Forest Restoration (Back to Restoration Program Index)

Restorative surface fire on Grand Canyon's North Rim. Photo courtesy NPS.

Grand Canyon Trust has been working to restore degraded forests of the Colorado Plateau for nearly a decade. We focus our restoration efforts in ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau—the region’s most endangered forests. The southern Colorado Plateau is home to the world’s largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest, spanning Flagstaff to New Mexico along the Plateau’s southern boundary, the Mogollon Rim.

Ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau evolved with frequent grass fires. Scientific studies show that grass fire occurred every two to ten years, varying in size and frequency with droughts and wet periods. Along with other disturbances related to climate variation, such as insect outbreaks, fires allowed forest changes to track climate changes over time. Fires regulated tree densities by killing small trees, maintained stands of old, large trees, recycled nutrients, and created wildlife habitat such as snags (standing dead trees) and burned out root holes. For thousands of years, fire was as integral a part of ponderosa forests as rain, wind, trees and wildlife.

Tree-ring studies demonstrate that fires stopped burning in ponderosa forests late in the 19th century. This coincided with the introduction of domestic livestock, which removed the grasses through which fire burned. Absent fire and grass, abnormal densities of small trees established, while industrial logging removed most of the large, old trees. These factors, coupled with road building and predator control, have caused radical changes during the past century. Today’s forests, having not burned in a century, suffer from too many small trees, too few large trees, altered nutrient cycles, road induced fragmentation, and reduced biological diversity that includes imperiled and even extinct species. Most notably, today’s forests support uncharacteristically severe “crowning” fires that burn through treetops rather than the forest floor threatening people, plants and animals alike.

Restoring ponderosa forests is a multi-faceted endeavor. To be successful, restoration must be ecologically, economically, and socially viable. At the broadest level, restoration involves restoring fire to wildland forests in a way that is safe, socially acceptable, and protective of wildlife and native biological diversity. This involves an integrated combination of science-informed social agreement, community fire preparedness, land use and fire management planning, and strategic placement of restoration treatments to facilitate fire management and wildlife conservation goals. Creating a safe landscape context for fire through community preparedness, wildland urban interface treatments, and other strategically placed restoration treatments is a critical prerequisite to landscape-scale restoration. The sooner we can safely manage wildland fires, the sooner we can safely restore wildland forests with fire.

Since 1997 Grand Canyon Trust has been working at the community level to collaboratively plan and implement restoration-based fuels reduction treatments in Flagstaff’s Wildland Urban Interface. These efforts included founding the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership, and through that effort working on all facets of restoration—from project planning, implementation and monitoring, to community volunteerism and the development of businesses that utilize small-diameter trees cut during restoration thinning.

We seek to bring the best available information to bear in collaborative processes and public discourse to facilitate ecologically sound, cautious, and science-informed restoration decision-making.

(Back to Restoration Program Index)