Fire management, Landscape-scale management
Fire Management Practices in the Saguaro Wilderness Area and the Gila-Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex
Case Study by the Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox
Status
Completed

Location

States

Arizona, New Mexico

Ecosystem

Forest

Subject

Fires
Forests
Outreach
Parks
Recreation
Watershed

Introduction

A lush green forest
Image Details

Managers of the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex (GALWC) in New Mexico and the Saguaro Wilderness Area (SWA) in Arizona have allowed fire to play a natural role for decades. Researchers with Northern Arizona University, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Park Service used a combination of approaches to document and synthesize the historical role of fire and the effects of contemporary fire programs on critical resources in the GALWC and SWA. The resulting report also outlines common challenges in implementing fire management practices and lessons for how to address them.

Key Issues Addressed

Fire suppression has been the dominant fire management strategy in the West over the last century. In forests adapted to frequent fire, this practice has contributed to declining ecological conditions, large build-up of fuels, and increased potential for large, high-intensity wildfires that result in irreversible changes to vegetation composition. In effort to restore historic forest structure structure
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Learn more about structure , managers are increasingly relying on fire as a relatively affordable, landscape-scale restoration tool. Systematically summarizing information and lessons learned from decades of fire management in the two study areas will help inform management practices in other areas where the use of fire as a restoration tool at landscape scales is in its infancy. Information from these decades of fire management needed to be summarized in a product that will be usable for other managers.

Project Goals

  • Use literature, fire occurrence data, and discussions with managers to summarize the effects and lessons learned resulting from several decades of fire management in the two study areas
  • Synthesize this information into a comprehensive report that can be used to inform fire management programs throughout the region 

Project Highlights

  • Literature Review: Both peer-reviewed and grey literature on fire ecology and management practices were reviewed for both study areas. The information was used to outline and define fire management eras ranging from the Pre-Euro Settlement Era to the current Megafire Era accompanied by historical fire atlas map images. The literature review also informed an assessment of the effects of fire management and prescribed fire in the two study areas.
  • Land-Manager Interviews: The authors interviewed several managers (both current and retired) from a variety of disciplines in each study area. This included phone interviews, email discussions, and informal conversations on field trips and in other settings. Those interviewed represent over 200 years of cumulative fire management experience in these study areas; they provided invaluable insight into the challenges and processes of implementing innovative fire management strategies.
  • Updating Historical Fire Atlases: To document the landscape scale patterns of fire occurrence over time resulting from changing management strategies, fire history atlases published previously were updated using data obtained from the National Park Service, The U.S. Forest Service, and the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity database (https://www.mtbs.gov/). They calculated cumulative area burned and proportion of area burned by each fire type (managed, prescribed, suppression) over time.
  • Sharing Lessons: The authors presented report findings at the Gila Natural History Symposium, a webinar with the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, a field trip in the Gila NF, and a presentation at an Association for Fire Ecology Conference. 

Lessons Learned

A forest after a fire showing scorched tree trunks and forest floor
Image Details
  • Wildfire and prescribed fire can restore southwestern forests. Both have been effective restoration tools in the SWA and GALWC to reduce fuels, restore forest and landscape structure, and reduce the potential for intense wildfire (particularly in the ponderosa pine dominated forests).
  • The analysis showed that a majority of each study area has experienced fire at least once since the end of the fire suppression programs in the mid 1970s. The resulting mosaic of burn intervals supports additional use of fire on the landscape and flexibility in managing prescribed and wildfires.
  • Collaboration across disciplines and agencies is imperative. There are several examples of successful collaboration across disciplines and agencies in both study areas: annual meetings among fire and non-fire personnel in the GALWC, the joint fire management plan between Saguaro National Park and the neighboring Coronado National Forest, and partnerships between Federal and private landowners in the Gila National Forest to manage wildfire on both jurisdictions.
  • It is critical to devote resources to public outreach year-round and to frame different messages at different times (before, during and after fires). Managers in both study areas have invested a great deal in public outreach, which ultimately has increased public acceptance of prescribed fire and wildfire programs. They take a variety of outreach approaches ranging from interpretive signs, putting information officers at visitor centers or other public venues, maintaining detailed websites to inform the public about individual incidents and the overall fire programs, and conducting educational programs in schools.
  • Special considerations must be made for threatened and endangered species. For example, managers in the GALWC have been successful in allowing fire to spread through Mexican spotted owl nesting habitat in pine forests with minimal and even beneficial effects to the species. The common strategy of avoiding burning these areas altogether, may ultimately be detrimental to the species if their core habitat cannot be made resilient to inevitable wildfire. The success in the GALWC is partly attributed to collaboration between the fire staff and the natural resource staff that work closely together and recognize the importance of meeting objectives for both fuels and wildlife.

Next Steps

Spread Like Wildfire: Many forest management units throughout the Southwest are increasing their use of wildfires to meet resource management objectives in ways similar to those documented in the two study areas.

  • Use information compiled in the report to promote the use of fire as a restoration tool to create more resilient and resistant forest ecosystems
  • Develop similar reports that synthesize fire regime and management histories, as well as lessons learned, from similar fire management programs in the Western United States, starting with the Northern Rockies

Funding Partners

Resources

Contacts

Case Study Lead Author

  • Ashlee Simpson, CART Graduate Research Assistant, University of Arizona

Suggested Citation

Simpson, A. C. (2018). “Fire Management Practices in the Saguaro Wilderness Area and the Gila-Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex.” CART. Retrieved from https://www.fws.gov/project/fire-management-practices-wilderness-areas.

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