Catron County Community Wildfire Protection Plan
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

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• CWPP Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Declaration of Agreement and Concurrence
• Preface & Introduction
• Planning Process
• Community Profile
• Planning for the Future
• Monitoring & Evaluation
• Appendix 1 - data
• Appendix 2 - maps
• Downloads

Prescription Guidelines

Prescription guidelines for site specific prescriptions are summarized here with more detailed guidelines available in the Appendix. See Appendix Volume 2 Data (page 81)

These guidelines describe the desired future condition as well as provide generalized recommendations for how to reach the desired future condition. These guidelines are recommended for use in developing detailed prescriptions for environmental analysis under NEPA and implementation of mitigation projects.

General Guidelines for Wildland Areas. All actions taken should reverse the current general trend towards Fire Regime Condition Class 3 and should move vegetative conditions towards Class 1:

• Reduce crown fire potential by reduction of crown density, ground fuels and ladder fuels.
• Move crown fire potential to that characteristic of the historic (natural) fire regime.

Selection of Leave Trees in Wildland Areas: Areas following treatments will have a healthy diversity of tree density, species and size. Recommended actions include:

• Utilize clump patterns for leave trees
• Space between smaller and larger tree clumps to prevent "laddering"
• Space between clumps to restrict potential size of crown fire
• Variable clump size
• Favor retention of healthiest, most disease free, larger trees
• Re-introduction of fire in Fire Regime III areas under cool burning conditions or after fuels reduction by mechanical means

Machine and Hand Treatment: The objective should be to remove the hazardous materials in a manner that will aid economic development in the County. This means that whenever possible, methods of removing hazardous materials which will optimize their use as marketable wood products should be preferred over other methods.

• Preference given to machine or mechanical operations (removal of small poles and larger commercial size trees) and hand treatment (chainsaws) methods
• Preference given to local operators for machine and hand treatment contracts
• Fire subsequent to machine and/or hand treatment would be used to remove dead/down fuels and non-commercial seedlings and saplings.

Fire Treatment: In areas not accessible to or prohibitive in cost for machine operations or hand treatment, fire is the recommended method of fuels reduction. Innovative solutions such as jackpot falling (a pile of haphazardly felled trees) and pre-treatments of perimeters and potential trouble spots as explained in the appendix are recommended. Fire use and prescribed fire should use techniques such as pre-treatment, back firing, firing out from ridge tops, timing, etc.

Slash and other Dead Fuels Disposal: In wildland areas, slash (hazardous fuels remaining after treatment) and ground fuels (litter, duff and other dead vegetation) quantity and distribution remaining on site should achieve the following results:

• Crown fire development is not supported over long distances or areas
• Amount of ground fuels supports desired prescribed and fire use objectives for both retention and removal of vegetation
• All organic matter is not removed down to mineral soil over large areas
• Treatment intensifies as the treatments are closer to the structures

Slash Treatment: Slash and ground fuels which are to be removed should be treated as follows:

• Fire with minimal use of mechanical methods used to treat slash in wildland areas to keep costs down.
• Mechanical methods should be used to treat slash in WUI areas, near protected improvements and other sensitive areas such as along major . For most cost efficiency, mechanical methods of slash disposal are recommended in the following order:
• Lop and scatter
• Machine crushing
• Machine pile and burn
• Chipping
• Hand pile and burn
• Removal to off site location

General Guidelines for WUI Areas The objective is to have improvements/structures that are defendable as follows:

• Decrease crown fire potential as distance to structures decreases
• Increase tree spacing as distance to structures decreases
• Retain aesthetic acceptability
• Gradual change between Wildland and WUI
• Preserve diversity of tree species, density and size
• Create room for spotting and crown fire from a wind driven wildland fire to fall out and drop down before reaching protected improvements
• Use WUI treatments to provide a reasonable amount of protection until treatments are completed on the larger wildland scale.
• Identify routes and zones for safe public evacuation and fire fighter access for every community.
• Use "Firewise" guidelines in close coordination with all the interested parties: Federal, State, County, Private and in particular the local Fire Department

Hazardous fuels reduction

It is highly unlikely that all of the tens of thousands of acres per year in need of some kind of treatment will in fact receive treatment in the near future: Time and resources are limiting factors. Nevertheless, a sense of urgency prevails, and choices must be made which reflect the most ecologically and economically beneficial places to locate restoration-based fuel treatments.

