In 2015, several organizations came together to launch a new coordinated effort to accelerate strategic and landscape-scale forest treatment in the Upper South Platte River watershed (USGS defined HUC 8 watershed) with an eye toward complementing and leveraging the impact of prior land management efforts.
This effort resulted in the creation of the Upper South Platte Partnership (USPP), a collaborative group that is using scientific data, modeling, and spatial analysis tools combined with local knowledge and perspectives. The aim is to identify areas across the watershed where active forest management could most effectively contribute to the group’s goals for improved forest ecosystem function and wildfire risk reduction objectives.
Frequent, low to moderate wildfires were once common in the landscape across Colorado’s Front Range. However, in the mid to late 1800s, the activities of settlers, miners, and other entrepreneurs began to replace indigenous communities and natural disturbance as the primary influence on Front Range forests. Since then, fire suppression practices designed to protect human life and property have impacted the way forests function. Tree densities have increased while forest diversity has decreased. This has resulted in forests overcrowded with trees, degraded habitat for wildlife and birds, less resilience to wildfires, higher fuel loads, and less frequent but more intense fires as compared to the early and mid 1800s.
The USPP collaboratively works to coordinate cross-boundary treatments and projects across federal and non-federal (state, local, and private) lands. These efforts include prioritization, implementation, and monitoring of projects designed to yield the greatest benefit from collaborative planning. Combined, the aim is to have a cumulative treatment footprint across the landscape that has a meaningful influence on future fire behavior and reduced potential for detrimental impacts to the water resources, ecosystems, habitats, heritage sites, and surrounding communities.
The Upper South Platte watershed is of vital importance. It is home to many residents, a place of recreation for millions of visitors each year, and contains significant habitat for wildlife, birds, fish and other beneficial species. Eighty to ninety percent of Denver and Aurora’s drinking water flows through this area. It also provides essential water to communities, farms, and ranches in eastern Colorado as well as Nebraska, Kansas, and beyond.
Unfortunately, the Upper South Platte watershed is also at extremely high risk of uncharacteristically large and destructive wildfires, such as the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire and the 2002 Hayman Fire. Fires like these frequently result in devastating post-fire flooding, erosion, and debris flow events along with many other negative impacts to people, water, and wildlife.
Following the Buffalo Creek Fire and floods of 1996, the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado State Forest Service, Denver Water, and the Environmental Protection Agency launched a focused treatment effort in 1998 to improve forest conditions and reduce wildfire risks. This effort was primarily focused on federal lands in three sub-basins of the Upper South Platte watershed. However, over time focus has expanded to include non-federal and privately owned lands within the watershed and more entities have joined the efforts. Financial support has come from a variety of sources including the US Forest Service, Denver Water, state and county governments, parks, open spaces, and other private and public donors to conduct cross-boundary treatments.
