For immediate release - 6/9/09

Although it is theoretically designed to protect Colorado’s backcountry forests, the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule could allow virtually unlimited logging and road building under the guise of fire risk reduction within 11/2 miles from homes and infrastructure. Additionally, a separate loophole could result in still further logging and road building farther into the backcountry if the area is identified in a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. These overly broad exemptions could allow more than 660,000 acres of roadless areas to be roaded and logged statewide, or 15% of Colorado’s 4.4 million acres of roadless National Forest lands.

“Research has shown that this buffer far exceeds the necessary protections needed to safeguard homes or community infrastructure from fire,” says Rocky Smith, Forest Watch Director for Colorado Wild. “Logging in more remote areas – for example, areas beyond a 1/2 mile from communities – would not provide any protection for these communities. Road construction in these areas might even increase the probability of ignitions.”

So, how much treatment needs to be done around communities to provide a reasonable amount of protection from wildfire?

In an effort to help the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and the US Forest Service who are working on the Colorado Roadless Rule, Colorado Wild recently submitted a brief summary of research on the topic to the State. Dr. Bill Romme, fire ecologist at CSU, reviewed the summary and said that it presents the science accurately.

Although there can never be a precise answer to how much of an area needs to be treated to protect homes from fire, research conducted by the Forest Service suggests a much more modest approach is sufficient to reduce fire risk:

• As little as 40 meters of defensible space is generally sufficient to prevent ignition of homes.
• Additional defensibility is best accomplished by reducing the flammability of structures themselves.
• The construction of forest roads increases the likelihood of fire ignition, and thus increases the risk to homes and infrastructure.

“The roadless rule should allow only the logging needed to protect homes, rather than a broad loophole to allow backcountry logging,” says Ryan Bidwell, Executive Director of Colorado Wild. “Logging in areas distant from communities would divert limited resources – things like funding, personnel, and equipment – from the areas near communities where treatment can legitimately help to keep communities safe from wildfire.”

This point is underscored by a research paper published this week by CU researchers which identified that the US Forest Service, when left to its own devices to implement fuels reduction projects under the National Fire Plan, implemented only 3% of projects in the WUI, and only 11% within 1½ miles of communities. Without sideboards in a roadless rule to prevent treatments far from homes and communities, this track record would likely continue, resulting in unnecessary and damaging logging in Colorado’s backcountry forests.

“While the draft Colorado Rule would allow logging within a mile and a half from homes, the science makes it clear that a half mile is well more than sufficient to protect homes,” explains Smith. “Narrowing the exemption in the Colorado Roadless Rule to a half mile, and eliminating the CWPP exemption, would focus treatments on the 150,000 acres of roadless lands where they could do the most good, and spare more than half a million acres statewide from unnecessary logging and road building.”

Consider Hermosa Creek Roadless Area, the largest in the state. Under the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule “protections,” the Hermosa Creek roadless area could see tens of thousands of acres of logging and road building that is unnecessary, dangerous, and would damage its wild character. Some smaller roadless areas could be completely logged if the Rule goes forward as written.

“Although everybody is quick to say they want to protect Colorado’s roadless forests, the proposed Colorado Rule – unlike the 2001 Roadless Rule – simply doesn’t do it,” says Bidwell. “Now that President Obama has required a high level of review before approval of any road construction and logging in roadless areas nationwide, Colorado can take the time necessary to forge a science-based Colorado Rule, or better yet, pressure the Obama Administration to adopt a strong national Rule to protect all National Forest roadless areas in a consistent and sound manner.”