Clyde Burnett, Nederland. The science of the greenhouse effect explains the benign climate to which we have evolved. But because of our increased population, we are a more influential part of nature. The resultant increase of CO2 from burning cheap fossil fuels has increased the water vapor trapping of Earth’s infrared radiation. Earth has responded with increased air and ocean temperatures, melting of glacier and polar ice, sea level rise and extreme weather. We have a climate change. We have largely failed to mitigate these changes. Earth’s responses have become increasingly costly and future climate changes will become dangerous for our children and grandchildren. Mitigation by controlling CO2 emission is becoming increasingly urgent. Shall we march?

The southern hemisphere’s summer has been extreme: 120F in Australia with floods, fires, dust storms and numerous cyclones. This is a warning. We’ve just had an addition to our snow pack, but that will melt and evaporate with one week of June sunshine. As every firefighter knows, the global warming temperature increase dries the forests. The loss of that large, latent heat of vaporization no longer delays and decreases the intensity of wildfires.

Our local firefighters may be able to control the small lightning and human caused fires. It is the megafires that are beyond control which are the most damaging and extremely dangerous. (Wildfire in the foothills endangers our Indian Peaks Wilderness to the North and the James Peak Wilderness to the South of the Needle Eye Tunnel. See photo).

We have failed to mitigate global warming; we are now past that so we must adapt. We have a choice. This summer, we can defend against our eventual Front Range wildfire—or we can pay for the disaster. Pay now or pay later.

I believe that adaptation requires a different policy of forest management. Economic control no longer works. Clearcuts bought with timber removed by huge machines must be reexamined. The cheap practice of slash pile burning should be discontinued. CO2 and other health dangerous compounds from such fires should be prevented. Instead, slash should be chipped and restored to the forest floor for nutrients and evaporation protection. Clearcut areas are more vulnerable to wind evaporation.

Increased sunlight exposure favors fire prone undergrowth and future doghair lodgepoles, and the loss of those mature trees removes the mitigation of the CO2 sequestration of the mature trees for many years; we sorely need that.

Those areas also lack the tree root protection against runoff. We need to conserve that mountain moisture. The road damages due to flooding have not yet been completely repaired and we have another big snowpack about to melt.

Citizens of the Little Kingdom Forest (LKF) realized this was a National Forest--our forest. We had the help of Governor Romer who asked the CSFS to help us with our discussions with USFS. There is now a cooperative demonstration plot on Lump Gulch Road. This area of the National Forest was subject to the USFS bid process for a local timber person to remove trees marked by the CSFS. The forest was 50 percent thinned. There are no ladder fuels; lodgepoles were limbed up to 10 feet. We chipped the slash and spread it back on the forest floor to return nutrients and conserve moisture, (no raking). And 20 years later, there is no brush or tall grass. We still have the forest beauty and its contribution to property values.

Question: How is that clearcut of a section of that demonstration plot better?

Answer: The USFS obviously says that there are no mature lodgepoles to burn and adds that it’s a good opening to drop retardant and could serve as a staging area for firefighters. I vote for the thinned forest.

I hope I have not made mistakes of poor advice. If so, sound off!

(Originally published in the April 4, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)