Fires prompt Nevada facelift

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Elko County rancher Patsy Tomera scrawled an eerie prediction in her journal Aug. 5.

"So much lightning," she wrote. "There probably will be a lot of fires."

Four days later, "We were in full blast," Tomera recalls now.

More than 50 large-scale fires tore across Nevada this year, charring about 1.6 million acres of the state in one of the worst fire-seasons on record.

"In 26 years of fire fighting, I don't remember a season when we had this kind of widespread burn," said Steve Frady, Nevada Division of Forestry spokesman. "Nevada has the dubious distinction of leading the nation this year in acres burned."

Now Nevada is the focus of one of the largest nature restoration proposals ever. Not only does the state need reseeding because of the fires; the entire landscape needs a major facelift, according to a new Bureau of Land Management report.

The report proposes a 10-year plan that seeks to restore soils, plants and wildlife scarred by fires. At the heart of the plan: eliminate aggressive nonnative species like cheatgrass and replant native vegetation. The fast-burning cheatgrass, which offers little forage or shelter for wildlife because it browns quickly, for decades has choked out native plants and animals.

"The cost of doing nothing or of a minimal restoration of the Great Basin would be tremendous," according to the report "Out of Ashes, An Opportunity -- The Great Basin Restoration Initiative."

"Nothing less than long-term restoration will slow this spread (of cheatgrass) and allow native plants to return and thrive," the report says.

The new BLM report says that without a long-term restoration program:

"These are not the predictions of alarmists, nor are they the forecasts of people seeking more dollars to promote their own programs and agendas," the report says. "They are the best judgments and projections of experienced scientists and managers and concerned citizens who understand the issues."

The aggressive landscape rescue estimated to cost about $100 an acre -- more than $50 million total -- is contingent on Congressional approval, unless some other funding is found.

"We can pay for it now, or we can pay for it later," said Don Smurthwaite, a spokesman for the BLM National Office of Fire and Aviation, in Boise, Idaho, which published the report. "It's more expensive to pay for it later."

Lightning began sparking fires in April -- about a month before fire season typically begins, fire officials said. The worst fires began in early August, fueled by lack of rain, high winds and seas of highly flammable cheatgrass.

"It was a real witch's brew of bad conditions," Smurthwaite said.

The fires caused countless dollars in private property damage and cost about $234 million to fight, the BLM estimates. The fires killed numerous wild animals , obliterated their habitat and further reduced native plants like sagebrush. Already, 1,500 wild horses from burned areas are being rounded up for relocation or adoption.

The blazes also whipped through 134 ranches, about 20 percent of the state ranches that rely on some BLM land for grazing.

"That's a pretty sizeable chunk," said Nevada Cattlemen's Association director Betsy Macfarlan.

The Tomeras lost 19 cows and calves from a herd of 1,800 and roughly 65,000 acres of their grazing land. They hope some of the vegetation will grow back.

"We were very fortunate," Patsy Tomera said. "It seems like everyone lost some cattle. The fire went so fast. The winds were so radical."

The Tomera's neighbors, Sandy and LeRoy Sestanovich, lost 30 head of cattle of 250 in their herd. Another 30 are still missing. They also lost most of their grazing land, about 18,000 acres. The Tomeras have agreed to let the Sestanoviches use some of their land.

"The fire took a real dent out of our herd," Sandy Sestanovich said.

The Sestanoviches drove most of their herd back to the ranch in a daring round-up an hour and a half ahead of the fire. The blaze came to within a half-mile of the house, but spared the meadow around their home where most of the cattle waited anxiously.

"We got in and turned to look back, and the fire was really coming," Sestanovich said. "It followed the same path that we brought the cattle through."

The summer blazes devastated wildlife, biologists say.

"The numbers are pretty staggering," said a downcast San Stiver, a state biologist.

Many animals escaped the fires, Stiver said. Burrowing rodents like the kangaroo rat likely went underground, only to surface to an expanse of ash too vast to cross.

"They were looking at a moonscape," Stiver said.

Stiver used the sage thrasher as an example of the homeless. Roughly 200,000 pairs of the small, spotty-breasted birds probably took to the air during the fire but lost their sagebrush shelter.

"Millions of animals died," Stiver said. "Millions more will continue to die."

Effects of the 1999 fires will be felt for decades, said Jim Jeffress, a Nevada Division of Wildlife biologist.

About 5,000 of 15,000 mule deer in Elko County died or will soon die, Jeffress said. He added that fires in some areas, such as Yellowstone National Park, can benefit the landscape by opening up seeds, for example.

"The Great Basin is drastically different than Yellowstone," Jeffress said. "People have the misconception that (desert) wildfires are good. They're devastating."

Traditional efforts to rehabilitate fire-scarred land already are under way. Efforts to reduce dust, protect watersheds and reduce flooding have begun, for example.

And the BLM has ordered 4.3 million pounds of seed, including 700,000 pounds of various sagebrush, to replenish native plants such as crested wheatgrass, Magnar Great Basin wildrye and bluegrasses, Richard Brown, Nevada BLM spokesman in Reno, said.

The $11.8 million in seed is paid for, but not all of it delivered, Brown said. Much of the sagebrush seed is not available, he said.

"Who could have anticipated we would need this much seed -- that 1.6 million acres would burn just in Nevada?" Brown asked.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said he was optimistic that Congress eventually will approve money for soil restoration in Nevada.

"To us, the fire would be akin to the flooding in the Southeast or the drought in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest," Bryan said. "I would hope that our colleages would support whatever money is necessary to reseed."

This year BLM officials are hoping to do more than rehabilitate after a fire. They want to restore the land so that it looks more like it did when settlers first arrived in the Great Basin.

That means stripping the landscape of exotic weeds and cheatgrass, which dries out quickly, inviting fire and leaving wildlife with little forage or shelter.

"Under restoration, we're talking about breaking the cheatgrass cycle," said Jo Simpson, also with the Reno BLM office. "We want to remove the cheatgrass and bring the burned areas back to better vegetation."

The whole restoration process could take 10 years after funding is approved, according to the report.

"This is a region that really may be facing a crisis," BLM's Smurthwaite said. "We want to reverse, in key areas at a minimum, this downward spiral where weeds are taking away the native range land."