Bringing Fire Back to Great Basin National Park

Adapted from an article by Bryan Hamilton, integrated resource program manager, in The Midden*, Great Basin National Park's newsletter, Winter 2023.*

Great Basin National Park has finalized a new Fire Management Plan, required of every park with burnable vegetation. It sets out how the park will respond to wildfires and manage fuels and prescribed fire. The previous plan was nearly 20 years old, and much has been learned since about fire's role in the Snake Range.

Fire's history in the Snake Range

Fire is a regular, natural part of the western United States, but tailoring fire management to a particular landscape is hard. By combining tree-ring dating, soil science and historical records in landscape-scale computer models, the park compared today's vegetation with the conditions a natural fire regime would produce.

Before 1900, fires burned frequently in the Snake Range, set by lightning or by Native Americans. They were less intense than today's and kept the land rich in bunchgrasses, wildflowers and other forbs, supporting more sage grouse, bighorn sheep, mule deer, Bonneville cutthroat trout, marmots and pygmy rabbits.

Around 1900, fire was effectively removed from the range: colonization ended Native American burning, and lightning fires were aggressively put out. Without regular "good" fires, heavy fuels and trees increased dramatically. That buildup, together with higher temperatures and more severe drought from human-caused climate change, has left the park's ecosystems vulnerable to intense, catastrophic wildfires. The Strawberry and Black fires burned nearly 10,000 acres, destroyed campgrounds, caused floods, endangered people and closed popular areas of the park.

A new course

The plan recommends reducing fuels on 21,024 acres over the next 10 years, mainly with prescribed fire, to protect private property, homes and water supplies. If the park meets that ambitious goal, it can reduce wildfire severity, restore plant communities and improve wildlife habitat. But prescribed fire is not easy to use, so the park plans to start small, build on success and earn trust.

The 800-acre Baker Creek prescribed fire project. Areas outlined in blue are targeted in the first year; target vegetation types are aspen, riparian and wet meadow. National Park Service.

The first prescribed fire will be at Baker Creek, an 800-acre project to reduce fuels, restore aspen, meadows and streamside areas, improve wildlife habitat, and protect popular recreation areas and campgrounds.

Visitors and neighbors should expect to see and smell more smoke. The park will announce projects through press releases, social media, the Snake Valley Connection and the Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website, and will hold annual field trips to view and discuss the work. Doing nothing, the park says, is not an option: there is too much at stake.

Sources

• Bryan Hamilton, "Bringing Fire Back to the Landscape," The Midden, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter 2023), Great Basin National Park, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/bringing-fire-back-to-the-landscape.htm
• Great Basin National Park Fire Management Plan (2023): https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/nature/upload/GRBA_Final_2023_FMP_508_w_Append_A-C-D2-D3-E-F-I_20230407.pdf
• Studies cited: Provencher et al. (2013), Kitchen (2015), Gruell and Swanson (2012), Sambuco et al. (2020), Williams et al. (2022).