What
is the Forest Service doing at Sportsman's Park?
Area
Closure
What
can I do to protect my property?
Logging
(Thinning)
Prescribed
Fire
Area
Closure
The area previously
logged by Dodge Logging Company (reference map below) is closed
to all uses for the benefit of area protection. Due to the
amount of short stumps in the area, it is considered unsafe
for recreationists. All recreation, camping, hunting, and
other uses are prohibited in this area until the area is deemed
safe for the resource and for recreationists.
The
Forest Service is working on three different levels to protect
your property from the risk of catastrophic wildfire while
also improving forest health.
These areas are
fire prevention, fire suppression and fuels management.
Fire
prevention
Fire prevention has
become an important tool to limiting the number of unintentional
human caused fires. Think of Smokey Bear's message: “Only
YOU can prevent wild fires!” Although we can not control lightning,
the most common natural cause of wildfire, we can educate
the public land users to prevent additional fires from starting.
What
can I do to protect my home and property from wildfire?
For more information
on what the Forest Service is doing in your area, how to protect
your property, and what the Forest Service is doing to protect
you from wildfire, please visit the new sign at the junction
of FS Road 4820 and the Rock Creek Campground.
Fire
suppression
When you think of
fire crews putting out wildfires in order to save lives, property
and resources, you are thinking of fire suppression. For decades,
fire suppression was considered the only “correct” response
to fire. We now better understand the importance of fire in
the natural ecosystem, but continue to actively fight fires
that threaten homes, property, and other fragile resources.
Fuels
management
Three factors—known
as the Fire Behavior Triangle—determine the way a fire burns.
The three factors are weather, topography, and fuel. A change
in one of these factors causes a change in the fire behavior
that may determine how hot it burns and how fast it spreads.
We are unable to change the weather or the local topography,
but we can change the amount and arrangement of fuel. This
is the basis for fuel reduction treatments.
Thinning/Logging
Thinning, also
called biomass harvesting, is used to reduce the risk of
crown fires by opening up the stand and creating more space
between tree crowns—the tops of trees. This helps
prevent fires from spreading tree to tree through the crowns.
Prescribed
burning
The purpose of
the prescribed burn is to reduce the risk of devastating
wildfire, by removing accumulated fuels—needles and branches—and
ladder fuels that will carry the fire up off the ground
and into the taller parts of the forest where firefighters
can not reach it.
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