Courtesy of the Durango Herald | By Jonathan Romeo | Photo by Jerry McBride
As more research is done within the 416 Fire burn scar, it’s becoming increasingly clear the blaze that burned in summer 2018 was a healthy fire for the landscape, which is already showing strong signs of recovery.
“It’s exciting to see a fire in the contemporary era behave as we’d except,” said Michael Remke, a forest health research associate with Mountain Studies Institute. “It’s not like the fires we’re seeing burn in California.”
The 416 Fire broke out June 1, 2018, during a time of extreme drought in Southwest Colorado, and went onto burn an estimated 54,000 acres, mostly in the Hermosa Creek watershed in the San Juan National Forest.
Initially, estimates showed the 416 Fire burned more acres at a higher intensity, raising concern from forest researchers about the prospect of vegetation recovering within the burn scar.
While not completely unnatural, high-intensity burns were historically less common and are considered to occur more frequently in recent years, in part because of a longstanding practice to suppress wildfires and the drying out of the landscape associated with climate change.
