Eastern Montana rancher says BLM prescribed burns helped improve land, minimize wildfire's impact
Northwest
of Sand Springs where rancher Kenny Rich makes his living, the log
cabin built from hand-felled trees and insulated with sod by his
ancestors still stands more than 100 years after the homesteaders
arrived in Garfield County.
In
a landscape where fire is an inevitability, part of the family ranch's
survival story on their slice of the Missouri River Breaks includes an
adversarial relationship with wildfires based on the knowledge of how
fast things can go wrong when fire touches timber and grass.
“Ranching in this country’s a bit of a gamble,” Rich said of fire danger in the region.
The
temporary fire suppression gains in protection of property and
well-being are undeniable, but around 20 years ago Rich began to wonder
about the long-term effects on his land as a result of fighting all
those fires.
Acres of
overly thick stands of ponderosa pine had gone unchecked due to
wildfire suppression, choking out the chance for grass to grow and
smothering valuable land with pine needles and canopy shade.
"When
it gets like this," Rich said, gesturing towards a thick grouping of
pines, "that's when I realized back quite awhile ago that we had to
start doing something. It's pretty much stagnant."
The
decision wasn't an easy one, Rich said, but on Easter Sunday in 2000,
he and the Miles City Bureau of Land Management's Fuel Treatment Office
partnered on a 3,600-acre burn across his land and government land, one
of the first major burns by the BLM's Miles City office in cooperation
with an Eastern Montana rancher.
A devastating prairie fire
What
may have seemed like a risk nearly 20 years ago appears to have paid
off in the wake of the Lodgepole Complex fire, which last year burned
across 270,723 acres of land in Garfield and Petroleum counties,
destroying structures, killing cattle, damaging fence lines and
temporarily depriving ranchers of the grassland and hay crucial to their
livelihoods.
All of
Rich's land could have burned. Both the Bridge Coulee and Barker fires —
two of the four that merged to form the complex — made runs on his
property. At one point fire was within 100 yards of his home.
Rich said he thinks he slept just seven hours over seven days while trying to protect his land.
Standing
on his porch in early July with a fire intensity map laid out on a
wooden table, Rich pointed to what he believes to be one of the
difference-makers in the effort — thousands of acres of fire-treated
land where in some cases the fire extinguished itself with barely a hand
lifted or found itself stymied by small two-track cattle trails.
Elsewhere, the fire jumped 80-foot bulldozer lines.
"It didn't seem to matter what you did," Rich's wife, Linda, said. "The fire just did what it wanted to do."
If
it weren’t for the protection his fire-treated acreage provided, Rich
suspects that the Lodgepole Complex could’ve jumped Highway 200 east of
Sand Springs and wound up at least tens of thousands of acres larger
than it did.
Paul
Pauley, fuels management specialist for the BLM's Miles City office,
said he didn't want to minimize the immediate and damaging impacts major
wildfires can have on local producers but wants the public to know
wildfires are critical to the ecosystem and are unavoidable in Missouri
River Breaks Country.
“This country is set up to burn. We know it will happen," Pauley said.
Research
has shown the ponderosa pines covering parts of the Missouri River
Breaks Country need to burn every seven to 15 years to stay healthy,
Pauley said.
Prescribed
burn treatments helped remove fire fuels that can lead to a wildfire
behavior called “crowning,” which occurs when flames climb to the canopy
level of trees.
Crowning
can produce 100 foot flame lengths and allow embers to “spot,” or
travel on the wind ahead of fires and above containment lines.
In extreme cases like the Lodgepole Complex, it's possible for embers to spot a mile or more ahead of a fire.
"When
you're talking over 100 foot flame lengths, that's so hot and so
aggressive that you can't do anything with fire engines or hand crews or
hand tools," Pauley said. "With a sustained crown fire there's very
little you can do from a suppression point of view."
With
un-managed lower ponderosa pine branches, thick needle cover on the
ground and low-hanging species like juniper present, fires are more
easily able to fuel their upward climb and begin crowning.
Part of what exacerbated the behavior of the Lodgepole Complex fire was how dense the fuels were in the area.
"This
country between here and the Musselshell River, in my lifetime it has
brushed up so much it's unreal. And I knew it was coming," Rich said of
the big blaze. "You just don't know when for sure."
Prescribed
fires on ponderosa pines simulate what Pauley described as a natural
“pruning” process by which the trees shed lower branches. This leads to
needle growth concentrated toward the top of the tree, giving the pines a
paintbrush-like figure.
