HELENA — The City of Helena has approved more than $100k in funding to reduce fuels on the wildlands that border the city. In Montana, we have to live with wildfire, but projects like this help to ensure that when there are fires, crews can quickly contain them.
“We’ve had a number of fires in the Helena area, and they’ve all had different stories,” said Helena open lands manager Brad Langsather. “What we want is for the next story to have a positive outcome.”
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In the summer of 2022, a fire on Mount Helena came very close to homes in the neighborhood.
“Pretty much the whole community was able to watch us work,” stated Helena assistant fire chief Mike Chambers.
For decades, the City of Helena, Lewis and Clark County, the US Forest Service and the State of Montana have partnered on numerous projects to reduce potential fuels in the surrounding area.
Most recently, on February 23, the city commission unanimously approved a $100,000 Cooperative Forestry Assistance Grant from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to reduce forest fuels across 105 acres on Mount Helena. The city will match with $25,000, for a total of $125,000 in funding for the project.
Forest fuels, like trees, fallen branches, and pine needles, can feed wildfires. By thinning them out, crews can help keep future fires lower to the ground. Chambers notes that once a fire starts burning in the higher areas of the trees, the fire can be much more difficult to fight.
“It keeps the fire in the lighter fuels, so it burns hot and fast, but doesn’t climb into the treetops where it can grow hotter and move faster,” Chambers said.
The work being done this year builds on earlier mitigation efforts and comes as DNRC plans to treat another 300 acres south of Lombardy Drive.
Langsather says the city’s goal is to treat all forested land it manages every ten years.
Forest management is a time-consuming process. Much of the process is analyzing the terrain, identifying the potential issues and working on what can realistically be accomplished.
Langsather describes the process of how they choose what stays and what goes in order to reduce density and maintain a healthy, wildfire-resistant forest floor.
“We want to have about 15 feet from tree crown to tree crown,” Langsather continued, “so trees that are in that intermediate space will be cut.” We’ll prune trees up to a height of 6-8 feet on trees greater than 20 feet, and a third of the tree's height on trees shorter than 20 feet.”
Cut material will be piled and burned after drying out for at least a summer.
Helena fire officials emphasize the importance of maintaining forest growth to keep residents and recreators safe from an uncontrolled fire.
“Fuel treatments in and around the city of Helena, especially in these park areas, is huge,” Chambers exclaimed.
Work is expected to begin later this year and last about a month. During that time, hikers and bikers should watch for posted warnings and temporary trail closures.
