Smoke rises from the Collins Creek prescribed burn near Woody Creek in May 2021. The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative is looking to build on work completed on public lands to harden local communities against wildfire.
Imagine a truck dragging a chain or a cigarette tossed from a car’s window along Highway 133, outside Carbondale toward Redstone.
If that spark lands in dry, roadside vegetation in typical summer conditions — low humidity, westerly winds and high afternoon temperatures — it could ignite a fire with the potential to spread from the highway to threaten the town of Snowmass Village within 12 hours.
That’s according to a wildfire simulation done by Roaring Fork Fire Rescue and the U.S. Forest Service about five years ago. Roaring Fork Fire Rescue Chief Scott Thompson and other local fire officials across an array of agencies participate in a simulated fire exercise each year, and this one stuck with him.
“It’s continuous fuels, and a lot of it is very hazardous oak brush, which in fires like Coal Seam and Lake Christine, a lot of those fires burned in the oak brush and it really increased the intensity and the speed of the fire,” Thompson said.
The simulation — which was done using Forest Service software called FlamMap — and analysis from the Colorado State Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk Assessment show the potential for a high-intensity fire that spreads quickly across the landscape between the Crystal River and Snowmass. The tools use factors such as topography, fuels and winds to predict how a fire might move, and they confirm that wildfire risk in the Roaring Fork watershed calls for coordinated preparation.
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative, a nonprofit that brings together local fire agencies and experts, is using tools such as fire simulation to prioritize and fund work that can help mitigate the danger of wildfire, which is both an ecological necessity and a threat to communities.
According to Executive Director Angie Davlyn, the collaborative is in the final stages of fundraising for a series of projects in the midvalley that include mapping, planning and conducting prescribed burns and other mitigation work on private and public lands. The intent is to knit together fire mitigation work on 300 acres near the Sopris Mountain Ranch subdivision with projects led by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on nearby public lands. This area was identified by the collaborative’s projects committee, composed of 21 experts from 10 agencies, because of the high risk of wildfire, the many homes that could be threatened and the need for a fire break to protect Snowmass Village.
The goal is to create a delineation or an area that can slow a wildfire and provide access for firefighters.
The team working on the 2021 Collins Creek prescribed burn meets for a briefing.
“What I’m trying to do is connect the public [lands] — Forest Service and BLM — onto private [land] to make this fire-stop delineation that we could actually get in there and stop a fire,” Thompson said.
The Colorado State Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk Viewer tool shows that much of the Roaring Fork watershed could experience moderate- to high-intensity fire.
Public land management agencies such as the Forest Service and BLM, local fire agencies and local governments, as well as homeowners associations and private landowners, all have an interest in reducing wildfire danger, and the wildfire collaborative aims to bridge communication, raise funds and help these groups work together to maximize impact.
“Wildfire is pretty far outside of the scope of fire districts that are tasked with and funded for putting out structure fires, but are increasingly wanting to get into the wildfire space but don’t have funding to do large-scale wildfire-mitigation projects,” Davlyn said. “Wildfire is also outside the scope of municipalities and counties that manage the land that is vulnerable to wildfire and have a stake in protecting the lives and structures of their constituents but don’t have an abundance of extra funds to do the work that’s needed to make those places more resilient.”
Angie Davlyn, executive director of the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative, poses with Smokey the Bear. Davlyn coordinates work across the many agencies and entities interested in mitigating the dangers of wildfires near communities in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Uniting federal, local goals
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative began as the brainchild of local fire agencies; it was designed as a program at the Aspen Institute in 2022 and became a separate nonprofit last April, with Davlyn, who became the collaborative director in June 2023, at the helm.
Now, the collaborative is part of seven large-scale fire-mitigation projects, including the Sunnyside prescribed burn planned for this spring in Aspen; the work to create a firebreak in the midvalley; and projects in Basalt, Marble, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs.
“All of us in the valley are doing work, but we kind of get in our own silos,” said Dan Nielsen, a fuels specialist for the White River National Forest who works on prescribed burns and other wildfire mitigation projects. “The collaborative allows us to come together, so we know where people are working, and if there’s an opportunity to partner, we can pool funding and do cross-boundary work. We’re treating across boundaries because fire doesn’t know there’s an arbitrary line; fire’s going to go across the line. But if we can do work on both sides of the fence, then you get a better product, and it makes it so we’re getting more acres treated as well.”
Davlyn said part of the collaborative’s goal is to capitalize on work that is already happening to harden communities against the damages of wildfire. Often, that means working to build on projects in the Forest Service’s 2011 Aspen-Sopris Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project, which identified 22 locations in the White River National Forest’s Aspen-Sopris Ranger District that would benefit from prescribed fire.
“We come in and try to amplify their impact,” Davlyn said. “We aren’t in a position where we’re bringing funds to the Forest Service. We’re gathering funds to do work on non-Forest Service lands that are contiguous or nearby, because the Forest Service can’t work outside of their own lands.”
For example, the Forest Service in 2011 approved a 2,800-acre prescribed burn in East Sopris Creek that is tentatively scheduled for 2025; the wildfire collaborative is working to add 300 acres of forest-thinning near Sopris Mountain Ranch. The intended impact is a mosaic pattern of areas with resilience to wildfire.
Large-scale, damaging wildfires in Los Angeles and Lahaina, Hawaii, have galvanized community support for mitigation work, while simultaneously, budget cuts at the Forest Service and other federal agencies have left funding in question.
The Lake Christine Fire burns on Basalt Mountain in 2018. The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative works to secure funding for work to mitigate wildfire hazards near local communities.
