Colorado State Programs & People
Campus Institute Works to Prevent Wildfires
Updated June 2007
The Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI) in the Warner College of Natural Resources aims to restore the health of Colorado forests and reduce catastrophic wildfires.
The photo above is an untreated forest, while the one below had a restoration treatment. Unlike traditional thinning, the small-diameter trees were masticated (chipped) on site, with the debris scattered across the forest floor.
Led by Dan Binkley, director, Bill Romme, associate director for research, and Bob Sturtevant, associate director for outreach, CFRI works to provide the best available science in forest ecology, restoration and management in ways that are readily usable by the diverse group of land managers in Colorado.
Federal support and funding
The institute was launched early in 2005, when Congress recognized the immediate need to restore forest health and reduce the risk of severe wildfires in the Southwest. The resulting Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act authorized the establishment of ecological restoration institutes in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Additional federal funding received in 2006 allowed CFRI to begin innovative approaches to providing the best scientific information in ways that solve forest problems and educate forest professionals, as well as the public.
Timely environmental research
The Colorado Forest Restoration Institute is a timely example of the long history of pioneering environmental research taking place at Colorado State University, and the application of that work to improve the forest lands of Colorado.
Devastating wildfires and timber practices have been hot topics as far back as 1905, when the U.S. Forest Service was founded. Historically, low-elavation pine forest in the Rocky Mountains would burn every seven to 30 years because of lightning strikes. However, these fairly regular, large fires had largely stopped by the late 19th century as grazing animals brought in by settlers eliminated the fuel that allowed the fires to spread.
By the 1920s, federal fire suppression efforts began in earnest, but those efforts also led to an unnatural increase in the density of pine trees, and during dry weather, these trees become fuels.
Today, the Forest Service, other land management agencies and private land owners thin forests and set prescribed fires to reduce fuel build-up, reducing the risks to lives and properties, if wildland fires develop later.
Managing forest fuels in the red zones
Managing fuel has become even a higher priority for the "red zones," where communities and wildlands meet, since the devastating fires of 2002. CFRI will provide the research and science to aid efforts to return forest to their natural, fire-tolerant condition and to spare communities from costly and potentially deadly fire threats.
For more information about CFRI, contact Dan Binkley at Dan.Binkley@ColoState.EDU or visit: www.warnercnr.colostate.edu.
Additional links to Warner College of Natural Resources wildfire research and resources:
