Plan for Restoring Grand Canyon Forest Draws Fire

The sound of saws and the smell of smoke could soon permeate the Grand Canyon.

It won’t be the result of commercial logging or a runaway wildfire, but an experiment aimed at saving one of the Southwest’s last stands of old-growth ponderosa pines.

Years of fire suppression have allowed the proliferation of small trees and scrubby brush that now threaten to choke the ancient trees, said R.V. Ward, a Grand Canyon National Park biologist.

“It’s a war out there. They compete for nutrients, for water. Like people, the younger trees can be more vigorous,” Ward said.

Park officials and a group of scientists from Northern Arizona University are seeking ways to reduce that competition while lowering the risk of ravaging wildfires. They are proposing experiments for the South and North rims of the canyon using 160 of the park’s roughly 1.2 million acres.

The same four experiments would be done on 20-acre blocks on each rim and would include:

* Doing nothing. The plots would be used as controls against which to compare the other treatments.

* Controlled burn. A fire would be set in these sections and allowed to burn the entire plots.

* Minimal thinning. Park officials would use handsaws to take out some of the smallest trees in an effort to fireproof the areas.

* Full restoration. Many trees, some up to 12 inches in diameter, would be taken out to make the forest look as it did a century ago, before aggressive fire suppression.

Environmental groups generally support efforts to restore forests but are wary of some of the proposed Grand Canyon experiments.

Martos Hoffman, executive director of the Southwest Forest Alliance, said the full restoration plans are too experimental for a premier national park.

“They are very aggressive. It looks like a very intense timber harvest. The extreme nature is not one that we can all get behind,” said Hoffman, whose group is an umbrella organization for 65 environmental and sportsmen’s groups.

Rob Smith, the Sierra Club’s Southwest staff director, worries because the full restoration experiments will require the use of logging trucks. “We just thought that was overkill,” Smith said.

Hoffman and Smith said they are concerned about the location chosen for the experimental plots on the North Rim. They fall, in part, in an area that has been proposed for a wilderness area designation, which would protect it from almost all human interference.

“Until they know what they are doing . . . we should not be going into the wilderness to find out,” Smith said.

But Wally Covington, the Northern Arizona University professor who developed the forest experiments, said some have been tried elsewhere in northern Arizona with some success.

In experiments that began 15 years ago, a mix of thinning and burning yielded more grasses and wildflowers, which bring a larger variety of birds, butterflies and small rodents, he said.

The Grand Canyon site was chosen because most forest service land is devoid of old-growth trees, which were logged out long ago, Covington said. “The Grand Canyon is the largest area of ponderosa pine in an uncut area. The longer we delay the kind of data collection that they need [to make a decision on forest restoration], the greater the threat,” he said.

Ward said large ponderosa pines used to be able to survive periodic fires that burned off the brush and small trees. But now, because of overcrowding, fires sweep treetop to treetop, consuming tens of thousands of acres. In 1996, 53,000 acres were charred in a wildfire.