrat said factors like terrain, vegetation type and rainfall made the rehabilitation effort more difficult than other fires. Studies have found terrain reduces the effectiveness of reseeding efforts and even if reseeding were done, the vegetation in the area recovers naturally at similar rates.
“Very few (rehabilitation methods) are effective on steep slopes, we have really steep slopes here. They’re 60 percent or greater,” he said.
Condrat said rain acts for and against recovery efforts. He said plants in the area can grow faster with a surplus of water, but those same high flows could sweep away the soil off steeper slopes.
In his summary of the recovery efforts, Condrat added the land goes through cycles of destruction and rebirth, with fire being a key component. He said scars on the landscape left by erosive forces could be there for centuries and the best anyone can do is work to sustain the land for current and future generations.
Geoffrey Thatcher is a reporter for KSL Newsradio. Email: gthatcher@ksl.com
