SEELEY LAKE — The Colt Fire in the Seeley Swan area burned 7,500 acres in 2023 and had many area residents on high alert as the blaze had the potential to move close to them.
But due to some successful forest management, that didn't happen. That was thanks in large part to the fire mitigation work that the Colt Summit Project did. Officials say the project was extremely helpful in their plan to manage the fire.
The project allowed officials to focus the resources they had to areas that didn’t have the same fuel mitigation treatment that the project did.
“And we're pretty fortunate in that they had the foresight to do the Colt Summit project to...break the canopy, break up the fuels if you will so that you didn't have that continuous timber canopy for fire to run through the crowns and impact these values at risk, explained Brent Olson who is the district fire management officer for the Swan Valley area.
The Colt Summit Project undertook the job of fire mitigation by reducing the amount of fuel that was on the forest floor. In the past, forest management doctrine was to leave the forest alone, but that allowed for the excessive build-up of fuel.
The project came about from the Southwest Crown Collaborative in effort to bring all the stakeholders involved in forest management together.
The effort helped bring to light different interests that various stakeholders had. Besides just the various interests, members of the collaborative also brought in more knowledge to better help develop a plan.
“They can bring the local knowledge they have of the land and the features of the landscape into the dialogue about. Well, what would be best in terms of treatments and what kind of outcomes can we expect?” Southwest Crown Collaborative co-chair Jim Burchfield explained to MTN.
Because of this collaborative process, the Colt Summit Project was able to come about and provide effective results.
A key thing about the project was that some members of the collaborative were also directly involved in implementing the project. Members like Pyramid Mountain Lumber, which was contracted to help clear the forest floor of fuel sources.
The Southwest Crown Collaborative ultimately allows for all the different stakeholders in forest management to come together and provide a wide range of perspectives on how to best manage their forests. And with these different perspectives come solutions that are more equitable and sustainable.