Davlyn, the sole employee of the wildfire collaborative, has been aggressive in seeking grant opportunities to support wildfire mitigation near homes. The operations of Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative are funded by contributions from four fire districts, four counties and six municipalities spanning the watershed from Aspen to Glenwood Springs and from Basalt to Marble.
To cover project costs, Davlyn said she has raised $2.42 million in the past two years, including a $1 million grant from the Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Program that will go toward fuels-reduction work near Glenwood Springs.
But other grant opportunities funded by federal agencies such as the BLM and the Forest Service, as well as state programs that rely on federal funds, have been disappearing. The potential for staffing cuts at the Forest Service is concerning as well.
“We need funds and the people to do the work,” Davlyn said. “We count on the Forest Service to plan, map and execute these very large-scale prescribed burns with their staff, who are exceptionally trained in this work.”
Davlyn and other members of the wildfire collaborative, including the four fire protection districts in the Roaring Fork Valley, sent a letter dated Feb. 25 to Brooke Rollins, the Trump administration’s secretary of agriculture, who oversees federal land management agencies, highlighting the adverse effects of recent staffing cuts.
“Staff reductions within our region’s Forest Service have a direct and measurable adverse impact on our local communities and the national economy. These professionals are essential for maintaining safe recreation use, monitoring forest conditions, and proactively mitigating wildfire threats,” the letter reads.
The signees ask for “continued and robust support for the Forest Service” to ensure safety and economic resilience.
On the ground, staffing cuts could mean delays in projects that have been in the works for years.
“Staffing numbers are so important,” Davlyn said. “The quicker we move, the more likely we’ll have a robust federal workforce to work with.”
Davlyn is hopeful that she can secure the final $100,000 needed for the Sopris Mountain Ranch project to move ahead this year, alongside the Forest Service’s plan for a prescribed burn. She also anticipates that the collaborative will need to rely more heavily on private fundraising rather than grants for future work.
Firefighters work on a prescribed burn near Avalanche Creek in May 2023. The U.S. Forest Service conducts prescribed burns to improve wildlife habitat based on a project plan from 2011.
A call to homeowners
Wildfire is both normal and beneficial for local ecosystems; each forest type in the area has evolved with fire.
“In some cases, fire is really important as a source of renewal, like in aspen forests,” said Adam McCurdy, forest and climate director at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. “Aspens are a really fire-adapted species. Their root systems survive fire really well and they come up after fire really well.”
A 2017 report from Colorado State University found that after the 2016 prescribed fire in the Hunter Creek Valley, aspen stands that had burned produced far more suckers — or new stems — compared with those that did not. There were 2,384 suckers per acre in burned plots compared with 255 per acre in unburned plots.
Because deer and elk browse heavily on young aspens, groves that have denser growth are more likely to have trees that reach maturity, McCurdy said.
Other forest types, such as scrub oak, see different benefits; in these areas, thanks to the region’s dry climate, which slows decomposition, old, dead vegetation can build up for years without fire to clear it out.
“Fire is a really important mechanism or force that breaks down that biomass and returns the nutrients to the soil,” McCurdy said. Without regular burning, that vegetation builds up as fuel for wildfires. In many cases, prescribed fire can help reduce that fuel load, while also benefiting the ecosystem.
The Forest Service’s wildlife habitat projects from 2011 illustrate how forest managers are working to balance the risks and benefits of fire using prescribed burning.
“For a lot of years, the White River National Forest had been not really as much of a fire forest, being high elevation and a little wetter,” Nielsen said. But large wildfires such as the Lake Christine fire in 2018 and the Grizzly Creek and Pine Gulch fires in 2020 are indicating a shift.
Although past prescribed burns focused on improving wildlife habitat, Nielsen said there’s a move now to increasingly use prescribed burns and other treatments to protect communities from wildfire.
“As we move forward, we’re looking more to target areas of vegetation that are closer to communities and higher risk,” Nielsen said. “We’re shifting from more wildlife habitat to a lot more true fuels-reduction. Usually, you get both — you can improve wildlife habitat and reduce fuels at the same time.”
The communities that face the largest risks are those that are situated in fire-prone areas, and Nielsen and others urge private landowners to pick up where the public entities leave off.
“The biggest threat is [to] folks that are adjacent to forests, residences surrounded by vegetation,” Nielsen said. “There’s some onus on them to do some work.”
Davlyn and the wildfire collaborative hope to step in here, to connect forest-level projects and individual or neighborhood work to harden homes against wildfire.
“It’s cool for us to do these large projects on the landscape, but we also have to do the work to get the trees away from your homes, which is less flashy and more practical,” Davlyn said. “We’re only successful at achieving community resilience if we do both.”
Davlyn points to research by Jack Cohen, a retired Forest Service fire scientist who has done work on fire mitigation around homes. His work shows that clearing flammable material away from homes so that embers can’t ignite is highly effective.
“The science is clear; we know exactly what burns down homes. It’s embers,” Davlyn said. “We know that we need to make home hardening interesting and compelling.”
Davlyn said the collaborative will work with communities about code requirements that can help lower the risk of wildfire to neighborhoods and homes. In the meantime, people can take simple steps to protect their own homes.
“It’s always the right time to do mitigation work, especially at a home level,” Davlyn said. “It doesn’t have to be huge, daunting, and it typically requires just the carpentry skills of a high school student.”
Some steps might be to place wire mesh over dryer vents, to clear pine needles and leaves from roofs and gutters, and to remove dry vegetation or flammable material close to the home.
Local fire experts also encourage residents to stay informed and connected to community alerts.
“It’s really up to the individual homeowners and citizens to prepare and be ready for evacuation,” said John Mele, fire marshal for Roaring Fork Fire Rescue. “That will be a key thing to help save lives.”
