BOISE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho — Forest managers and nonprofit partners are working to reduce wildfire risk across some of Idaho's most fire-prone landscapes using forest-thinning projects designed to make future wildfires burn at lower intensity.
The National Forest Foundation is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to thin forests across the Boise and Payette National Forests, removing dense vegetation that can help fires spread quickly and intensify.
“We’d like to decrease the risk of communities burning up,” said Josh Rodriguez, Intermountain Program Manager with the National Forest Foundation.
He says proactive forest management can help reduce the likelihood of catastrophic high intensity wildfires.
“Doing this now on the front end is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than suppressing wildfires and rebuilding communities and those sorts of things on the back end,” Rodriguez said.
WATCH: See the what forest thinning projects look like in Idaho's National Forests
Rodriguez explained that a 2022 U.S. Forest Service analysis ranked the most fire-prone areas across the National Forest System. Southwest Idaho was identified as one of the highest-priority regions in the country.
“In this area, which we referred to as the southwest Idaho landscape, came out in the top 10,” Rodriguez said.
Now crews are focusing on reducing fuels across about 150,000 acres of high-priority forestland in the Boise and Payette National Forests over the next decade.
The work aims to take out smaller trees and vegetation known as ladder fuels, which can allow flames to climb from the forest floor into the crowns of larger trees.
“So when the crew comes in, the thinning crew, they are getting rid of all this little stuff,” Rodriguez said. “Keep the fire on the ground, keep the flame lengths low — those are the kind of fires that are a lot easier to control.”
After thinning operations are finished, the treated sections of the forest have a more open under story that helps established trees grow with less competition.
“The after looks like what we’re looking at here, you know it’s an open under story, the fuels that are down there are grasses, and when those grasses burn, they don’t really create very high flames for the most part. The chance of a fire in here getting up in the crowns is much much lower,” Rodriguez said.
Crews gather the cut logs and limbs into large burn piles, which are left to dry for a few years before being burned by the Forest Service during the off seasons.
“You can see a lot of piles are really close together, which means there was a lot of stuff for them to take out here,” Rodriguez said.
The forest-thinning work is part of an ongoing effort to reduce wildfire risk in Southwest Idaho as multiple agencies and conservation groups work together to prepare and protect public and private lands for future fire seasons.
