Forest Service delays Ojo Sarco prescribed burn
After reviewing site conditions at the start of this week, Carson National Forest fire personnel elected not to move forward with the Ojo Sarco Piles Prescribed Fire project on Tuesday (March 7), which was the the first day identified for potential ignitions.
Fire management will continue looking for any potential opportunities to ignite the debris piles, produced from a 137-acre thinning project, according to a press release.
“This is a normal part of the prescribed fire planning process. If the conditions are outside of the prescription, we will postpone until later and look for other opportunities,” said District Ranger Michael Lujan, who oversees the Camino Real District. “If weather and site conditions continue to be out of prescription, we will postpone ignitions until next fall or winter.”
According to a press release, “the amount of snow on the ground significantly melted over the weekend. While snow on its own is not required for ignitions, fire managers must also consider site conditions combined with weather, and little precipitation is forecasted in the near term.”
In other forest news, on March 2 the Carson announced that the Willow Piles prescribed burn, which was ignited Feb. 9 in the Tres Piedras Ranger District to treat debris piles from a 421-acre thinning project near Hopewell Lake, was complete. It was the first prescribed fire within the Carson National Forest since the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, ordered a review of controlled burn practices in the wake of the Calf Canyon–Hermits Peak wildfire in 2022.
The Carson and the neighboring Santa Fe National Forest have both been working under new and revised burn protocols to implement several prescribed burn plans that have been updated as a result of the national review, including a 53-acre pile burn slated for ignition on the Carson north of Canjilon later this year, and the Deer Lake pile burn east of Cuba on the Santa Fe, which was ignited on Feb. 27.
“An update on the Deer Lake project monitoring will be forthcoming later this week,” said Pamela Baltimore, public affairs officer for Santa Fe National Forest.
According to a press release, the Forest Service’s national fire management strategy is centered on long-term forest health, and that strategy includes reducing forest fuels and using prescribed fire on the landscape. In order to maintain resiliency, fire-adapted forests in the Southwest region must undergo fire disturbance on a regular basis. After prescribed fire is completed, if a future wildfire reaches this area, the fire behavior will likely be modified to a less intense, more manageable surface fire due to the absence of accumulated debris and ladder fuels.
The Carson National Forest is part of two national initiatives to confront the wildfire crisis and restore lands. The efforts cover 95% of the 1.5 million-acre forest and are broken down into two separate projects: The Enchanted Circle Wildfire Crisis Strategy Landscape in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where the Ojo Sarco piles are located, and the Rio Chama Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program in the San Juan Mountains, where the Canjilon piles can be found. Each project involves shared stewardship with multiple partners and cover lands beyond Forest boundaries.