The priorities described and summarized in the Community Profile section of this plan are a guide among many other considerations. Implementation of the reduction of fuels will be according to the priorities as much as is practical, however there are many factors that will on occasion make that impractical; for instance, lightning fires that start fire use fires do not always strike in the highest priority areas. Also, the state of knowledge and available skills may not always allow treatment of the highest priority areas first. Economic considerations (funding, commercial product values, community economic development needs, etc.) will not always allow treatment of the highest priority areas first. Nevertheless, the priorities established by this plan should be considered when selecting the location and timing of hazardous fuels reduction projects.

n general, WUI areas should receive priority over wildland areas, however if projects are temporally and/or geographically insufficient, they will not generate substantive ecosystem changes necessary for effective fuel reduction and hazard abatement. Half-hearted measures will be ineffective. Progress toward community protection and watershed restoration goals must occur within an appropriately large landscape scale. Spatially, restoration-based fuel treatments must be at a sufficient scale to affect fire behavior. Restoration-based fuel treatments outside the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) are necessary to prevent significant losses of forest values that are important to society such as wildlife habitat and watersheds.

Education And Community Outreach

Evacuation plans will be completed for each community during project level planning for that community.

Firewise" guidelines for reduction of hazardous fuels that would threaten a structure or other improvements will be used. "Firewise" guidelines are easily available on the internet or at local Federal and State land management agency offices. www.firesafecouncil.org and www.firewise.org

Additional Recommendations

Reduce ISO

Actions are and will continue to be taken to improve the ISO ratings of fire depts. and communities. A communication project being finished at present will implement a new emergency services frequency with sufficient repeaters to access all but some small areas of the County. This will enable the 2 fire depts. that are ISO 10 to become 9's or better. At least 5 fire depts. have water supply improvements in progress. The mobile fire training simulator acquired a year ago is being used to improve structural fire fighting capability of fire fighters. Training of fire fighters in wildland fire fighting will continue to be coordinated by the 20 Communities group. The appendix has a list of training completed and needed for fire depts. as completed and maintained by the 20 Communities group. Also in the appendix is a table showing the 7--10 year priorities for improvements in fire depts. in the County as completed and maintained by the 20 Communities group.

Current Projects And Policies

The Southwest Regional Command Team is presently tracking future restoration planned for Catron County for approximately 100,000 acres. See Appendix Volume 2 Data (page 81)

Inventory of fire protection resources, Protection Capabilities & Infrastructure Protection

All fire departments were surveyed for data about their fire department and the communities protected (or in many cases not protected because the community is so far from a fire station). There are 13 fire departments in the County, 12 of which are County departments and 1 of which is municipal.

Table #15

Table # 16

Structure Ignitability

The reduction of ignitability of structures in the County will be a long term process and will need to be done with some sensitivity. Existing guidelines available in "Firewise" programs and in the "Living With Fire" program as developed in Nevada and adapted to New Mexico by the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Forestry Division State Forester explain how owners may reduce the ignitability of structures.

Typically the residents of Catron County are not receptive to regulations and codes and even recommendations have to be carefully presented. Many of the residents of the County are here because of a desire to escape the restrictions of life in more urban areas. Those participating in the 20 Communities and Regional Command Team efforts understand this and have demonstrated success through past efforts.

The 20 Communities and Regional Command Team will continue to integrate education of the public as to the benefits of reduction of ignitability into their programs of work. The theme of the presentations to the public have and will continue to be "what you can do to protect your property" rather than "this is what you should do".

Public education opportunities will continue to be identified and coordinated as they arise by collaborative members of the 20 Communities and Regional Command Team. Some of the opportunities taken advantage of to date have been homeowner association meetings, County Fair, County Health Fair, Fire Department meetings and events, landowner assistance trips, fire use events, annual report of the Regional Command Team and distribution of informational materials.

