Federal Funding Ignites Nevada’s Fight Against Devastating Wildfires

Sam Mori and his family scrambled to rescue their cattle from a massive wave of fire that raged across northern Nevada in August of 2018. Many of the animals would be difficult to reach as they were grazing in steep, rugged, and rocky terrain.

Just the day before, the 61-year-old rancher looked across the horizon and saw a large pillar of smoke and fire on a neighboring rancher’s property. In that moment, Mori felt a deep wave of anxiety.

“When you see that, you feel like your house and home are on fire,” Mori said. “Then, you fear your entire business, your livelihood, is on fire.”

The fire moved across the dry, grassy terrain so quickly that Mori only had time to find and safely relocate half of his cattle. Miraculously, most of those that remained survived, he said.

The South Sugarloaf Fire began with a lightning strike and burned across federal, state, Tribal, and private land near the rural community of Elko, Nevada, for nearly a month. In the end, the scorched black scar left on the landscape would nearly intersect with what was left by the Martin Fire in Northern Nevada during roughly the same timeframe. Together, the fires consumed nearly 700,000 acres, impacting many local agriculture and ranching operations, killing countless wildlife, and destroying several state and federal recreational areas.

It took years for ranchers like Mori to recover. With nearby federal grazing allotments destroyed, ranchers were forced to move their cattle farther from home or pay for expensive feed. When herds experience changes in environment, it negatively affects reproduction and weight gains and severely impacts a rancher’s profits, according to Mori.

A Changing Landscape

Mori comes from a long line of ranchers dating back 95 years. Five generations of his family currently work on his ranch. He knows the land.

Mori said he’s seen a drastic increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires in recent years. When the warm, dry summer temperatures arrive, the threat of wildfire becomes a constant concern, he added.

“We’ve had four major fire events here since 2006,” Mori said. “We had wildfires when I was young, but they weren’t of this magnitude.”

He’s especially worried this year.

“There’s a huge fire load this year and we’re sitting on a tinderbox,” he said.

Heavy snowfall this winter has resulted in thick vegetation growth across Nevada’s rangelands that will dry out as temperatures continue to rise this summer.

For nearly 20 years, Nevada and the entire western U.S. have faced potentially catastrophic wildfire due to declining forest and rangeland health, noxious weed infestations, increasing temperatures, encroachment into wildland-urban areas, and human-caused ignitions. Nevada’s forests are also suffering from the lack of low intensity fire that reduce natural fuel accumulation, while its rangelands have seen too much fire resulting in invasive plants taking over the ecosystem.

“The scale of the wildfire problem has expanded faster than the capacity to effectively manage it,” said Ryan Shane, the deputy administrator of operations for the Nevada Division of Forestry. “Wildfires are changing in scale, intensity, and timing.”

Nevada is one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S., resulting in unprecedented amounts of development in wildland-urban interface areas at risk of wildfire impacts, according to Shane.

“These developments add complication and cost to mitigating, suppressing and rehabilitating wildfires” he said.

Community Partners Take Action

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service joined forces with the State of Nevada, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get ahead of the wildfire threat. These groups came together in 2019 to form the Nevada Shared Stewardship Agreement, committing to increased collaboration and action aimed at protecting the state from wildfire. The Natural Resources Conservation Service and long list of local Tribes, non-profit organizations, private companies, landowners, and contractors later joined to provide input, planning and implementation at the local level.

“The significant challenges related to wildfire go beyond boundaries and management jurisdictions,” said Bill Dunkelberger, Forest Supervisor on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. “Here in Nevada, we have a long-standing history of partnerships in managing the nation’s forests and grasslands that are now formalized through the Nevada Shared Stewardship Agreement. Through this collaborative partnership with the addition of significant wildfire crisis strategy funds, we are dramatically increasing the pace and scale of our efforts to mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfire through shared expertise, financial resources, people, and equipment.”

The Nevada Shared Stewardship approach aligns with the goals and objectives of the USDA Forest Service’s National Wildfire Crisis Strategy based on threats to communities and ecosystems. The cross-boundary strategy seeks to reduce long-term wildfire risk, vegetation, and wildlife habitat, and address forest and rangeland resiliency. These efforts focus on fuel breaks and landscape treatments including mechanical thinning and mastication, where vegetation is ground up or shredded to increase the speed of decomposition. Target grazing for fine fuels reduction, manual and chemical treatments for non-native annuals and noxious weeds, and prescribed fire are also being used.

“We’re really looking at vegetation management holistically to make our landscapes more fire resistant and resilient,” said Duncan Leao, acting priority landscape coordinator on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. “Each landscape and ecosystem are different, and we want to take that into account as we determine how best to do the work in each area. Shared stewardship helps us leverage a wide range of expertise, skillsets, and funding to make the right decisions.”

A National Issue, Close To Home

Earlier this year, the USDA Forest Service further ignited Nevada’s Shared Stewardship Agreement efforts by naming the state’s Elko and Sierra Fronts as one of 21 high-risk landscapes in the western U.S. as part of the National Wildfire Crisis Strategy. The USDA Forest Service is investing $57 million into these two landscapes, which will directly benefit at-risk communities and protects vital watersheds while enhancing forest and rangeland conditions and creating a fire-resilient forest.

The Sierra and Elko Fronts Landscape encompasses approximately 3.4 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands adjacent to the metropolitan areas of Reno, Sparks, Carson City, and Elko, Nevada, and approximately 30 other rural communities in Nevada and a small portion of eastern California. Around 1.3 million acres of the landscape are located on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

“I have a deep appreciation and respect for the work being done to realize the danger out here and do something about it,” Mori said. “With wildfire, everybody loses, not just the ranchers – our wildlife, fisheries and recreation areas, and communities are at stake.”