Over 1.1 million acres of Colorado forests have been treated for health, wildfire management since 2000
The Colorado State Forest Service and the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute launched a new public tool to track completed forest management projects
Ali Longwell/Vail Daily
Over one-third of Colorado is forested acreage — 24 million acres of the state’s 66.48 million acres — managed by a variety of local, state and federal entities.
The Colorado State Forest Service and the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, both part of Colorado State University, launched a new online tool to better track completed forest management activities in the state.
The Colorado Forest Tracker provides information on where and when forest projects occurred, how projects were funded and what agency oversaw the work. It includes projects between 2000 and 2023 that altered forest vegetation in some way, including cutting trees or bushes, prescribed fire and reforestation efforts.
Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, reported in a news release that the tool will be useful to policymakers, forest managers and local governments in gaining a better view of completed forest health and wildfire reduction projects and aid in planning future activities.
Amanda West Fordham, Colorado State Forest Service’s associate director of science and data, said it would be especially useful to wildland firefighting teams to view historic fuel treatment data in wildfire management.
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In the 23 years, the tool cataloged over 25,000 forest management projects on 1.1 million acres of Colorado forest. The majority — 900,577 acres — were on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The federal agency oversees the largest segment of Colorado forest.
The vast majority of this work has been what is classified as “canopy management,” which includes cutting down trees and shrubs as well as thinning activities. This has occurred on over 786,000 acres of land between 2000 and 2023. It also includes 75 acres of chemical treatment, including pesticide and herbicide application.
Prescribed fire is the second largest activity, with 538,428 acres receiving this treatment. This has included 385,577 acres of broadcast burns and 152,852 acres of pile burning.
Surface management — which accounts for a variety of fuels management from removal to mulching and piling vegetation — is the third-largest activity, occurring on over 184,000 acres. Reforestation, predominantly in the form of planting trees, has occurred on over 46,000 acres.
According to Colorado State University, the data came from both publicly available databases and voluntary submissions from land managers.
