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Wildland Fire
Nevada, like many western states, is facing the escalation of wildland fire impacts in both rural and urban areas. From 1999 to 2001, almost 3,800 fires burned approximately 3.25 million acres, most in the northern half of the state (Table 3-15). The tremendous damage to biological resources and environmental quality caused by the extraordinary wildfire behavior cannot be adequately quantified or described. The distribution of Nevada wildfires from 1981 through 2000 (aggregated in five year increments) is displayed in Figure 3-8. (Note that a number of areas have re-burned, although the overlapping patterns may be difficult to discern on the map.)
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Table 3-15
Wildland Fire Season Statistics on Federal and Non-Federal Land
1999-2001
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The Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF) cooperates with federal and local entities to mitigate threat of wildland fire statewide. Volunteer Fire Departments (VFD's) are a key player in wildfire suppression activities. VFD's typically are first on the scene of emergency incidents and provide critical information to arriving out-of-area state and federal fire suppression resources. The NDF provides training, equipment and vehicle maintenance support to VFD's within eight fire districts. The agency engages in initial attack, fire investigation, and direct protection capabilities to portions of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. NDF also partners with federal agencies, local government, and private property owners to locate funding for and implement rehabilitation projects on private land.
NDF and federal fire management agencies are increasing efforts to advise property owners on defensible space practices for the increasing number of homes built in the urban/wildland interface. The BLM and USFS fire suppression and prevention programs also are instrumental in protecting the state's natural and cultural resources. Recognizing the critical need to share information, expertise, and resources, intergovernmental entities have been formed. These are the Western Great Basin Coordination Center and the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center.
Especially troubling is the cumulative, long-term natural resource losses caused by the greater intensity and number of large wildland fires in recent years. At the end of August 1999 fire storms, the NDOW estimated habitat losses for some game species: 340,000 acres of deer winter range, 305,000 acres of deer summer range, 668,100 acres of pronghorn antelope range, and 45,500 acres of bighorn sheep range were seriously impacted. In addition, about 144,560 acres and 185,667 acres of winter/spring and summer sage grouse habitat burned (Nevada Division of Wildlife, 1999). In addition, the fires killed livestock and destroyed structures, such as homes, fences, water developments, bridges, ranch buildings, and power lines.
Fire, like flooding and drought, is a natural disturbance that periodically returns to play an influential role in ecological cycles of a variety of vegetation types, especially in the semi-arid climate zones, as illustrated in Figure 3-8. Historically, people have used fire to alter vegetation and grow certain plants for food, fiber and to attract game animals. Since the 1950's, wildland fires were uniformly excluded to prevent destruction of the commercial value and natural functions of forests and rangeland. Ironically, aggressive firefighting in the past 50 years is one reason that recent fire seasons are notable for excessively large and destructive burns. Aggressively suppressing fires allowed overcrowding of shrub species less adapted to fire and accumulation of dead plant matter. However, the present day wildfire problems are more complicated than recent fire suppression policies. The current wildfire pattern is both a response to and cause of "impaired" ecological conditions in fire prone shrub, woodland, and forest types.
Though fire exclusion efforts increase fuels, land use practices precondition rangelands and forests for extreme wildland fire. Forage and timber harvest practices that extensively modified the composition, structure, and diversity of fire-adapted plant communities contributed to the conditions that are conducive to extreme wildland fire behavior. Widespread over-grazing and clear-cutting helped set the stage. Little attention was paid to changes in the regeneration of sagebrush-steppe, sagebrush, woodland and forest communities. The density of plants in regenerating shrublands and forests increased as perennial grasses and forbs were persistently removed and lighter-fueled fires limited. Cheatgrass, a flammable nonnative annual grass, invaded the understory of shrub and pinyon/juniper communities, eventually forming monocultures as fires returned to infested areas. Riparian zones that were eroded, dewatered, and denuded no longer provided cooler and moisture conditions that provides a natural brake on the spread of wildfire.
