A major challenge the group has faced is the recent battery of fires that have destroyed large forested areas in the Upper South Platte basin. Following the Buffalo Creek fire in 1996, the High Meadow Fire of 2000 burned 11,000 more acres in the watershed and destroyed over 51 homes. In 2002, Colorado saw the most destructive fire season in its history. The Hayman Fire was the largest fire on record, burning 137,000 acres, 133 homes, 447 other structures, and causing the evacuation of over 5,430 people. It also damaged some of the best trout waters in the Upper South Platte River. Two other fires in the basin consumed over 6,400 acres in the project area. A significant amount of the steering committee’s time and energy was spent preparing for a large-scale prescription to take place in 2002 on Forest Service lands (the result of a NEPA decision of the summer of 2001 and spring of 2002). Unfortunately, within a two-month period, the 2002 fires destroyed over 142,000 acres in and around the basin, and burned over 5,800 of the 17,400 acres of National Forest lands planned for fuel treatment. These fires also destroyed many of the project’s monitoring stations, including some of stations that were used as study control sites to evaluate the effects of prescribed treatments against un-treated forest stands. According to the project’s annual report, as a result of the 2002 fires, “[t]he monitoring program lost valuable information due to delayed or cancelled surveys, as well as approximately $6,000 in direct monetary losses from lost time, materials and the cost of replacement equipment.”
For steering committee members, the 2002 fires were a major distraction that frustrated efforts and forced the restoration project off track. Ekarius noted, “Hayman this year overshadowed any accomplishments we had made because it took a long time to get through the NEPA process and finally the restoration project was going to actually start moving forward and we had this big fire and some of the area defined for work burned.” Wiley noted that the fire forced parties to shift priorities, “When this fire happened, everyone rolls into town to do rehabilitation…so I think it has been hard for the group at the Forest Service level to do other things and pull off the job. For the Forest Service, some days it is on the front burner, some days it is off to the side.”
Importantly, while the 2002 fires created setbacks, they also underscored the need for partnership and, if anything, strengthened the bonds of steering committee members. The project’s annual report notes, “A positive aspect of the summer’s devastating fires is the sense of community that developed among the watershed project’s partners as well as with surrounding jurisdictions and community organizations and businesses during both the fire suppression activities and, particularly, during the recovery and rehabilitation phase. The time is ideal to capitalize on the interests and relationships that now exist and the general public support for federal, state and local agencies to address the area’s fuels treatment and forest management needs.” Despite the setbacks, the parties have made haste to put the restoration project back on track. In the fall 2003, the Forest Service planned to undertake major fuel treatments on 1000 acres of national forest land which, as stressed in the group’s annual report, is a “major step forward, given the appeals-delayed Decision Notices and the early and tumultuous fire season this [past] year.”
Another major challenge faced by the restoration effort was an appeal filed by seven conservation groups of a Forest Service decision to log approximately eight square miles within a roadless area. The conservation groups filed their appeal in September 2001 and argued, among other things, that the agency failed to determine the cost-effectiveness of logging in roadless areas. Commenting on the appeal, Ekarius noted, “There are players we didn’t get in early enough and that’s part of why we had an appeal. The environmental community as a whole doesn’t trust the Forest Service and has worked for years now on the process of waiting for when there is a decision notice and then they appeal it. That’s the process they’ve operated under in the past and so that’s familiar ground for them and we had an appeal. Maybe we could have, as a steering committee, more effectively gone to some of the groups that were appellants before the decision and encouraged them to actually sit down at the table earlier [before the suit].” Importantly, the conservationists’ appeal did not oppose the general idea for restoration initiatives in the valley. Indeed, in a press release about the appeal, one conservationist commented on the positive, but failed negotiations with the agency prior to the suit, “We had some really good discussions with the Forest Service, and we hope those will continue as the Forest Service takes another look at this project. There’s a real chance we would not oppose this type of restoration work in these particular roadless areas if the Forest Service continues in the direction they were moving.”
One of the great frustrations among staff in the Forest Service is that they feel the appeal could not have been avoided. Steve Culver commented on the Environmental Assessment they prepared for the project, “We spent a lot of time and effort trying to get the environmental groups involved and we sent out over 600 newsletters. They provided zero input on our project. To me that was a wasted effort. I was shocked when we got no input after the effort we went through; we thought nobody had an interest in our project.” Commenting on the appeal process and some of the distrust between the agencies and environmental community, Ekarius stressed that leaders of collaborative initiatives should do everything they can to identify those parties who should be involved in the process. She advises, “sit down and really think about what stakeholders you haven’t got at the table yet. You have to try to get the divergent sides to come together. You also have to expect that there probably are a few people you can’t let stop the process, meaning the extremes on either side of the issue.” Ekarius noted that today, all parties are more attuned to the need to be more inclusive, and stressed that next time, the appellants would probably be willing to come to the table earlier in the decision-making process.
Finally, the restoration project has struggled with the differing capabilities of the parties to implement projects in a timely manner. From the project’s beginning there were expectations that all parties would coordinate and administer the sub-projects according to a shared timeline. Unfortunately, due to the different administrative operating procedures of the Forest Service (involving a lengthy NEPA planning process), these expectations have not been met. With approximately eighty percent of the land in the Upper South Platte basin, the Forest Service is the major player in the effort, but their individual fuels treatment projects have lagged far behind those of Denver Water and the Colorado State Forest Service. Wiley from Denver Water commented on the Forest Service’s delay, “We would yell at them all the time – ‘you were supposed to start two years ago’ -- and then at the end of each year they would lose the money and they’d have to go back and get it again. So, that was a concern by everyone outside the Forest Service. [But we eventually realized], they’ve got a lot of things they have to do. That was something that kind of surprised us.”
As a testimony to the group’s resolve, committee members tried to turn this problem into an opportunity. The delays heightened the need for communication between the parties and gave the Forest Service a chance to educate others about the complexities of federal decision-making processes. More significantly, as noted earlier, delays in implementation provided a useful avenue for adaptive management. Wiley noted, “We were able to do things on our land a lot quicker than they could, it went on three or four years before they could even start on their land and by that time we had a majority of our stuff done …” With some of the restoration work completed on Denver Water’s land, the Forest Service and Colorado State Forest Service were able to draw lessons from the earlier restoration work and apply these lessons on their own lands.
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