Vulnerability surveys are available for a few individual properties/structures and the plan is to complete more as time and financing allows during detailed community planning and project development. These vulnerability surveys will be used by the Fire Departments, State Forestry and County fire prevention and loss mitigation efforts to identify areas and individual structures most in need of reduction of ignitability. Public contacts then will be concentrated where needed most. These contacts will be made during project level planning and implementation.

Funding

Planning for specific community CWPPs and on-the-ground projects is not part of this Plan, but rather should be done at the community level and should be based on priorities as developed in this CWPP. Additionally, since treatment can be expected to extend over the next 20 years, detailed planning and financial estimating would not be productive at this stage. Some broad based observations can be offered, however.

This plan recommends 100,000 to 200,000 acres per year be treated in Catron County. Estimates can be made for treatment of public and private lands, be it via mechanical, hand work or fire, however given the vast amount of acreage needing treatment, no matter what the cost per acre, expecting government funding for this work to be done is not an affordable or realistic solution. Our legislators have warned us all that there simply will not be enough federal funding available to cover the full amount needed for forest restoration and hazardous fuels reduction across the country.

Obviously cutting costs will be necessary, no matter what the source or amount of funding. Even though fire (prescriptive or the use of naturally caused fire) is a very cost effective method for treatment of the maximum acreage, there are many areas for which use of fire alone would be difficult if not impossible to obtain the desired conditions. Mechanical or hand treatments must be an available option for use alone or in combination with fire treatments.

Generating local funding for treatment work could be achieved through sales of forest and woodlands wood products from the lands being treated. However that is more easily said than done. Several Forest Service efforts in the County over the last 5-10 years has attempted to "sell" small diameter timber mostly in the 6-9" dbh range with limited success. None of the sales have been successful without the aid of grants. Even with grants, processing and marketing of the smaller diameters has not proven economically feasible as yet.

Ideally, stewardship contracting (contracts in which the cost of service/treatment work is offset by the marketable wood products) would be used for all mechanical and hand work. Realistically, however, the bulk of the fuels treatment materials which will come out of forests and woodlands has the least value: Small diameter timber, firewood and slash. This Plan is not proposing that the possibility of "breaking-even" on such low value products is impossible, but it is proposing that the "break-even" point be researched more by the County Marketing Strategy Group. This research needs to determine the mix of raw material needed to support an efficient processing and marketing industry. Options on the mix necessary to obtain a "break-even" situation must be left open at this point. The option of failure or success based on small diameter alone is not acceptable. There is too much at risk in resource and economic values.

Of course, even if commercial harvest areas are made available, without a ready market for the products few funds can be generated for treatment. Because of what has been essentially a moratorium on harvesting of timber in the forests of Catron County, no local large diameter sawmills exist in the County today, and only two remain in the state of New Mexico. The county has one fledgling small diameter mill, but markets for small diameter products are not large and are only now being developed. Individual commercial harvesters of wood products have developed their own markets for fuelwood, latillas, vigas, fence posts, window sills and fireplace mantles, chips for landscaping and biomass plants, etc., however the amount of marketable wood products these businesses can handle is miniscule compared to what needs to be marketed.

Clearly markets need to be developed for wood products which, if left in the forests, woodlands and grasslands, are simply hazardous fuel. The Catron County Commission has created a Marketing Strategy Group which is a collaborative effort between local government, federal and state agencies and interested citizens to develop these markets.

Project specific funding

Funding requests for specific projects should be based on the needs identified in this plan and will be on-going for years to come. The results of the analysis is already being used for the application of a grant for WUI project level planning and demonstration projects. Funding for doing the same on three WUI areas has already been received. Lower Frisco Wood Products presently has a CFRP grant of $120,000 to continue improvements in the present mill. Kellar Logging, a local logging contractor, has received CFRP grants of approximately $360,000 and has also done logging under a stewardship contract with the USFS. The County has two BLM grants (administered through New Mexico Association of Counties) totaling $90,000 to complete community specific plans, project proposals and demonstration projects for 8 of the higher priority communities.