Of special concern is the construction of more buildings in the urban-wildland interface where coincident with hazardous levels of woody fuels. With more subdivisions built in fire-prone and fuel-rich wildland areas, the risk of catastrophic natural resource and private property damage escalates. State, federal and local fire suppression agencies are committed to protecting life and private property. Fires burning at the urban/wildland interface require that more fire fighting resources be directed to save people and homes as a priority over natural vegetation. The result can be unnecessarily extensive damage to critical wildlife habitat, watersheds and water supplies, cultural resources, and outdoor recreation resources.
Expanding development in wildland areas also limit fuels management options, in some cases precluding tree harvesting or prescribed fires. Because most property owners have been reluctant to prepare defensible, fire safe, space around buildings, the NDF, BLM and other land management agencies are implementing technical assistance programs to promote defensible space practices. However, casual attitudes toward fire risk and inadequate local regulations for defensible space in new and existing subdivisions continues to hamper state and federal agency efforts to advance reasonable strategies for the protection of lives and property at the wildlife/urban interface.
The extreme fire events of recent seasons have focus attention on reduction of hazardous fuel conditions, restoration, and fire ecology in shrub, woodlands, and forests. Scientists are studying the pre-settlement role of fire in Nevada vegetation types and learning about the effects different land uses and management practices have had on vegetation patterns and wildfire behavior. Past fire rehabilitation efforts have not been extensively monitored, so practical knowledge is limited on revegetation prescriptions for the subtly different rangeland ecosystems. Gaps in knowledge, different interpretations of the meaning of restoration, and variation in visions of the future uses of fire-damaged lands raise important issues. Ongoing debates involve the use of native versus introduced species; on the use of prescribed burns versus mechanical removal of fuels; and the distribution of funding between suppression and prevention activities. Unfortunately, disagreements over wildfire science can delay development and implementation of much-needed, landscape-scale restoration, vegetation management, and fire prevention strategies.
Progress is being made in state and national efforts to improve fire management and restore burned areas. One example is the Great Basin Restoration Initiative (GBRI), proposed by the Nevada BLM during the catastrophic 1999 fire season. The active component of the GBRI, the Eastern Nevada Landscape Restoration Project, entails a 10 million acre area with diverse shrub, woodland, forest, and riparian habitats. A coalition of all interests has formed under the mission of improving the dynamic and diverse landscapes of the Great Basin for present and future generations through collaborative efforts.
Restoration, defined as a long-term, landscape-based approach to changing ecological health, is emphasized rather than reclamation. Urban interface fuel reduction, cheatgrass/weed control, prescribed fire and natural wildfire use, and learning about the ecosystems are short-term tasks (Nevada Bureau of Land Management, 2002).
The 2001 National Fire Plan promotes and supports federal, state, and local fire fighting agencies on five fronts to interrupt the fire cycle. Priorities are: 1) reduction of fuels in dense shrub and pygmy conifer zones; 2) restoration of burned areas;
3) protection of healthy native communities and restoration of degraded communities to reduce extreme wildfire risk; 4) enhanced fire suppression; and,
5) advance fire management planning that take into consideration local public safety, ecological site conditions, biodiversity concerns, and cultural resources (National Interagency Fire Center, 2002).
The Nevada Division of Forestry has the lead in developing a complementary State Fire Plan that will build on priorities set by the Governor's Wildfire Management Committee in 2000. Priorities include interagency risk/hazard assessment mapping; education and training of local volunteers, miners, and ranchers; fuels management emphasizing livestock grazing and green stripping; fire-safe community legislation; and, expansion of the state native seed bank.
References
Bradley, P.V., J.A. Williams, J.S. Altenbach, P.E. Brown, K. Dewberry, D.B. Hall, J. Jeffers, B. Lund, J.E. Newmark, M.J. O'Farrell, M. Rahn, and C.R. Tomlinson. 2002. Nevada Bat Conservation Plan. Nevada Bat Working Group. Austin, Nevada.
