When the Silver Creek fire scorched more than 20,120 acres in and around the Routt National Forest in 2018, it left nothing but blackened lodgepole pines behind. 

Three years removed from the lightning-caused blaze, there is green growth in the burn scar near Red Dirt Reservoir. Fireweed lives up to its name and thrives, while rose hip and raspberries flourish next to asters and invasive thistle. However, very little of the greenery popping up between charred downfall is from young trees. 

Clumps of four-foot-tall aspens exist only in sporadic patches. Young evergreens are even harder to find, most no taller than a foot and scattered widely across the landscape.

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On Saturday, Aug. 27, volunteers worked with the U.S. Forest Service and the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council to count how many trees are growing in the burn scar and help plan for a reforestation effort that could take place as early as next year.

Two groups set out to randomly generated points within the forest to collect information about the vegetation within a circle about six feet in diameter. Neither group counted a single tree within the points they surveyed on Saturday.

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Jennifer Doolan, a forestry technician with the U.S. Forest Service, guided volunteers to each point and explained the process of surveying. Each point is assessed for trees smaller than a foot growing within the area, the amount of vegetation, the percentage of visible soil. The amount of deadfall, cones on the ground and cones in the canopy were counted as well. Deadfall was usually light, while there were no cones in sight. 

“The Forest Service has a lot of things on its plate,” said Tim Sullivan, Resilient Land and Water Director at YVSC. “It’s both a way to help get the work done and get the community connected to public lands management and helping heal things. I think the Forest Service could do this without us, but I think it’s a better project with the community involved.”

With the knowledge from the surveys, the Forest Service will assess the data collected and decide whether trees need to be planted to restore the forest, how many need to be planted, and where. 

Such post-fire regeneration surveys are conducted starting three years following a fire, according to Samuel Hahn, timber management assistant with the United States Department of Agriculture.

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“We just want to know if the fire has burned so severely and intensely that nothing will grow back unless we intervene,” said Sam Hahn.

The USFS started surveying the area alongside the YVSC in 2021. Between last year’s data and this year’s work, Hahn thinks much of the burn scar will need intervention in restoring the forest to its prior glory. 

Why reforestation?

A similar effort was conducted following the Hinman and Burn Ridge fires in 2002 when the Forest Service teamed up with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps to plant 66,000 seedlings to fill the forest floor again.

Historically, forests recover relatively quickly following a fire or other natural disaster. Unfortunately, Hahn said that doesn’t happen at the rate it used to. 

“Our hypothesis is that fires more recently aren’t going to respond as quickly,” said Sullivan. “One thing to test that is to do this kind of survey.”

The Silver Creek burn scar and the surrounding forest is mostly full of lodgepole pine, a tree that is built to burn. The cones on a lodgepole pine are covered in a layer of sap that needs fire or heat to release the seeds. In a typical fire cycle, a lodgepole forest will burn, seeds will be exposed and soon after, young evergreen trees will grow around the charred downfall. 

However, it’s suspected that the Silver Creek fire burned too hot, a trend in forest fires nationwide. 

Another potential reason no trees are growing could be that the minerals in the soil were burnt beyond ability to retain life, however, other plants are growing — in some places in abundance — so the lack of seeds is likely the issue, rather than the soil. 

“We’ve noticed that the fire was especially pronounced in the crowns,” Hahn said. “There were cones around, but it was burning so hot that the heat the lodgepole pine needs for its cones to open was just too much.”

So, the area will likely need thousands, if not tens of thousands, of seedlings planted to help restore the forest to the multi-species haven that it was. Hahn said the task is too big to rely on volunteers, so the Forest Service will likely contract it out. Planting all the necessary seedling trees, which is more successful than seeding according to Sullivan, could take years.

The Forest Service started surveying the area alongside the YVSC in 2021 and hopes to start planting as soon as next spring. There is no definitive timeline, but Hahn said the USFS is encouraged by recent federal funding. 

In November 2021, the REPLANT Act, or the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees Act, became law as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed. The act “provides the Forest Service with funding to plant or support the natural growth of more than 1.2 billion trees over the next decade”, according to AmericanForests.org. Even more recently, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed earlier this month, allocated billions of dollars to the U.S. Forest Service to distribute to state governments, cities, nonprofits and more to plant trees. 

Hahn said making reforestation a priority is a good thing, because there is a danger in waiting for the forest to regenerate on its own.

“There is the possibility that this bit of forest could turn into grassland,” Hahn said. “The whole ecology of this area, the wildlife, depends on there being a forest here.”

Summer 2023 will mark three years since the Middle Fork wildfire in North Routt, which could very well need the same help the Silver Creek burn scar does. In 2024, the Muddy Slide and Morgan Creek burns will be three years removed.

“There’s good reason to believe we have other fires that could use the same kind of work,” Sullivan said. “We don’t have the capacity to do it. We could. There’s no reason not to, especially if you could do this whole process and establish the need to be replanted in order to regrow because the benefit of getting that forest back quicker is it builds some resilience to climate change and builds habitat back up.”

Shelby Reardon is the assistant editor at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. To reach her, call 970-871-4253, email sreardon@SteamboatPilot.com or follow her on Twitter @ByShelbyReardon.