A post-logging “prescribed burn” overseen by the Boulder Ranger District of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest in May 2025 near Gross Reservoir in Boulder County, Colorado got out of control (reportedly due to higher-than-expected winds), accidentally killing and damaging hundreds of trees up to an estimated 200 years old.
Over sixty photos recently taken within the 131-acre Unit 45 of the U.S. Forest Service’s Forsythe II logging project show many large, medium-sized, and small trees killed by the pile and broadcast burn last spring, their trunks scorched, vegetation dead or completely consumed. Flammable woody debris lies scattered throughout much of the unit from agency operations.
The federal project was undertaken under the auspices of reducing “hazardous fuels on National Forest lands that may contribute to the increased spread and intensity of wildfires,” despite Forest Service data proving that this mixed-conifer and lodgepole pine forest in the upper montane zone is well within its historic fire return interval of hundreds of years. This means forest density has not been altered by about eighty years of fire suppression (only truly effective once aircraft was employed after World War II) and categorizations of these forests as “overgrown” are false.
Eco-Integrity Alliance 