Rainbow Point Fuels Reduction Project at Bryce Canyon National Park

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Narrator: Wildfire, it's a familiar scene across the western U.S. Millions of acres are consumed annually with the toll increasing every year.

2018's burned acreage total of 8.8 million acres nearly matched 2017's total of 10 million acres. As burned acreage totals rise, the cost to combat wildland fire rises as well. In 2018, federal agencies spent over $200 million more than they had in all of 2017. So, what do we do? How do we mitigate loss? What steps do we take as public land management agencies to reduce cost and minimize risk? Within the Department of the Interior, agencies have been tasked with undertaking active fire management. At Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah, current Superintendent Linda Mazzu, former Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh, and former fire management specialist, Doug Sprouse, talk about active fire management, its origins, and how it's been implemented at specific areas within Bryce Canyon National Park.

Linda Mazzu: Active fire management is a way to look at how we do hazard fuel reduction, which is not a new program at all. We've been doing it in the Park Service and other agencies for many many years. It's a way for us to look at and explain that when you have a forest that hasn't burned in a long, long time, we actually have to manage that forest to make sure that wildland fire can move into an area if it happens, and not totally devastate an area. Maintain ecological function and make sure that our structures and infrastructure are protected. So it's all about hazard fuel reduction. Doug Sprouse: In 2009, a managed fire necessitated closing down of the park road while there were still visitors at Rainbow Point. After a little confusion they were able to evacuate the visitors down a back road. And, it was thought that it would be safer to actually start reducing the fuels in the area in case a fast-moving fire was to come up to the area. The officials, if they did not to have that time to evacuate people, it could be catastrophic.

Narrator: Former Bryce Canyon National Park Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh, discusses what led to the decision to implement the mechanical thin and piling and pile burning project during his tenure. Jeff Bradybaugh: A 2011 structural fire assessment evaluated various areas in the park for susceptibility and safety concerns for wildland fire. That particular area at any given time in the summer can have thousands of visitors and there are very few escape routes. There's one route in and one route out, same route. So, we were concerned about the fuel accumulation, both live and dead fuels.

Linda Mazzu: We certainly have done fuel reduction around, all around our developed area. Around our National Historic Landmark which is the Bryce Canyon Lodge. Around our park housing, around any structures, we've done hand piling and burning, it's called mechanical thinning. But, right now our focus for the past three years has been a Rainbow Point. And, Rainbow Point is an area where we have a different type of forest than most of the park. It is called mixed conifer forest, so it's got a lot of dense conifer trees, they're supposed to be things like spruce, bristlecone pine, douglas fir, and what happened is that because fires have not burned there in a long time there's a species called white fir that has come up under the canopy of the forest and it's crowding out the understory and creating this dense forest situation, where if a fire were to hit it, it would be very devastating to that forest.

Jeff Bradybaugh: The wildland-urban interface situations are increasing around the West and, in fact, nationally. So, we do need to look at these fire assessments seriously and think about what are the safety concerns? What the forest health situation is because we certainly have a number of disease and insect-damage outbreaks in the West and so we need to take those things into consideration and if we have alternative funding sources. Not always can we fund these projects out of fire funds.

Doug Sprouse: These small-scale active management projects are what allow us to do large-scale active management projects. Such as the Riggs and Lonely fires. When we, when we do these smaller scale projects, protecting infrastructure allows us to more safely conduct large-scale managed wildland fires with, for a lower cost, because it takes less money to do the work upfront, beforehand, than to be reactive in the case of trying to fight a fire, to trying to do, do a full suppression fire.

Linda Mazze: We've been able to, to pass on economic benefit of this project towards other groups, such as ACE, which is Americans Conservation Experience interns. And, then also, UCC which is the Utah Conservation Corps. You know, both youth groups. So we've been able to fund those groups, provide revenue to them to help us pile these piles. We've also had a lot of groups come in and just help us out. We've had veterans group, we've had volunteer groups, and so, you know, it takes a huge effort. I understand the groups love doing it. I don't, I need to go out there and try. I guess it's really fun to pile these hand piles. They're, they're pretty big and, you know, people feel we do a lot of different volunteer efforts here, but the people working on the hand piles feel like they can really see success in what they're doing. And, in fact, I can't recall what else they helped with, but there was one group who did some work doing something else and said "can we go back and do the hand piles?" And now, it's even more important to show that all their effort basically helped us to manage the Riggs Fire in a way that was way more economically palatable than a lot of wildfires, I mean it could have cost millions of dollars if we hadn't had that fuel reduction project done because we would have had to been fighting fire very aggressively with all, with the amount of thick forests, dead & downed fuels. But because we'd stacked that and we were able to control how we, we lit off a line and met the fires that came towards us, we saved, millions of dollars probably.

Doug Sprouse: Definitely a success story that shows that our fuels reduction projects work. And hopefully we'll be able to use that to continue the work across the boundaries, Forest Service, BLM, Park Service, throughout the Department of Interior and continue to do good work on the land.

Linda Mazzu: I think this is a success story that we should be telling as many people as we can. Because, you know, it's, it's not always the case that you do a hazard fuel reduction project and you actually get to use it right away or within a couple years. And, and, it is, I mean, it really changed the fire behavior because we did that. So, I think it's a great story to tell. And it's an important story to tell when it comes to things like how we fund our fuels reduction projects. I mean, this project was done with a combination of funding sources but primarily it was some National Park Service fuels funding from the fire program but it was also other funding that the park relies on, such as, primarily it was concession franchise fee. Which you wouldn't think is something that helps with a resource project, but if we can attend to all our commercial service's needs and visitor experience needs with the amount of concession franchise fee we get, we can then use that money for resource projects. And so this was an ideal project to use that funding for.

So, now that the fire's gone through, we have yet another chapter to tell in our story about fire ecology. And that chapter is all about the fact that these ecosystems are fire dependent. And we kind of ignored that for 100 to 150 years. We've put fires out, we're afraid of fire and it's not really about fire being devastating or catastrophic. The acres haven't, you know, they always say acres burned, you know, or acres lost, the acres are still there, they're, they're recovering. And if we can manage fire in a way for ecological benefit, which is a huge part of our fire management plan, we will be able to get back to a healthy ecosystem. So now, that's what the interpretation program is going to get to talk about, I think that's pretty exciting for them and for the visitor. We've got a lot to show, not just about the fuel reduction but about fire ecology.

Duration:

11 minutes, 24 seconds

The Rainbow Point Fuels Reduction Project at Bryce Canyon National Park and the successful utilization of that treatment to stop the Riggs/Lonely Fires in 2018.