A healthy, mature ponderosa pine can have a trunk diameter at breast height of 10 inches or more. In
areas where wildfire has been suppressed, ponderosa pine trunk
measurements might be half that, making the trees unattractive for
logging.
Still, they
demand groundwater and moisture, which limits grass growth and alters
the landscape by drying up small streams and creeks, Pauley said.
Fire
suppression in parts of the Missouri Breaks has allowed a high density
of ponderosa pines. In parts of the Missouri River Breaks Country there
are up to 1,200 ponderosa pines an acre. Pauley said ideally there
should be 10 to 15 mature ponderosa pines over the same sized area.
Without
prior fire treatments, it’s possible Rich would’ve been left after the
complex with almost no grass at all, he said. Instead, the rancher said
he was able to continue to graze some cattle after the fire and was
recently baling hay for the first time in years.
"A
lot of people don't like burning up a little bit of grass, but on the
other hand, it is unreal the production you get a year after a
prescribed burn," Rich said.
Working together
For
some ranchers prescribed burns are a deviation from tried and true
methods. Back when he was working with BLM on the first burn, Rich said
his father was still alive and was initially skeptical but came around
after seeing the results. For other ranchers in different circumstances,
sacrificing grass temporarily isn't feasible in an industry where
natural events outside human control can rapidly alter profit margins.
Landowners
that cooperate with BLM on prescribed burns are expected to put up an
"in kind" match of labor on private roads to help facilitate the burn,
Pauley said.
BLM
finds landowner burn partnerships desirable in part because of
increased cost efficiency and environmental impact, Pauley said. Pieces
of BLM land and private land in Rich’s part of Montana are often
interspersed like the squares on a checkerboard.
But when it comes to prescribed fires, they may seem more like squares on a chess board.
Planning
begins two to three years before a burn and includes wildlife habitat
assessments, soil testing, vegetation monitoring, cultural surveys and
other studies of the land in order to inform a prescribed burn plan and
set goals.
Prescribed
fires are controllable to a certain point. Partnerships with land
owners gives BLM the ability to treat larger tracts of land, creating
more widespread consistency in land conditions. If BLM can’t reach an
agreement, efforts at tightly containing the fires can be
counterproductive to their intended purpose.
Fire
lines cut by bulldozers and other heavy machinery are disruptive to the
land and can create conditions for weeds and invasive species to take
root. If the area is too difficult for a limited prescribed fire,
“mastication” becomes the next best option. “Mastication,” in BLM-speak,
refers to the removing fire fuels with machinery and tools.
Pauley
estimates that mastication can cost around $300 an acre, prescribed
fire treatments can cost less than $100 an acre, and wildland
firefighting can reach well above $1,000 an acre in costs. But
prescribed fires aren’t a silver bullet for every rancher and every
situation, Pauley said.
The planning is extensive, the operation is intensive, and there is a range of outcomes.
Flames, then renewal
Just
as there was little sleep during the Lodgepole Complex last summer,
sleep was also in limited supply up to Easter Sunday 2000, when Rich and
the Bureau of Land Management finally put into action the burn plan
they’d devised during months of planning.
"You think about it a little bit," Rich said of the days leading up to the burn.
A
prescribed burn can include 30 to 40 firefighters with hand torches and
tools, brush rigs and water pumpers, and a helicopter dropping
nitrogen-infused incendiaries resembling ping pong balls.
In
the years since then, Rich and BLM have continued to conduct prescribed
burns on the land in a partnership they believe to be mutually
beneficial by reducing land management and firefighting costs and
improving habitat and grazing land. The burns are an ongoing project,
and more are planned for either 2019 or 2020, Pauley said.Rich
said part of his original intention was to increase his grass to improve
the quality of his cattle, and leave himself with more options to feed
them, which he said has worked out.
"I
like to have some grass in the bank. That's the way I am, because
that's the only thing I've got on this ranch. I don't farm," he said.
One
of the added benefits is how the land has begun to transform and return
to a form he's only heard about in family stories and seen in old
photographs. Gesturing past the hills, Rich said he’s seen a spring
start flowing where he’d only heard his grandfather tell of one flowing
in decades past. Chokecherry bushes Rich remembers from his youth are
beginning to take hold on hillsides and fallen ponderosa pines could
begin to create habitat suitable for elk, which have been scarce for a
long time. Woodpeckers come in droves to pound on charred snags and
turkeys have been known to group on land after a burn.
Referring
to another area treated with fire in 2015, Rich laughed as he talked
about how a beaver showed up within a week after the spring started
running.
"First
beaver I've seen on this creek in 50 years," he said. “I wish I was 25
years old, so I could tell 50 years from now what it will look like."
