Forest treatments continue on South Platte Ranger District
Project area is being prepped and marked for forest health treatments
Contact Information: Josh Cowden 719-225-3793 Joshua.ColeCowden@usda.gov
BAILEY, Colo., April 11, 2025 — Visitors to the South Platte Ranger District of the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands may notice marked trees along Ute Creek and the Forest Service Road 550 corridor, southeast of the town of Bailey. These markings are there to help guide contractors as they implement forest health treatments
later this year.
The areas identified for treatment (see map) will connect previously treated areas along the Upper South Platte in Jefferson and Park counties. Previous treatments took place along Rolling Creek and Jerome Miller/Miller Gulch areas (see map). Together, all units help form a firebreak to help protect wildlands and the wildland urban interface and to aid in wildfire suppression in the event of a wildfire.
Forest health treatments include mechanical thinning to reduce tree density. Thinning areas were identified using tree density calculations to create openings that are designed to reduce the spread of mountain pine beetle and dwarf mistletoe and to increase the forest’s overall resilience to these disturbance agents. Some brush will be mulched and left in place where it can break down and add nutrients back to the soil. Some brush will be gathered into piles to be burned in prescribed fire projects at a later date.
About the Forest Service: The USDA Forest Service has, for more than 100 years, brought people and communities together to answer the call of conservation. Grounded in world-class science and technology — and rooted in communities — the Forest Service connects people to nature and to each other. The Forest Service cares for shared natural resources in ways that promote lasting economic, ecological and social vitality. The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners and maintains the largest wildland fire and forestry research organizations in the world. The Forest Service also has either a direct or indirect role in stewardship of about 900 million forested acres within the United States, of which over 130 million acres are urban forests where most Americans live.
