Denali and Its Neighbors Work Toward Living With Wildfire

A site just south of Clear that burned three times in recent years; before the fires it was a dense stand of black spruce. NPS / Dave Schirokauer.

A forest near the end of its cycle

The 2023 fire season in Interior Alaska started unusually late — possibly a sign of a new climate regime that park managers are busy adapting to.

Almost 100 years earlier, in 1924, a large fire burned through the Nenana Valley and Riley Creek watersheds of Denali National Park & Preserve — the area that now holds most of the park's critical infrastructure. That fire started most of the area's aspen stands. Their glowing yellow each fall is a reminder that this patch of boreal forest is near the end of its fire return interval.

Getting ready

The park's wildland fire crew recently finished 10 acres of fuels treatment — removing burnable vegetation — in the area: a critical step in reducing wildfire risk, and toward becoming a fire-adapted community.

But reducing fuels can only change how a fire behaves, and wildfire knows no jurisdictional boundaries. Communities have to act before, during and after fire to become fire-adapted.

Learning from the neighbors

The Anderson–Clear area, north of the park, has had several major fires in the last decade, and has taken important steps toward living with wildfire — work that proved its worth during the Clear Fire of 2022.

On September 18, 2023, staff from the park, the Denali Borough and the Anderson Fire Department toured the area to see the tactics the Incident Management Team had used against the fires, and what the fires left behind:

• dozer lines;
• shaded fuel breaks and masticated fuel breaks;
• a site that had burned 2–3 times in the past decade.

They discussed how well these treatments worked, how they can give fire crews safe access, and the safety hazards of a jumble of trees pushed over in a straight line.

The tour group, from left: Clay Walker (Denali Borough mayor); Dave Schirokauer, Keith Mitchell, Leah Mitchell and Sarah Hayes of the NPS; Nathan Grimes (Anderson fire chief); Forest Shreeve (Denali Borough emergency manager). NPS / Chris Noel.

It was a good day for the park's staff to get to know their interagency neighbors and brainstorm new ways to work together toward a fire-adapted community.

Sources

Based on "Working with Denali's neighbors towards becoming a fire-adapted community," Denali National Park & Preserve, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.