JACKSON, Wyo. — On Tuesday, Dec. 10, the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) released the second part of its roundup for wildfires in 2024.
After the Fish Creek and Pack Trail fires merged to become the largest fire on the BTNF since 1988, BTNF reports that a lot of the vegetation was temporarily removed from the expansive burn area. According to BTNF, the focus is now turned toward managing erosion and preventing noxious weeds from taking over.
Forest Service crews are on the ground identifying potential problem areas, including culverts that might need to be replaced to handle increased spring run-off that could impact or even destroy portions of roads and trails. BTNF also notes that beaver dam analogs, or man-made structures that mimic beaver dams, are planned at key locations in drainages to help reduce flows and erosion.
Crews have also identified six and a half miles of livestock fence that will need to be replaced.
The price tag for managing the Pack Trail Fire since it began is estimated to be $70 million, according to BTNF Jackson District Ranger Todd Stiles in the press release. But Stiles also notes some positives, which includes the removal of standing dead and down timber that “quite frankly needed to go.” The fire primed these areas of forest to start over again with new vegetation, and newly burned areas have more available nutrients and sun reaching the soil to promote aspen growth, a fire-dependent species used by many wildlife species.
“In fact, we have a prescribed fire planned in the nearby Slate Creek drainage of the Gros Ventre to accomplish similar objectives to what this fire just did, although this wildfire was over a much larger area,” Stiles writes in BTNF’s post. “We were lucky the fire didn’t burn super-hot across most of the burned area.”
According to Stiles, the BTNF is seeing a mosaic of varied burn severity that will result in a diverse mix of vegetation, which benefits a greater variety of wildlife.
Crews also made special effort to protect threatened whitebark pine trees throughout the duration of the fire, Stiles highlights. Much of the protection work was focused on protecting large trees with substantial cone production and genetic resistance to the non-native fungus white pine blister rust; according to Stiles, many of these trees had their cones collected over the years by Forest Service staff to provide cones to the whitebark restoration program contributing to planting efforts throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Thanks to structure protection actions near Togwotee Mountain Lodge, crews removed thousands of large dead Engelmann spruce snags, which were then available to members of the public with a standard personal use firewood permit, yielding over 750 cords of firewood that helped heat homes.
Confinement actions on the Flagstaff Road to remove fuels created around 20 large decks of wood, which have been provided to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes and can be sold to timber sale operators by the deck. Most will be open to removal as personal use firewood or post and pole material as well.
Stiles emphasizes that people should expect more fire seasons like this past one in the future. Read the first part of the BTNF’s wildfire roundup here.