Funding for fire-use treatments is provided through emergency fire fighting funds in the USFS and other Federal agencies. The State is presently determining how to fund like efforts on State land. Prescribed fire on Federal and State lands must be funded project by project.

As has been mentioned, stewardship contracts would be the preferred funding source for hazardous fuels reduction and forest restoration. Most of the recent and current stewardship contracts have been on BLM and State woodlands and grasslands, offsetting service work for low value wood products such as fence posts, latillas and fuelwood. Few forest stewardship contracts for timber have been available to date in New Mexico, however businesses in Catron County have received several such contracts for forest restoration and hazardous fuels reduction on both USFS and BLM lands. To date, most work in the Ponderosa pine forests being accomplished through grants such as Collaborative Forests Restoration Project and Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (PL 106-393) funding. Unfortunately, an insignificant amount of acreage (compared to the total needing treatment) has been treated through these projects over the past years.

Cost per acre

Restoration-based hazardous fuel treatments are expensive, ranging anywhere from $200/acre in outlying areas to thousands of dollars per acre in wildland urban interface areas. When compared to the total cost of fires such as the Biscuit in Oregon, the Hayman in Colorado, the Cerro Grande in New Mexico, and the Rodeo-Chedeski in Arizona, which range from $750 to $2,750/acre, it is clear that hazardous fuels reduction is the most cost effective method for dealing with wildfire. (Lynch, D.L., 2004)1

Costs on the fire use fires of 2005 are currently at about $60 average per acre depending on the complexity of the issues on the fire. The 2004 Southwestern New Mexico Fire Plan/National Fire Plan Accomplishment report by the Regional Command Team reported slightly over 91,000 acres of prescribed fire (in a 7 County area), fire use and mechanical treatments for an average cost of $39.82/acre. These costs included both wildland and WUI type treatments. However, variation in treatment cost in the 2004 report varied from $4,960/ac in a 75 acre WUI area to $1.67/ac in a 6,000 acre fire use area (which gives some indication of the difficulty of estimating the costs). Experience has shown that fire use costs usually decrease as the size of the area burned increases. Fire use costs will likely decrease as experience is gained and larger areas are burned. Almost certainly, fire use costs will decrease as the fire threat situation improves with treatments being completed simply because fire use fires will be less likely to escape if surrounded by prior treatments or the area burning has received prior treatments.

Unfortunately, much of the fire use area to date has been in the easier moderate and low fire threat areas and thus has been less expensive to treat than the higher fire threat areas still needing treatment, and therefore it is not realistic to expect the lower end cost estimates for future fire use fire treatment.

Presently two options appear to be most likely to keep the costs as low as possible. One is to use fire use as much as possible. The second is to develop commercial operations to as near a self supporting condition as is possible. Strategic placement of these treatments, particularly the first few years, can link other treatments and other lower fire threat areas. This will provide breaks in the existing large expanses of high fire threat, thereby maximizing the protection gained for cost expended. It is the recommendation of this plan is that strategic placement of these two options be the priorities for development and implementation of treatment.

1 Lynch, D.L. 2004. What do forest fires really cost? Journal of Forestry, 102(6):42-49.

Planning Summary

The Catron County Commission and partners in this Community Wildfire Protection Plan have committed to providing protection for the community values as expressed by the stakeholders in the County – landowners, residents, businesses, industry and recreational users of the land.

This Plan has provided the locations of and priorities for areas to be protected in the County. Because of the scope of the plan – county-wide, almost 7000 square miles and almost 3 million acres over a span of 20 years – treatment planning necessarily must be done on a smaller, project specific level, and therefore is not part of this Plan. Communities in Catron County will develop their own Community Wildfire Protection Plans using the data from this Plan with assistance from the partners of this Plan.

he Catron County Commission and partners in this CWPP are committed to providing the same quality of assistance for the development of individual project specific CWPPs as they have for this Plan.

Next: Monitoring & Evaluation