Yellowstone Developed Area Fuels Management

A masticator removes fuels as part of the 2021 Grant Fuels Reduction Project in Yellowstone National Park.

NPS, J.W. Frank

In 2021, Yellowstone National Park continued and completed mechanical fuel treatments that began in 2020 on 262 acres in and around the Grant Village developed area. This was a continuation of a similar fuels project completed in West Yellowstone in 2019 and will be continued in the Lake District in 2022. All these projects are designed to create defensible space adjacent to structures to protect human life, property, and resources from the threat of wildfires by changing the fuel structure to reduce crown fire potential and to slow ground fire spread.

These areas have traditionally been hand-thinned or treated by horse logging. This was the first planned mechanical treatment in the park’s history and led to an exponential increase in acres being treated and a safer operation for workers performing the treatment. The environmental compliance, cultural compliance, and fuels planning was performed by NPS staff; the treatment work was done by two contracted Type 1 masticators and two Type 2 masticators.

Yellowstone resource management staff surveyed Grant Village for post-treatment invasive species and implemented chemical control where needed. The Yellowstone fuels management program plans to do second entry on these treatment units in four to seven years to ensure the project objectives continue to be met.