The District cooperates with public land managers and private landowners to improve the health and resiliency of Front Range forests.
The State of the Forests
The history of the forests on Colorado’s Front Range mirrors the history of the human habitation of the region. Before settlement by white Americans in the nineteenth century, forests were subject to a natural regime of disturbances, including periodic fires and assault by insects and disease, that regulated the makeup of forest stands. Since humans generally did not interfere with these natural processes, forests continually replenished themselves over a period of decades. This meant that, at any one time, there was a diversity of forest types within an area. Some trees may have been fairly young following a small fire or insect outbreak, others may have been quite a bit older, awaiting a disturbance to come along.
As Americans arrived from the east into Colorado in the mid-nineteenth century, seeking furs and then gold and silver, they began to interrupt these natural cycles for their own purposes. Mines and mining settlements required timber for construction, railroad ties, and fuel, and entire forests were clear-cut to provide the necessary material. As they had done before, these forests grew back, and large stands of a uniform age and species composition took root on Front Range hillsides.
The mines of Clear Creek and Gilpin counties stopped producing almost as suddenly as they started. By the 1890s, the price of silver could no longer support mining in these areas, and the large-scale cutting of entire forest stands generally ceased. Since then, the general practice of public land managers and private landowners has generally been one of suppression and preservation. The natural disturbances that might have been restored were instead suppressed in an effort to preserve the forest types as they were. Fires were fought aggressively in all parts of the forest, and insect outbreaks were managed to protect uninfected trees.
This confluence of events and strategies- the uniform ages and forest types produced in the nineteenth century and the aggressive suppression of disturbances in the twentieth- have combined to produce a twenty-first century forest that is very susceptible to large-scale events like fire and insects. Most forest stands on the Front Range are a single species, or uniform mix of species, and a single age. Lodgepole pine, Pinus contorta, one of the dominant species in this region, depends on fire in its reproductive cycle and therefore now consists of stands that may be entirely from a single year. By the year 2000 we had arrived at an entire forest region that lacked diversity of both age and species composition.
What Is A Healthy Forest?
The term “Healthy Forest” often conjures up images of a verdant forest with large trees spread across a large area. Gaps in the forest, dead and dying trees, or fires, fires, insects and disease are usually seen as “unhealthy.” However, in the conservation profession “forest health” has a more specific meaning. We use the term to describe a forest that is diverse and resilient. Diversity includes both diversity of age and species. Resiliency is the forest’s ability to withstand disturbances in a natural way.
Front Range forests, as described above, often lack diversity and resiliency because of their history. The Buffalo Creek, Hi Meadow and Hayman Fires of the past two decades testify to how quickly fires can spread through a forest made almost entirely of older trees, and the recent Mountain Pine Beetle outbreaks in Clear Creek County (which were much more severe outside the District’s boundaries) demonstrate the vulnerability of forests of a single age to infection.
While these disturbances partially restore the natural, healthy condition of the forest, they can pose a hazard to human users of the forest. Therefore, the Jefferson Conservation District, along with many other land managers and land owners, implements practices designed to mimic natural disturbances safely, and return the forest to a healthy, resilient, diverse state without the same risks to human safety and property.
JCD’s Forest Health Program
JCD employs a full-time forester to connect private landowners within the District’s boundaries with the financial, educational and technical resources to improve the resiliency of their forests. Generally speaking, private consulting foresters write management plans at the request of a landowner. These plans include a prescription of how to manage the forest to achieve the landowner’s particular objectives. If JCD approves of this plan as a strategy to improve the health of the landowner’s forest, we can connect you with a variety of incentive programs to make it more feasible to complete the prescribed work on a reasonable schedule. There are two primary resources JCD draws upon to do this:
EQIP
EQIP is a federal program- the Environmental Quality Incentives Program- administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA). JCD can guide qualifying landowners through the EQIP application and planning process, but JCD does not award funds out of this program. If a landowner is selected for EQIP funds by a USDA review panel, JCD administers the delivery of this funding to the landowner and certifies that the work is completed satisfactorily and on schedule. EQIP generally does not pay the entire cost of forest health work on a parcel, and JCD encourages landowners to engage logging contractors to ensure the work is completed professionally and on time. EQIP can be a great resource for forest owners to meet their management objectives. Contact JCD if you think your property might benefit from a forest management plan and/or financial aid to help implement it. Note that EQIP pays only for specific practices approved by USDA and JCD, and is therefore not for everyone.
Grant Funding
As a special government district, JCD can apply to state, federal and private grant programs in the same way that a non-profit organization can. JCD frequently uses grant funding to fund larger-scale forest health projects covering multiple landowners. EQIP funds can only be directed to individual landowners, and has certain eligibility thresholds, so it is not a good fit for landscape-scale projects. The District seeks out neighboring landowners to complete projects that make a real impact on the health of the forest across a wider area. Past grant funds have come from the Colorado State Forest Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). If you’re interested in working with the District on forest management, and you’re concerned that you or your property may not qualify for EQIP, don’t worry! The District would still like to hear from you. We are always searching for grant opportunities that may help you meet your objectives. Grant funding has even helped us work with entire subdivisions at once.
Technical Assistance
Even if you may not qualify for EQIP or fit under a grant opportunity, JCD still can help the health of your forests through technical assistance. At every step of our interaction with landowners in Jefferson, Clear Creek and Gilpin Counties, we are available to provide technical information, make management recommendations, and walk your property with you. We review forest management plans and talk forest health to landowners whether you intend on applying through us for financial assistance or not. Our mission is the improvement of the health and resiliency of Front Range forests and we’re happy to work with you toward those goals in whatever way we can.
