There are many ways you can become involved with your community focusing on forest health and wildfire issues. One of the best ways is to join the conversation at local forest health collaboratives that have monthly meetings, field trips, and learning opportunities.

Join the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership in the Pagosa Springs area.

Join the4 Rivers Resilient Forest Collaborative in the Durango, Bayfield, and Silverton area.

Join the Dolores Watersheds Collaborative in the Mancos and Dolores area.

Additional information can be found at the Fire Learning Network, on the get involved page on La Plata county's Wildfire Resource Center.You can also find information about current fire management practices on the US Forest Service fire page.

Living with fire is a reality in our forested communities. Fire is a necessary force for the health of the forest, but can also be detrimental to our ways of life. There are ways to prepare for wildfire by understanding and accepting risk and taking actions to mitigate that risk.

To learn about what you can do at your home and property to reduce risk and maintain insurance, visit Wildfire Adapted Partnership.

The Colorado State Forest Service has excellent information to Live Wildfire Ready. They also have good resources that describe Wildfire Mitigation.

To learn more about how you can be prepared to live with wildfire, you can find the latest information on the La Plata county Wildfire Resource Center Get Prepared page.

There’s great information on what it means to live with fire and how fire is beneficial from the Fire Learning Network.

One thing is clear: fire is inevitable. Fire is also natural. Our forested ecosystems have adapted to live with fire, meaning that they rely on fire’s presence for their well being. That does not mean it is a process without some level of destruction. Fire burns things, after all, and can cause negative impacts to our resources, but those fires also provide conditions for regrowth, species diversity, animal habitat, and more. Fire is part of the natural cycles of life in the forest, where things are always in a state of change.

Colorado State Forest Service has a document about the Role of Wildland Fire in Our Forest. The Fire Learning Network specializes in putting beneficial fire back on the landscape to reduce harmful fire.

Human interventions can change the role of fire for better or for worse. Suppressing wildfire can lead to more intense fires that have increased and more long term negative consequences to water and other resources. However, given that we live in places with fire and want to protect those places, we often must intervene. There is a balance of protecting our resources and homes and allowing fire to play its vital role.

Our most precious resource in the Southwest is water. The health of a forest has a direct connection to a healthy watershed that provides clean and ample water for plants and animals (like us). The conditions of soil, tree density, diversity of tree species, and intensity of fire all change the amount, timing, and quality of the water that becomes groundwater and flows in streams and rivers.

New research, including snowtography sites managed by Mountain Studies Institute, is underway to help quantify how forests and watersheds are related.

Colorado State Forest Service has a nice web page on Forests and Water United in the West.

Understanding the risk to your home has multiple stages. The home itself and immediate surroundings can be assessed by Wildfire Adapted Partnership.

The overall risk of your neighborhood or region is more complex. Models and maps provide information about risk. For example, in La Plata County, there’s the Wildfire Hazard Map. The US Forest Service compiles different data sets to create their Wildfire Risk to Communities. FEMA has a more generalized National Risk Index map as well.

There are also circumstantial conditions that can change wildfire risk, such as Red Flag Warnings that are issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Local US Forest Service Ranger Districts also issue warnings.

A prescribed fire is when land managers, like the US Forest Service, intentionally put fire on the landscape to mimic the natural fires that occur in forested areas, albeit with many constraints and safety considerations. Fire is an important and inevitable force in the forest. Prescribed fires, by mimicking the frequency of natural fires, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, improve habitat and forest health, support the protection of homes and communities.

Even though the benefits are very similar to naturally occurring fires, prescribed fire allows land managers to plan and prepare, choose the right conditions, and minimize smoke, unlike naturally caused fires.

Here is some great information on benefits and details of prescribed fire by the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the US Forest Service.

Land managers must extensively plan and consider many conditions before a prescribed fire can occur, such as temperature, air humidity, humidity of vegetation, wind, amount of fuel (trees and vegetation), and more.

Learn more about efforts to bring back fire in its beneficial role from the Fire Learning Network.

Forest management does not have a one size fits all solution. There are various approaches to managing a forest depending on the existing conditions and the goals for the forest. In a general sense, managing the forest means living in balance with the forest. That includes improving forest health, reducing risk of catastrophic wildfire, access to wood products, and more. It also depends on who owns the land. The US Forest Service is the largest land manager in our area, but forest management happens on all lands, private and public.

