GNA Spotlight, Arizona, February 2025
Submitted by Colby Powers, AZ DFFM GNA Coordinator
The Poco Pino Fuels Reduction Project on the Tonto National Forest was put to the test when the West Fire spread into the project area.
Working under a Good Neighbor Authority agreement with the Payson and Pleasant Valley District, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management completed the thinning of the 718-acre fuels reduction project. This included removing merchantable timber, thinning non-commercial timber, and removing subsequent biomass from operations to protect the wildland urban interface community of Pine.
Thinning work was completed in July 2024, and in early August, a lightning strike ignited the West Fire a few miles northeast of the project area. This fire was allowed to burn as a managed wildfire and grew to encompass over 15,000 acres, including three units of the Poco Pino project. The project had not yet been closed out, and landings were used as staging areas for fire personnel and some skid trails were used as holding features to contain the fire and stage firing operations. The outcome of the fire was a mosaic of burn severity across the landscape, ranging from low-severity underburn in the timber to high-severity on steep slopes covered in manzanita.
Overall, the treatment of the Poco Pino project area met its goal of reducing ladder fuels and increasing tree crown spacing, and provided more options to the fire operations team to overall better manage the landscape-scale fire.
For more information, contact Colby Powers.