A former wildland firefighter reflects on what it takes to keep Wyoming’s sagebrush country healthy, and the legislation that could help. Part of a TRCP series on wildfire, forest health, and what this fire season means for hunters and anglers.

Dust and ash blotted out the sky as 40mph winds whipped my dingy yellow shirt against my chest. I could still see flames from the House Draw Fire popping up periodically as I parked my side by side a safe distance away and walked into the black. I took my tablet out to record the location of a power pole which had been completely burned at the base, leaving it suspended by the powerlines that had hopefully been turned off. As a Fireline Resource Advisor, it was my job to protect natural resources and other values during wildfire operations, ensuring that fire suppression activities don’t do more damage to the landscape than the actual wildfire itself.  

When I hiked to the top of the hill to record the damage to the telephone pole, the phone in my pocket buzzed. 

It was a job offer from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. 

The summer before I joined TRCP, I had been on multiple fire assignments across the country. I was what’s called a “militia” firefighter; someone trained as a fire fighter but holds a different full-time position within the agency that was not necessarily fire related. But these days, everything is fire related. During my last summer with the BLM, I served with the National Burned Area Emergency Response Team (BAER team) as a rangeland ecologist on the Durkee fire in eastern Oregon. Ecologically, the area was fairly similar to where I live in Wyoming, but after years of large wildfires, Invasive Annual Grasses (IAG) had infiltrated the area and the fire cycle shifted from every 60-80 years, to every 5 years. With the House Draw Fire, which burned 174,000 acres, our northeastern Wyoming ecosystem shifted from sagebrush steppe to an annual grassland in less than 48 hours.

Fire cycles describe the predictable, historically established pattern of wildfire occurrence in an ecosystem, including frequency, intensity, size, and season that has evolved alongside the region’s climate and ecology over time. Much of the West is a fire-adapted ecosystem, meaning the types of plants that grow here, and the animals that feed on those plants as well as the animals that feed on those animals, all depend on regular fires in some way. Prairies, Savannahs, and some forests are all examples of fire adapted ecosystems, but sage brush takes longer to regenerate.  

None of this means fire is the enemy; in fact, fire has been used as a land management tool in North America for thousands of years. I’ve stood in the smoke of a prescribed burn in Northeastern Wyoming and watched it creep low and slow through the understory, clearing ladder fuels and leaving the ancient Ponderosa Pines standing, creating high-quality habitat for elk, Great-Horned Owls, and long eared bats. A few seasons later, that ground is thick with grass and forbs, and the elk know it before I do. That’s fire working the way this landscape evolved to expect it – through slow, low temperature fire that leaves the soil intact instead of scorched earth where invasive weeds can get established faster than native plants.  

Sagebrush does not regrow after a fire like perennial grasses and forbs do, nor is it serotinous like the lodgepole pines that make up the Big Horn Mountains; it regenerates by dispersing seeds in the wind from the seed banks stored in the unburned islands of the sagebrush sea. Not only is it slower to regrow after a fire, but it is often outcompeted by the tenacious annual grasses that rapidly infiltrate a burned area. Sometimes, the seeds from these IAGs are inadvertently brought in by firefighters themselves. Invasive annual grasses, such as Cheatgrass, Medusa Head, and Ventenata increase the frequency and intensity of the wildfire regime. With an increase in fire and a decrease in sage brush, comes a cascade of consequences that, once begun, is nearly impossible to reverse. 

A catastrophic wildfire can set off a chain reaction that can reshape an entire sagebrush ecosystem. When fire burns through sagebrush, IAGs can move in and prevent native vegetation from recovering. As the landscape changes, conifers—especially junipers—can encroach, consuming large amounts of water, lowering the water table, and reducing flows in streams and springs. With less surface water and fewer nutritious plants, cattle and wildlife such as mule deer and elk have fewer resources to survive and may be forced to move elsewhere. Over time, what was once a healthy sagebrush steppe supporting a diverse array of wildlife can become a degraded, sparsely populated landscape with diminished capacity for hunting, fishing, ranching, and other outdoor recreation opportunities. 

When I left public service for the nonprofit world, I brought my deep personal connection to the landscape, and an intimate understanding of the interconnection between flora, fauna, and fire. When I stalk through the deep timber of the Big Horn mountains looking for elk, I see a landscape shaped by epochs of alternating fire and ice.  But without regular fire, or the ability to conduct fuel mitigation projects, those trees become so tightly packed that elk avoid the areas that are impossible to move through; the ladder fuels build up, and catastrophic crown fires become inevitable. With those catastrophic fires comes the risk of invasive weeds, reduced forage for wildlife, and bare topsoil that comes rushing off the mountain in landslides that bury buildings, wipe roads off the map, and fill in streams at the first inclination of rain. 

Freshwater streams that are tender enough to sustain native trout populations are furious enough to spend millennia carving through solid granite bedrock. But these streams can take decades to fully recover on their own from the erosion after a wildfire. Trout cannot survive in warmer waters with fine particles of ash in their gills. That kind of damage is possible to prevent – but only if people and funding show up at the right time.   

 These days, everything is still related to fire. Even as the Energy Policy Advisor for TRCP, my work is related to fire through the impacts of policies that we advocate for – including the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA), legislation working its way through Congress to speed up active forest and rangeland management. Though I am no longer a BLM range tech, or a militia fire fighter, I still serve as a volunteer firefighter in my community.  

FOFA speeds up active management –  like the low-and-slow prescribed burns I participated in while at the BLM – before a fire cycle breaks in the first place. It also strengthens the workforce behind that work, including the militia firefighters who perform all of the necessary logistical needs of fire management. For hunters and anglers, that means forage for elk and mule deer before cheatgrass takes hold, and cold-water streams that don’t choke on ash and sediment for a generation. FOFA also designates high-risk Fireshed Management Areas and, for the first time in legislation, authorizes watershed and riparian restoration inside them – protecting the same trout streams and water tables that are impacted by the plants surrounding them. 

I drive through the burn scar of the House Draw Fire regularly and see the grasses that have replaced the black that spread as far as the eye can see. I didn’t know that day that I was about to trade a Nomex shirt for a desk, but I’ve never really left the fire line behind; I just moved to a different position on it. What I want, working this job instead of that one, is for the next militia firefighter who takes that call to walk into country that still knows how to burn the way it’s supposed to – and regenerate the way it’s supposed to, leaving a clean slate for healthy plants and animals to thrive in. That’s what active management, and legislation like FOFA, is working toward: fewer catastrophic burns, and healthier regeneration. That’s the work in front of us now. 

Learn more about the Fix Our Forests Act HERE

This is part of a TRCP series on wildfire, forest health, and what this fire season means for hunters and anglers. Read the others:

• A Dispatch from NY: This Isn’t Someone Else’s Fire Season Anymore
• In the West: A Pool Is for More Than Swimming
• A Dispatch from WY: From Fireline to Forest and Energy Policy
• In the West: A Wildland Firefighter’s Perspective