Experts still assessing huge losses from summer fires

Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1999 | 1:37 a.m.

"The difficulties we face from this disaster are enormous," said Gene Kolkman, Ely district manager for the Bureau of Land Management, who is coordinating the statewide emergency action plan.

This summer has seen more than 2,300 square miles of grass, brush and trees burn in rural Nevada.

With an area the size of Delaware stripped of vegetation, wildlife biologists say wind and water erosion are as certain to follow as wildlife starvation.

Large game animals move to lower elevations during tough winters. In the coming years, cheatgrass will replace the native grasses and shrubs wild animals depend on for food and shelter from the wind and snow.

"Once the fire is over, life doesn't go on," said Jim Jeffress, a biologist with the Nevada Division of Wildlife. "For decades and decades to come, the manifestations and impacts of those fires will be felt in the wildlife communities, from the mice on up to the big-game species."

At a Sept. 10-11 meeting in Winnemucca, Nevada wildlife commissioners will consider a proposal to close off all hunting this fall in a 357,000-acre unit near Elko where three huge fire complexes burned off most of the area's vegetation.

The biologists doubt there's much left of the deer and sage grouse population for hunters to go out for anyway.

"If you can imagine an animal in the middle of the perimeter escapes the fire, they may have 15 to 20 miles of charred earth to walk over to find the next habitat," state wildlife biologist San Stiver said. "That's insurmountable for most species of animals."

The long-term threat to the state's wildlife is the cheat grass that is expected to take over the burn areas.

Cheat grass was brought from Asia as packing material around the turn of the century. Animals can eat it for about a month in the spring when it's green. When it dries out, it becomes flammable and causes wildfires to burn more frequently and hotter than normal. After a fire, cheat grass comes back stronger than before.

With every major fire, Nevada's open spaces are changing from a sagebrush and bunch-grass ecosystem with a myriad of wildlife to a cheatgrass and exotic-weed environment that supports little to no wildlife, Jeffress said.

"We need sagebrush," he said. "Without that, the animals cannot get out of the weather.

Kolkman estimated that it will take 4 million pounds of seed to begin the restoration effort - 2 million of it for Elko County alone.

"This is the most extensive rangeland reseeding effort ever undertaken in Nevada - and maybe enywhere," he said.