To accomplish any particular goal, there are a number of available tools from prescribed burns, tree thinning, to policy decisions around recreation and usage. In our area, we have the unique opportunity to join the conversation and help inform these decisions on forest management at local forest health collaboratives.

Learn more about how the US Forest Service manages forests. For work on private lands, look into Wildfire Adapted Partnership, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Colorado State Forest Service.

The impacts following a wildfire can last for decades whether from low or high intensity fires. These are called post-fire impacts. Ash and exposed sediment at the site of the fire are prone to erosion and deposition into water. This can impact water quality and damage water infrastructure. These erosive events can also cause mudslides and large debris to damage homes and waterways.

Public and private lands must think about these impacts long before fire occurs, knowing that even with a low intensity fire, there are post-fire impacts. Just like fire, post-fire impacts are inevitable.

The National Interagency Fire Center has information on the response to post-fire impacts.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board supports Wildfire Ready Watersheds that prepare for wildfire and the post-fire conditions.

Fire isn’t the only agent of change in the forest. Both insects and disease are natural elements of our environment and can often be significant disturbances to our forest populations. Some insects, such as bark beetles for example, can cause large-scale tree mortality when conditions are favorable. Diseases can also cause large-scale mortality. However, previous forest management (notably fire suppression) and climate change dramatically increase the impacts of insects and disease, disrupting the natural cycle of these disturbances.

If interested in more information, view the 2023 Report on the Health of Colorado’s Forests by the Colorado State Forest Service. Additionally, check from out the 2022 report, Forest Insect and Disease Conditions in the Rocky Mountain Region from the US Forest Service.

As climate change continues to create warmer and drier conditions with more intense precipitation events, especially in arid regions like here in the southwest, the risk and severity of forest fires significantly increases beyond the normal intervals of fire. With snow melting earlier in the year, more precipitation falling as rain, and persistent drought, prolonged fire seasons mean that forests are more susceptible to large, catastrophic fires that threaten critical habitat, soil health, and water quality. Forests are also more susceptible to insect and disease outbreaks.

Learn more about climate change impacts on forests from the Environmental Protection Agency. To get an overall sense of how climate change affects forests, go to this For more information on overall changes in the Southwest, visit this Environmental Protection Agency site on climate impacts.

This is a common question among folks we interviewed. Unfortunately, preventing wildfires altogether is not something we want to pursue, nor have the capacity to do. Wildfire is a natural phenomenon, similar to earthquakes and hurricanes in many ways. While we can suppress some fires, that act of suppression only makes the forest more susceptible to larger, more intense fires later. This article in Nature Communications suggests that a legacy of fire suppression has made wildfires more severe.

The aim, therefore, is to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of fire while understanding that fire is inevitable. That includes improving forest health, wildfire mitigation work, and even actions on your property.

Click HERE to learn more about fire danger levels and what the different stages of fire restrictions mean

The USDA Forest Service released short, informational videos about understanding stage I and II fire restrictions on national forests:

• Stage I Fire Restriction

• Stage II Fire Restriction

For issues related to ongoing fires, go to InciWeb, the Incident Information System. If the fire is on the National Forest, consult the San Juan National Forest website.

By intentionally and carefully planning fires we are reintroducing fire under conditions that limit impacts of smoke compared to unplanned and uncontrolled conditions during a wildfire. Using prescribed fire helps reduce fuels on the landscape and helps mitigate the risk of a large wildfire and the greater smoke impacts of a wildfire.

Smoke impacts and mitigation from prescribed fire is considered from the first phases of developing a burn plan all the way to the day of the fire. A plan is created that defines which communities would be impacted and identifies strict weather conditions under which a burn must be carried out to minimize impact. Fire managers must operate under a permit obtained from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment and closely monitor conditions to determine the optimal time to burn. Fire managers are always aiming to minimize impacts from smoke and attempt to carefully balance the impact of both time and intensity of smoke on the landscape.

• Fire Adapted Colorado, Smoke Ready

• Colorado Smoke Management Program

• Colorado Smoke Outlook

• Purple Air: Local Air Quality

• CDC: Wildfire Smoke and COVID-19

• NOAA’s Smoke and Hazard Mapping

• NOAA Smoke Forecast

• Wildfire Smoke: FAQs

• AirNow fire and smoke map