Disastrous fire leaves legacy of risky residue; Erosion and fuel buildup follow Rattlesnake blaze

CHIRICAHUA MOUNTAINS - Chris French stood in the middle of what used to be a 5-acre lake stocked with rainbow trout. He scooped a handful of sand, then let it stream through his fingers and drift off in the hot breeze.

``This used to be a nice fishing hole,'' French, a U.S. Forest Service employee, said of the debris pile that was once Rucker Lake, the only fishing lake in the Chiricahua Mountains of eastern Cochise County.

``But the sides of the hills just washed away,'' he said. ``This is all topsoil that was once on the mountain.''

Rucker Lake is gone, filled to the top of its dam with cobbles, gravel and sand washed from the Chiricahuas since last July's monthlong Rattlesnake fire. Rucker's lakeside campground remains closed, with picnic tables nearly buried in sediment.

The transformation is striking, but it is merely ``the most visible symptom'' of a far more massive, widespread erosion problem caused by the 27,500-acre Rattlesnake fire - the largest fire in the Chiricahuas in 77 years, French said.

And according to Forest Service critics, both the fire and the erosion are products of a wrongheaded fire-suppression policy that allowed a lightning-sparked wildfire on Rattlesnake Peak to escalate into a firestorm. It devoured entire canyons, reducing vast expanses of biologically rich high-elevation conifer forest to sterile ``moonscape.''
Spending priorities controversial

Forest Service critics said the federal agency threw millions of dollars at the fire while it was burning but has done very little since then to slow or reduce the erosion damage, which is expected to continue for up to five years.

And the agency seems to have learned little from the Rattlesnake and the other large wildfires that raged across the West last summer, one of the worst fire seasons since the early 1900s, critics charge.

Shortly after the Rattlesnake was extinguished, Forest Service officials in Arizona stressed the need to use more deliberately set fires to reduce the accumulation of fuels in the state's national forests, thereby heading off catastrophic fires like the Rattlesnake.

But a year later the fire policy hasn't changed: Suppression is still the rule in the upper Chiricahuas, and the agency will ``throw the kitchen sink'' at wildfires in the high elevations of the range, according to Douglas District Ranger Brian Power.

``When the crisis is over, everything gets put on the back burner again, and it's back to business as usual,'' said Josiah T. Austin, owner of El Coronado Ranch on the western slope of the Chiricahuas.

``But there are places out there off trail where you've got 2 or 3 feet of pine needles, and that's just asking for trouble,'' Austin said. ``It's going to happen again.''

Austin's 14,000-acre Forest Service lease runs clear to the 9,795-foot summit of Chiricahua Peak. The Rattlesnake fire, which burned most intensely in ponderosa pine, surged over the top of Chiricahua Peak last July and consumed a small amount of the spruce forest that cloaks the crest of the range - the southernmost spruce forest in the United States.
Animal habitats destroyed

The fire ate big chunks of prime black bear habitat, devoured nesting sites in an internationally known bird haven and killed all the fish in the upper South Fork of Cave Creek.

The Chiricahuas contain about 100 miles of wilderness trails - one of the largest wilderness trail networks in Southern Arizona - used by 10,000 to 15,000 backpackers, hikers and birders each year.

About three-quarters of those trails were damaged by the fire and subsequent erosion. Though much of the network has been repaired in the past year, new erosion damage is expected during this summer's monsoon season, said French, a member of the recreation and lands staff at the Douglas district of the Forest Service.

Aspen, ferns, raspberry bushes, wildflowers and other patches of green can now be found within the boundaries of the Rattlesnake, but some steep-sided canyons contain little more than rock fields and ``match sticks,'' the blackened trunks of dead standing trees.

The fire killed vegetation that used to soak up rainwater like a giant sponge. And the rains that followed the fire carried away soil that would have allowed new life to gain a foothold. Pouring off the hillsides and into canyons, the raging muddy water and stones scoured riparian areas down to bedrock. After that, it ruined wells and stock ponds at ranches in the flats below, Austin said.
Check dams helped trap soil

Last August, Austin and a five-member crew built 243 small rock check dams in Saulsberry Canyon, on Forest Service land within the boundaries of his lease, to slow the rain waters, trap some of the sediment, and help restore some of the lost riparian areas.

Hiking up Saulsberry Canyon this month, Austin pointed out where grass, weeds and flowers were sprouting in the soil trapped by his check dams, which slow the water but don't block it completely.

Austin said the Forest Service should have made more of an effort to keep some of the soil on the mountain - by building erosion-control structures and felling dead standing trees, for example.

``I guess what annoys me about the Forest Service is that they're being paid to take care of this forest and they're not doing it,'' he said.

``When the fire stops, then the emergency's gone to them,'' he said. ``But in reality, it's really just beginning.''

Richard van Loben Sels, a Mesa high school science teacher with a summer home on the western slope of the Chiricahuas, agreed that the Forest Service hasn't done enough.
``They just walked away''

``This place burned, and they just walked away,'' he said. ``I don't know how many cubic meters of dirt moved off that hill, but they just let it go.

``The question is whether or not there's enough topsoil to support reforestation where large trees burned,'' said van Loben Sels. ``There are going to be some areas that will not reforest.''
District Ranger Power said the Forest Service spent about $8.5 million fighting the fire and has spent in the ballpark of $100,000 on post-fire restoration. There is no written rehabilitation plan and a lot of the costs aren't being tracked, in part because much of the work is being done by volunteers, he said.

The restoration money comes out of the Douglas district's $1 million annual budget, while the firefighting money came out of a national fund for fire emergencies, he said.

