Forest tree cutting is gaining momentum in Colorado and the West — a federal push boosted by more than $5 billion from Congress to protect populated areas from worsening wildfires as the climate warms.
Lodgepole pines grow thick in mountain foothill forests west of Denver. Government-backed loggers cut down thousands. This left a hole across several acres of the popular Flying J Ranch Park that, close up, looks to visitors more like mowing than thinning.
U.S. Forest Service documents describe an unprecedented 10-year project to prevent wildfire catastrophes by “treating” — defined as prescribed burns or thinning — up to 50 million acres, mostly public forests in the West . Federal planners have prioritized forests around urban areas including Colorado’s Front Range from Fort Collins southward to Pueblo, designating this 3.5 million-acre area as one of the West’s most imperiled “high-risk fire-sheds.
If forests aren’t treated, “the impacts could be greater,” Buchanan said. “That’s what is poised to happen.” That’s how work began in the mountain foothills forests southwest of Denver in Jefferson County, including the 418-acre Flying J Ranch Park and the 667-acre Meyer Ranch Park – areas residents increasingly flock to for recreation as cities“I’ve been up to see our mitigation projects up close. I’ve been to the Flying J Ranch.
“Going into 2024, we’re looking at doing approximately 300 more acres of landscape management in some of the mountain parks the city owns,” Gilmore said. “Our forest is unhealthy, and a lodgepole pine forest should burn. Our forests are not burning because we put out the fires. We’re trying to re-create some of the natural ecosystems as if people were not around.”
Ecologists critical of large-scale forest cutting point to studies, including work by U.S. Forest Service researchers, that prioritize home protection over tree removal to minimize destruction.
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