Nick Smith had an article about t his in his Wildfire News of the Day email today, but the link at the Payson Roundup doesn’t work. This is all I see:
“The US Forest Service will remove overgrown brush and saplings on 7,600 acres burned by the Dude Fire in 1990 in an attempt to restore the natural, fire-resistant Ponderosa Pine forest that once grew there. The devastation from the Dude Fire can still be seen in Rim Country.”
FWIW, the USFS has this page about the project and a June 12 update here.
Again n, really? Thirty four years later and now we are getting aggressive on regenerating this fire scar? Time was, we had reforestation backlog and it was a FS priority to put these lands back into timber (as well as other resource values), and into something other than a brush field thicket.
That country is a challenge for site integrity anyway, and the danged junipers will be hard to control. The Rodeo-Chedeski fire is just above the Dude on the Rim; lots more moisture and not as intense heat, and even it has a major juniper problem!
Fantastic that it is being addressed, I question what took so long…..
Those AZ P-pine sites do not have predictable climatic conditions that make planting practical. Natural regen is episodic. There can be many consecutive years with very little regen. April, May, June are often very dry and windy. Wet springs are infrequent, but when they occur there can be a rather large regen event. With the low desired stand density and very low growth rates on that part of the TNF/CNC, I don’t see timber ever being a thing. It is going to take frequent fire to keep the juniper out.
Well one thing is for sure, when you remove a seed source over a large area, the only way to get pine back in the ground is to plant it. And, it’s a different world above the Rim, but even there the juniper is a pest!
As for timber in the commercial sense, maybe someday, but just getting pine back on the landscape is a noble endeavor….