Thinning Beetle-Killed Spruce to Cut Fire Risk at Katmai's Brooks Camp

Dead, beetle-killed spruce down at a monitoring plot in the treatment area. Jennifer Barnes, NPS.

The problem

Around 2006, a spruce bark beetle outbreak spread through Katmai National Park and Preserve, including Brooks Camp, the popular bear-watching area. Sixteen years later most of the big spruce were dead and falling. Park managers worried about:

• fire risk from dead and downed trees and thick dry grass;
• damage to buildings from falling trees;
• safety as bears and people move through the camp.

The plan

In 2021, Katmai and the Alaska regional office drew up a mechanical fuels treatment: thinning and limbing trees, and removing downed ones, within 50 feet of buildings, trails and roads — about 65 acres over five years.

A Student Conservation Association women's crew on its first NPS assignment at Brooks Camp. Jennifer Barnes, NPS.

The work so far

• Late fall 2021: Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service smokejumpers start the project under an interagency agreement.
• June 2022: an all-women Student Conservation Association crew, trained in chainsaw use, carries on, working with Katmai staff on resource and cultural compliance.
• Fall 2022: another smokejumper crew follows.

Smokejumpers pile dead spruce along the Falls Trail for later burning. Keaton Shepherd, BLM-AFS.

In fiscal year 2022, twenty-four acres were thinned and piled; by September 2022 about 48% of the multi-year treatment was done. The year's work received $20,000 from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — and the 2022 fire season, with several fires in and near the park, showed why it matters.

Smokejumpers haul debris to a burn pile on the beach; the bears are more interested in fish. Keaton Shepherd, BLM-AFS.

Watching the results

Thinning could let shrubs and grass grow up and hide bears, making encounters harder to avoid. So in June 2022, regional fire ecologists set up 27 monitoring plots before treatment. Over the next decade they will track whether the work is on schedule, whether fire risk fell, and how the vegetation changes.

Sources

Based on "Reducing fire risk in Brooks Camp - Katmai National Park and Preserve," National Park Service, Alaska Region fire management; a work of the United States government in the public domain.