Power said he expects to spend about $100,000 a year on restoration for the next five years. That does not include the estimated $1 million cost of dredging Rucker Lake and building a dam above it to collect some of the sediment.

Power said the Forest Service already has installed ``at least a few hundred'' erosion-control structures in the Chiricahuas to slow the erosion, and that additional efforts would have been futile in some places.

``If I had a couple thousand people I probably could have kept more of it on the mountain,'' he said. ``But I don't think you could have done enough to keep a lot of the soil from moving in certain areas.''

In addition, about 75 percent of the fire burned in a designated wilderness area, where felling trees and building wire-mesh-reinforced dams are considered inappropriate. Austin's loose-rock check dams are effective in small canyons like Saulsberry, but they would have been washed away elsewhere, he said.

``We appreciate what he did, but it's not the panacea that (Austin) thinks it is,'' Power said.
Reseeding, planting planned

Aerial reseeding with grasses is planned in some of the burned areas, and young conifers - grown from seeds collected in the Chiricahuas - will be planted, Power said.

Up to 5,000 young trees would be planted near Rustler Park, a popular campground high in the Chiricahuas, after dead burned trees are removed from 69 acres in a salvage timber sale proposed by the Forest Service.

In a June 19 letter to the Forest Service about the proposed timber sale, David Hodges of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity's Tucson office said removing the dead trees will accelerate soil loss and hinder long-term recovery in the Rustler Park area. But the Forest Service says the timber sale and subsequent replanting will have the opposite effect.

Power said erosion now occurring in the Chiricahuas is ``part of a natural system.''

But critics said the massive soil loss is not natural because it is the result of a long-standing fire-suppression policy that allowed a lightning-sparked wildfire on Rattlesnake Peak to become a firestorm that consumed entire canyons.

``Yes, it was caused by lightning, but it was a man-made disaster'' because of the fire policy, Austin said.
Fire suppression's results

The Forest Service has been aggressively suppressing wildfires in the Chiricahuas since the 1930s, and this allows dead wood, pine needles and other burnable material to accumulate.

Prescribed burns - fires intentionally set to reduce this ``fuel loading'' problem - have rarely been used in the Chiricahuas.

Excessive fuel loading increases the likelihood of catastrophic fires, and it's a serious problem throughout Southern Arizona's rare ``sky islands'' - isolated mountains on or near the border, surrounded by desert or grassland, with coniferous trees on the summit.

One of the worst fuel buildups is on Mount Graham, northeast of Tucson, where there are up to 100 tons of dead fuel per acre in some high-elevation locations, according to Safford District Ranger Rich Kvale. A ``desirable'' fuel load is about 20 or 30 tons per acre, Kvale said.

``I think the potential is extremely high'' for a catastrophic wildfire on Mount Graham, Kvale said.

``On the right day, once it reached a certain size, there's probably not much we could do about it, other than getting people out of the way,'' he said.

To reduce the fuel load on Mount Graham, Kvale allows the public to collect firewood along Swift Trail, the road that winds nearly to the 10,720-foot summit. Last year about 400 cords of wood were given away, and about 200 have been collected so far this year, he said.

Kvale and Power said the obsession with suppression must change, but new rules must come from Washington, D.C. There are signs that it may happen soon.

Last month, a task force representing several federal agencies released a draft fire policy that recognizes fire as a ``critical natural process'' that ``will be used to protect, maintain and enhance resources.''

Natural and controlled, deliberately set fires should have a greater role in making forests healthy while preventing worse, potentially deadly blazes, the task force concluded. Years of suppression have allowed vegetation to build up on the ground and enabled smaller trees to flourish, creating ``fuel ladders'' from the ground to the crowns of the tallest trees.

Such conditions breed fires, like the Rattlesnake, which burn out of control and replace entire stands of mature trees, the task force stated. A draft version of the new federal fire policy is open to public comment and will be used to write new rules after this summer's fire season.

Kvale and Power warned that new rules won't immediately change the dangerous fuel-loading conditions atop Southern Arizona's sky islands and elsewhere in the West.

``You can't just turn fire `on' at this time,'' Kvale said. ``With 80 or 100 years of accumulation of fuels, the presence of fires in those areas will probably cause stand-replacing fires.''

Firewood sales, thinning of unnaturally dense forests and judicious use of prescribed burns during cooler parts of the year would help reduce the fuel load, he said.

``We're going to have bad fire seasons in the West for a while. Rattlesnake was part of it, and Yellowstone was part of it,'' Power said. The great Yellowstone fires of 1988 blackened nearly 800,000 acres, about a third of the national park.

``We'll slowly work on it, but it's going to be a problem as long as you've got that type of fuel loading,'' he said.

``It took us 100 years (of suppressing fires) to get where we we're at, and it's going to take us 100 years to get back where we ought to be.''










StarNet: The National Park Service has on-line information about the "http://ice.ucdavis.edu/US_National_P ark_Service/Chiricahua_National_Monument/"wildlife at Chiricahua National Monument.

Photos by David Sanders, The Arizona Daily Star

Raccoon tracks line the banks of what was once Rucker Lake, now filled with eroded topsoil

Forest Service worker Chris French, left, at sediment-flooded campsite. A wildflower, above, grows next to a tree charred by the fire.

Burned trees in Rustler Park are a silent reminder of the huge, 27,500-acre Rattlesnake fire

Rancher Josiah T. Austin by a check dam

Forest Ranger Brian Power

Map by The Arizona Daily Star