YELLOWJACKET PASS – From afar, gazing northeast toward the Continental Divide, one can point out the scar of the Dry Lake Fire east of Bayfield. It has specks of brown compared to the forest around it, which has begun to green up with the spring snowmelt.

But to stand in the scar is to experience a paradox. Deadened leaves of gambel oak rustle on branches that now bear fresh buds, and green leaves sprout from the charred ground.

“They were able to burn it hot enough to knock this oak down but not impact the overstory,” said Noah Daniels, assistant fire management officer for fuels on the Columbine Ranger District.

On a tour of the site last week organized by the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership and the 4 Rivers Resilient Forest Collaborative, more than 40 people gathered at an overlook up a forest road.

Nearly 10 months have passed since lightening started a small fire in an area east of Bayfield known as “first notch.” Rather than contain the fire at a quarter-acre, firefighters opted to contain it within a network of fire lines leftover from a 2019 prescribed burn that encompassed 1,372 acres.

The landscape is adapted to the kind of fire Daniels was talking about.

Fire consumes the persistent endemic gambel oak and thick layers of pine needles that carpet the forest floor with such frequency that it cannot accumulate large amounts of fuel; fire kills the low-hanging branches, causing them to fall off and die, rather than remain and act as a ladder for future fires that could climb into the tops of the trees and heighten the intensity and hazard of the fire.

It’s a natural part of the ecosystem that widespread fire suppression tactics have removed from the cycle. An assemblage of partners from local conservation groups, stewardship stakeholders and U.S. Forest Service partners at the Dry Lake Fire tour were there to see, on the ground, the impacts of what happens when natural fire returns to the landscape.

“There’s a thread that brings us all together – and we’re looking at it,” said Nick Glidden, the ranger on the Columbine Ranger District, standing atop the overlook. “This location was chosen because you can see the interconnectivity of the landscapes that we all work in.”

Last year, the Dry Lake Fire was a turning point of sorts in terms of fire management on the San Juan National Forest. The lighting strike that started it happen to occur inside an existing burn unit with a recent burn history and intact fire containment lines.

It was a moment to exercise the kind of “paradigm shift” described in the 2022 document outlining the USFS response to the national wildfire crisis.

The document describes how the Forest Service will work with partners to use a science-based approach to apply tools such as prescribed fire and mechanical thinning, which can reduce hazardous fuels, change fire behavior, accomplish restoration objectives, and create healthier and more fire-resilient forests.

But even with internal buy-in, there’s still a problem: communicating that to the public.

“The San Juan National Forest is an amazing group of people, we do great work, and often times we don’t explain ourselves all that well in this complex ecosystem-world that we live in,” Glidden said.

It was for that reason that, at the top of the tour, Glidden encouraged the multitude of stakeholders to talk, to meet and swap cards between stops and build stronger connections with one another.

Jimbo Buickerood was the public lands coordinator for the San Juan Citizens Alliance for many years and a founding member of both partnerships that spearheaded the Dry Lake Fire tour.

He’s seen the social license for less aggressive fire suppression grow over the years.

“Coming off Missionary Ridge (in 2002), there was a lot of fear that all smoke meant bad smoke, or catastrophic smoke events,” Buickerood said.

But that has started to change.

He said its been a decided shift toward acceptance on the part of the public, and more consideration of the risk-opportunity balance on the part of land managers.

Fire, in a way, begets more fire. People get used to seeing smoke, and they associate it with hazard reduction, rather than hazard.

“I feel like we have a social license,” said Pat Seekins, the prescribed fire and fuels program manager for the San Juan National Forest.

Just this week, he oversaw the fourth wildfire that forest officials opted to use for hazardous fuels reduction. The Spruce Creek Fire burning northeast of Dolores had consumed 4,962 acres as of Thursday.

The more burning that happens, the more flexibility fire managers have to burn in the future, as lower fuel loads make conditions safer.

But, looking out at the Dry Lake Scar – just over 1,300 acres – Seekins recognizes that there’s much work to be done.

“In an ideal world, if we could treat 30 to 35,000 acres across the forest (annually), particularly in the ponderosa pine, we would slowly be catching up to where we need to be,” he said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com