The 2020 wildfires in Colorado were historic.
Before last summer, the Hayman Fire was, for 18 years, the largest wildfire in Colorado’s recorded history at over 138,114 acres. It burned about 215 square miles across large swaths of Teller, Park and Douglas counties. It was a massive fire that impacted most Front Range communities and even generated its own weather. If you were here when it was ignited June 8, 2002 northwest of Lake George, you no doubt shudder at the memory of the sickening plume of churning smoke that billowed ominously for weeks.
This year, the Cameron Peak, East Troublesome and Pine Gulch fires each burned more than the Hayman.
Of course, these events have huge impacts on big game and aquatic life within burn zones. What happens when wildlife habitat is charred or, worse, turned to ash? How does it impact the creeks and lakes within the zones?
As we look toward 2021 and beyond, what can we learn from these incidents and does the Hayman Fire have any lessons?
In early December, I went searching for answers that I might share with fellow sportsmen and women. I found myself standing just off Trail Creek Road, overlooking a section of the Hayman Fire burn area in Teller County with Officer Tim Kroening, CPW district wildlife manager based in Woodland Park. In the distance to the west we could see the pyramidal Signal Butte and the jagged spires of Turkey Rocks, two landmarks familiar to the hunters, OHVers and residents of this area of Colorado.
From this vantage point, we could see a wide swath of the Hayman burn area as well as the diversity here; many small ponderosa pines, mountain mahogany and a variety of low-lying forbs and grasses growing among the few blackened standing dead trees that still remain on the landscape. Kroening pointed out the contrast between the landscape here and an older forest with a thick upper canopy.
CPW Officer Tim Kroening, district wildlife manager based in Woodland Park, observes a blackened landscape recovering still from the Hayman Fire of June 2002. Photo courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
“Most old-growth forest is pretty homogenous and covered with needle litter and pine duff,” Kroening said. “There’s not much growing because the canopy is so thick. The sunlight never reaches the ground.”
He pointed out that fire has historically been a regular occurring event on the Colorado landscape and that many of the native plants and animals benefit from and even rely on occasional fire. For example, species of pine trees produce fire-resistant cones designed to protect enclosed seeds during a fire and the actual seeds of many plants need fire to germinate.
“If a fire burns too hot, it can make soil hydrophobic and create flooding issues,” Kroening said. “But a low-heat and slow-moving fire, the kind they aim for with prescribed burns, clears out old growth and allows sunlight to reach the forest floor, which allows new plants to grow.”
CPW’s area offices receive many calls from citizens concerned about how wildlife are affected by wildfires. Kroening said that, for the most part, wildlife are well-adapted to dealing with fire.
During the Hayman fire, and subsequent fires like Waldo Canyon in 2012 and the Black Forest in 2013, CPW wildlife officers observed that elk and deer tended to stay relatively close and feed on new grasses and forbs that spring up in a burn area.
But until this past summer, CPW only had anecdotal evidence of wildlife movements during fires. It seemed counterintuitive that big game animals didn’t bolt at the first sign of fire.
But thanks to a well-timed research project by CPW biologists, we now have quantitative data about how animals like elk deal with the fire in real time. What turned out to be a ground-breaking study underway during the Cameron Peak fire has changed the conventional wisdom of wildlife movements during fires.
By pure coincidence, CPW had collared 30 elk for a study fortuitously occurring in the Poudre Canyon and Red Feather Lakes elk when the Cameron Peak Wildfire hit. CPW biologist Angelique Curtis used data from those elk to map their movements as the fire approached and passed their home habitat.
“The elk stayed on the perimeter, but the fire never moved them off their main location,” Curtis said. “They didn’t run 50 miles in one direction or another. They stayed even though the fire was close.”
Not only did they hang around the burn area, some actually crossed into the active fire zone. Curtis said the data showed the elk moving across the fire lines to reach islands of unburned habitat within the perimeter where they knew they’d be safe.
“From there,” she said, “they just continued on to their regular summer range.”
The study showed that elk were moving in and around the burn area during an active wildfire, finding suitable food and habitat. Clearly they understood how to keep out of harm’s way. By and large, that was the case with most of the large wildfires that occurred this summer. A few individual animals were caught in the East Troublesome Fire because it spread so rapidly.
But the good news for big game hunters and wildlife watchers alike is that these animals largely survived and will remain in their home territories, over the long haul, and should do fine.
The real issue will be the watersheds.