Charlet, David A., 1998. Atlas of Nevada Mountain Ranges; Vegetation Zones of Nevada. Biological Resources Research Center, University of Nevada, Reno and Department of Science, Community College of Southern Nevada, North Las Vegas.
Dahl, T.E. 1990. Wetlands Losses in the United States, 1780's to 1980's. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. Washington D.C.
Fiero, B. 1986. Geology of the Great Basin. Max C. Fleischmann series in Great Basin Natural History. University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada.
Grayson, D. K. 1993. The Desert's Past: A Natural Prehistory of the Great Basin. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Hutchins, Mary. 1999. Prairie Racer: the Pronghorn Antelope. North American Pronghorn Foundation Web Page. Internet Address: http://www.antelope.org/pronghorn1.htm
National Interagency Fire Center. 2002. National Fire Plan, Managing the Impact of Fires on the Communities and the Environment. Internet address: http://www.fireplan.gov/president.cfm
NatureServe. 2002. States of the Union: Ranking America's Biodiversity. Prepared for The Nature Conservancy. Arlington, Virginia.
Nevada Agricultural Statistical Service. 2002. Pesticide And Herbicide Application Summary, 2000. Internet address: http://www.nass.usda.gov/nv/Pesticide01.pdf
Nevada Bureau of Land Management. 2002. Eastern Nevada Landscape Restoration Project. Internet address: http://www.nv.blm.gov/ely/enlrp.htm
Nevada Department of Agriculture. 2002. Personal communication.
Nevada Division of Wildlife. 1999. Wildfire, An Assessment of Wildlife Losses Resulting from the 1999 Firestorm.
Nevada Division of Wildlife. 2001. Nevada Sage Grouse Conservation Plan, Final Draft. Prepared by Governor's Sage Grouse Conservation Team.
Nevada Natural Heritage Program. 2000. Scorecard 2000, Highest Priority Conservation Sites.
Nevada Natural Heritage Program. 2001a. Personal communication.
Nevada Natural Heritage Program. 2002. Internet address: http://www.state.nv.us/nvnhp/datasens.htm
Nevada Partners in Flight. 1999. Bird Conservation Plan. Larry Neel, ed.
Nevada Weed Action Committee. 2002. Internet address: http://agri.state.nv.us/nwac/
Sada, D.W., G.L. Vinyard, and R. Herschler. 1991. Environmental Characteristics of SmallSprings in Northern Nevada. In Proceedings of the Desert Fishes Council. Volume XXIII.
Strickland, Rose. 2002. Personal communication. Comments on the Public Review Draft, Nevada Natural Resources Plan.
The Nature Conservancy. 2000. Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. Edited By Bruce A. Stein, Lynn S. Kutner, and Jonathan S. Adams. Oxford University Press.
Thompson, S.P., and K.L. Merritt. 1988. Western Nevada Wetlands - History and Current Status, in Blesse, R.E. and P Goin, eds., Nevada Public Affairs Review No. 1. Reno, University of Nevada.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 2001. Personal communication. Table of Impacted Wetland Acreage (Non-Tidal).
U.S. Bureau of Land Management. 2001. A Guide to Managing, Restoring, and Conserving Springs in the Western United States. Technical Reference 1737-17. National Science and Technology Center, Denver, Colorado.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2002. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory. Fire Effects Information System. Internet address: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/index.html
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Office. 2001a. Review comments submitted to DCNR pertaining to the Draft Nevada Natural Resources Report.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Office. 2001b. Personal communication. National Wetlands Inventory Mapping in Nevada, excerpted from draft report on the 1980's National Wetlands Inventory reconnaissance level mapping data.
Utah State University. 1997. Nevada Vegetation Cover-Type Codes and Descriptions (accompanies the Nevada Gap Land Use/Land Cover Map). Department of Geography and Earth Resources. Logan, Utah.
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