Last updated: December 19, 2023
Article
Sustaining a park and a workforce through prescribed fire
NPS
The National Park Service’s Four Winds Fire Zone manages wildland fires at six National Park Service (NPS) sites in central New Mexico and east-central Arizona. Over five days in late May and early June 2023, the zone completed a 1,021-acre prescribed fire in El Malpais National Monument. The Lava Fields prescribed fire was designed to accomplish three goals: reduce fuels near natural and cultural resources, roads, and private property, reintroduce low-intensity fire into the fire-dependent pinyon-juniper and Ponderosa pine ecosystem, and reduce the likelihood of unwanted wildfires on the landscape. Furthermore, it was an example of the sustainability that park and fire managers are striving for in the park’s landscape and in the Four Winds Fire Program.
The Lava Fields prescribed fire was necessary due to the buildup of grasses and brush. Light fuels found in the burn area, such as cured grasses, can carry fire at a rapid pace. The medium fuels, such as brush and bushes, can act as ladder fuels that allow fire to gain intensity that can threaten the pinyon-juniper woodlands or the Ponderosa pine forests in the park. Reducing hazard fuels aims to slow future wildland fire spread, both from outside fires entering the park or from fires that start on the park from leaving NPS lands.
NPS
In the last week of May 2023, conditions were favorable to complete the prescribed fire. Fire staff from Saguaro National Park’s Wildland Fire Module, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Bandelier National Monument, Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Big Bend National Park including the Diablos Type 2 Initial Attack crew, and the Cibola National Forest were included in the 60 firefighters that carried out the operation.
Conditions remained favorable for the week and crews successfully burned multiple units. In addition to reducing fire risk, the prescribed fire reintroduced fire into a fire-dependent ecosystem to maintain the vegetation types that are adapted to the area’s natural fire regime as well as maintaining a sustainable stand density that is resistant to drought and threats that have devastated nearby pinyon-juniper forests.
One of the burn units surrounded the “Bat Cave” located at El Calderon, home to a maternity colony of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats. Bats began returning to the area just days prior to the planned prescribed fire. Fire managers consulted resource management staff and plans for executing the prescribed fire continued as the bats were not at their most sensitive to disturbance. The firing operation around the opening of the cave removed surface fuels and firefighters took care to minimize smoke near the cave’s opening to reduce impacts to the bats. Removing the grasses and other fuels near the cave’s opening reduced the likelihood of a fast-moving or high-severity wildfire burning into the area during a time that could be most detrimental to the bat population.
NPS