Both Garfield County and Pitkin County entered Stage 1 fire restrictions Friday, as multiple fires forced evacuations and highway closures in recent days.
Adam McCurdy is the Forest and Climate Director at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES). He monitors forest health in the Roaring Fork Valley and educates the public.
He spoke with Michael Fanelli about the current level of wildfire risk in western Colorado and how climate change is affecting the landscape. McCurdy said Colorado’s fire season peaks in late June and early July, but several additional factors will determine its severity.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Michael Fanelli: In terms of this summer and our current state, I know you said it's not the driest year, but it's been pretty dry. Are we more susceptible to fires this summer than in previous years?
Adam McCurdy: I think it helps to back up a little bit and look at what Colorado's fire season typically looks like. So, if we look at our largest fires, with the exception of the fires that occurred in 2020, all the other largest fires started the last two weeks of June or the first week of July. So our —
Fanelli: So right now.
McCurdy: Right now. Our really significant fire season is really between — we have a winter snow pack that melts off and introduces a lot of moisture into our ecosystems. Typically the end of May, early June, is when it's going to be really tapering off and not driving as much moisture.
June is one of our driest months here, and so we have this dry out period. When we enter June with an early melt off date, which we did this year, we dry out throughout June, and then the summer monsoons — North American Monsoon — usually kicks in early July. It's that kind of gap between when we're driest from — furthest from our snow melt out — but we haven't gotten the monsoon, that a lot of our wildfires start. So the next couple weeks in terms of what we might expect for Colorado's fire season are really critical.
Fanelli: Ok. It really just depends on how much precipitation we get in the next few weeks?
McCurdy: Yeah, it depends on precipitation. I do want to throw out another piece about wildfire. So we have the climatic conditions and then the human conditions. So 2002 and 2012 were both drier than 2018, but we didn't see a Lake Christine Fire. So why is that? Well, you need two different things for a fire. You need a spark and you need receptive fuels. In 2012 and 2002, we probably had receptive fuels in different places, but there was never a spark that got to them and started a fire.
This year, we have an added complication of our forest service staff at much lower levels than they've historically been. So the White River National Forest is —
Fanelli: Staffing numbers wise?
McCurdy: Staffing numbers, yeah, they have 35% fewer staff than they have had in past years, half the number of on-the-ground trail crews. In addition to doing trail work, a lot of these folks put out campfires — fires that were improperly extinguished by campers. They might find them in the morning when they're smoldering. If those fires are left throughout the day as winds come up in the afternoon, you could end up with a lot of sparks on the landscape. So that human factor is, I think for a lot of us, is of higher concern this year.
Fanelli: Interesting. How does climate change fit into all of this? When you're explaining it to people, how do you do that?
McCurdy: It's really the overarching, or maybe the throughline. Climate change connects a lot of the issues that we're seeing in forest health. A lot of these different things, whether it's fires or beetles or other pathogens, a lot of them existed on the landscape before. Things like Douglas-fir beetle, wildfire, those are things that have been important parts of our forest before. So climate change is taking those things that existed on the landscape previously and is putting them out of whack. It's tipping the scales so that those forces have a leg up on our forest.
Fanelli: What is your ideal forest management strategy? Do you think managers are doing a good job or doing the right things, or are there things you'd like to see more or less of?
McCurdy: I think by and large, our forest managers do a really good job here. ACES has historically worked closely with the Forest Service, with Pitkin County Open Space and Trails, City of Aspen, which are land managers. And we've got a really good group of managers and scientists in the valley.
I do worry with, again, jumping back to staffing cuts in the National Forest, with the current administration's cuts to funding in the National Forest, the cuts to staffing there. You know, those folks are at a much lower capacity. We've lost a lot of institutional knowledge within the White River National Forest and the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District. I have some concerns about the future, about what they're going to be able to do. I hope that this isn't a permanent condition and that we're able to bring back a lot of that capacity and knowledge.
Fanelli: Well, thank you so much for coming by, Adam. I really appreciate it.
McCurdy: No worries, thanks for inviting me.
