Wildfire hazard and roads

Opinion by Mark Boslough

In 1995, a road to Nevada’s Jarbridge Wilderness Area washed out. The Forest Service blocked the streamside road with boulders to keep out damaging motor vehicles, but not benign hikers. Angry local off-roaders organized a “shovel brigade” to seize control. On July 4, 2000, they converged on the site, removed the boulders, and built their own unauthorized road.

The mentality of some off-roaders seems to be that anywhere vehicles have ever been driven can be used for motorized recreation, regardless of environmental harm. These enthusiasts do not limit their aggressive intrusions to public lands. They also invade private lands, as I learned first-hand.  When a professional forester drafted a plan for thinning 300 acres of trees on property in Boulder County owned by my family for generations, he suggested that I stop all unauthorized recreational use. If I started work without putting up gates and fences, he reasoned, the land would be much more vulnerable to motorized trespassers.

The year I posted “no motorized vehicles” signs, a group of fifteen vehicles from the Mile-Hi Jeep Club drove through anyway. One vehicle dumped a crankcase load of oil into our creek. I blocked the trail. Some angry members of the jeep club organized a “Barking Dog Shovel Brigade,” removed my boulder, and started an amateur road construction project on land they had no right to enter.

I didn’t let the matter go. I brought in a truckload of boulders. The “road” has now reverted to a hiking trail for my neighbors and the community. The streamside wildflowers, grasses, and trees that were crushed under the jeep tires are growing back. The jeep club’s oil slick is gone, and I have picked up much of the trash and vehicle parts (with the help of conscientious hikers).

And the threat of human-caused wildfire on the property has been greatly reduced. After I blocked the trail to off-road vehicles, I removed a dozen unauthorized fire rings.

This summer has brought the worst drought in a century, but off-road recreation has continued unabated. A few miles north of my property, two men in a Jeep drove off a road onto dry grass and ignited a fire with their hot catalytic converter. The re­sulting Big Elk fire consumed 4,100 acres of forest, forced the evacuation of 250 homes, cost two million dollars, and tragically claimed three lives.

One evacuee asked, “I keep wondering why it is that we can’t close off more of the backcountry roads and the places where people are coming in and being careless with fires.” This seems like a no-brainer; so obviously beneficial it is almost beyond discussion.

Fire-prone areas that are crisscrossed with roads are exposed to matches, tossed cigarettes, exhaust sparks, fireworks, unattended campfires, and arsonists. Ninety percent of wildfires in national forests are human-caused. A common-sense way to prevent forest fires is to limit motorized access, especially during the fire season.

Take the recent huge fire in Arizona. The Chediski fire broke out after a trespassing pickup truck driver got lost and ran out of gas. In desperation, his stranded passenger lit a signal fire that went out of control, merged with another fire, burned almost half a million acres, destroyed nearly five hundred homes and cabins, and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

Forests with open roads will always be vulnerable. Someone who tossed a cigarette or other burning object into a roadside ditch near Durango started a fire that destroyed fifty-six homes and more than 70,000 acres, and cost more than $40 million.

Roaded areas in our national forests require active management to reduce their unnaturally high fire hazards, but thinning makes them vulnerable to damage from motorized intruders. That’s one of the reasons thinning projects need a comprehensive environmental re­view, so that we don’t inadvertently increase the fire risk with a rushed job due to political pressure.

In roadless areas of our national forests, nature can be left to its own devices, keeping forests healthy, reducing wildfire hazards, saving taxpayers the expense of road construction and upkeep, and providing solitude and respite for hikers.

Mark Boslough grew up in Boulder County, Colorado, and lives in Albuquerque.