Fire Management Plan and Environmental Assessment for Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

National Park Service

The suppression of fire at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area has eliminated a high frequency low intensity fire cycle of 6 to 19 years typical of ponderosa pine forests. The benefits of these fires included reduction of duff material, recycling of nutrients, reduction of accumulating fuels, pruning of trees which reduced ladder fuels into the canopy, thinning of regenerating pines, sanitizing of trees with dwarf mistletoe, and the encroachment of young conifers into grasslands. These benefits have not been available with the suppression of fires. Past wildland fire suppression actions have led to many forest stands that are overly dense causing a shortage of resources needed for vigorous growth. This limiting of resources affects not only the size and volume of the tree, but also reduces the tree’s ability to fend off attacks by various endemic insect and diseases. In turn dying trees eventually lead to heavier fuel loads on the forest floor. The exclusion of fire in the steppe, shrub-steppe, and ponderosa pine ecosystems in the future will continue the stress on vegetation as systems become more and more out-of-sync from the norm. Stress in the vegetative community leads to more disease and insect mortality creating unnaturally heavy fuel concentrations. The NPS at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area needs this plan to guide management decisions in response to wildland fire incidents occurring within Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area and adjacent to the area’s boundary. Presently and in the future all wildland fires will be suppressed. The size and configuration of LRNRA’s land base eliminates the option of using wildland fire to obtain other resource objectives that may be possible in a park with a large aggregate acreage. In contrast the preferred alternative proposes to add a prescribed fire component that would enhance the NPS's ability to manage and improve the park’s ecosystem components and processes while providing for firefighter and public safety.