Wood chips can be seen flying in air as Jonathan Gay uses a chainsaw to cut a fallen Douglas Fir tree into smaller sections to be removed from a steep-pitched slope overlooking the Sanctuary neighborhood in Steamboat Springs.

Gay was part of a crew of three workers from Lost Ranger Wildfire Mitigation Services who were clearing dead or dying trees and other fuels from the forest floor Thursday to reduce fire danger in the wooded Steamboat Springs neighborhood as homeowners are coming to terms with one of our region’s biggest threats.

Lost Ranger owner Spencer Allnutt said that threat is bring customers to his business, and last winter’s dry weather is adding to that.

Allnutt said his team has grown from a single five-person crew last year to two crews and eight employees this year. Lost Ranger started this project over the past winter and will spend the next few weeks completing it before moving on to complete others — mostly in the Steamboat Springs area.

“We focus on low-impact wildfire mitigation and forestry practices,” said Allnutt. “Our primary clients are HOAs, private residences, bigger open areas or ranches.”

Allnut said Lost Ranger Wildfire Mitigation works with these groups to essentially fireproof properties. After our unseasonably warm and dry winter, he said demand for Lost Ranger’s services have increased this spring.

“We’ll take out all the dead and dying trees, we’ll take out all the fuels that are overgrown and that need to be reduced around the place to try to create defensible space around structures,” Allnutt said.

If the work is done properly, Allnutt said, those using the Sanctuary Trail that cuts through the area his crews are mitigating, will experience largely the same forest they loved prior to the work.

“I feel like we’re important because we offer that low-impact mindset where we leave the forest like you want it to be,” Allnutt said. “These people have very nice-looking, expensive properties, and we want them to be able to enjoy the forest right when we’re done.”

On Thursday, Allnutt was joined by Lost Ranger co-founder Sally Ross, who started the company four years ago with a business partner. She sold the company to Allnutt last year and is now running SR Fire Mitigation Service, which offers consulting services like project scoping and prescriptions, as well as writing Firewise Action Plans — three-year, community-driven strategies designed to reduce wildfire risk by focusing on homeowner education, risk assessments and structural mitigation.

Additionally, Ross continues to work with Allnutt and Lost Ranger, while also expanding her efforts to prepare communities and homeowners for the very real possibility of a wildfire before it happens. She has overseen prescriptive pieces (actions aimed at reducing fuels in the forest) in high-level plans including the Bear River Wildfire Ready Action Plan, making such plans more specific and implementable for contractors.

“I was a wildland firefighter and worked seasonally for the Forest Service and then worked in conservation,” Ross said. “We started Lost Ranger to have a hand crew option for this type of work that is low impact, and we can get to some of these sites where people might not want a lot of disturbance. We target the issue and utilize the experts, their research and advice in a site-specific way to promote resiliency and health in addition to fuel reduction.”

The group touring the area last week also included Aaron Richards from the Colorado State Forest Service, which manages the Colorado Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation grant that, in partnership with the HOA representing the Sanctuary neighborhood, made the work Lost Ranger was doing in the Sanctuary area possible.

“It makes all the difference,” Richards said of taking proactive measures to prepare for possible wildfires. “If a firefighting crew gets to a house and it is indefensible, they will have to leave it and go on to a house that is defensible. There’s a triage to it, so in terms of individual home mitigations, if you have a home that’s well hardened against wildfire, and it requires no action, firefighters can look at it and say, ‘This home will survive. We don’t need to do anything for it, and move on to the next one, and save more homes’ … it makes a huge difference in terms of how many resources are required to fight a fire and how effective those efforts will be.”

Crews from Lost Ranger started working in the Sanctuary neighborhood last fall and recently returned to complete the project that includes the removal of dead or dying trees and some of the growth from the forest floor. Ross explained that these measures not only reduce the fuels that feed wildfires but promote the growth of aspen tree groves — which provide natural firebreaks that can slow wildfire spread due to their high moisture content, low resin content and less flammable leaf litter.

The company is also working with many of the homeowners in the area to mitigate the fire danger for individual homes. SR Fire Mitigation Service offers home ignition zone assessments, and Lost Ranger also works with private homeowners to help protect homes against the threat of wildfires. Allnutt expects the heightened wildfire risk trend that Colorado has seen the past few years will continue. He stressed the importance of creating defensible spaces around homes, while maintaining the beauty that people enjoy. He also understands the threat of wildfires firsthand after losing his home in the High Park Fire that ravaged Poudre Canyon in 2012.

“I didn’t like working in a cubicle, and I had a house burned down in a wildfire. I wanted to do something to try to help people avoid that, so I decided I want to make a switch,” Allnutt said. “With the heightened wildfire risk trend we’re seeing, and it’s just going to keep getting worse, it’s really important that we are getting in there and that we’re creating defensible spaces around these houses — and that we’re leaving a good final product for these people to enjoy right away.”