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Ensuring Healthy Forests

Why Healthy Forests Matter?

Healthy forests provide a suite of important benefits to Western communities and ecosystems, such as regulating snowmelt and water supply, improving water quality, capturing and storing carbon, and providing habitat for fish and wildlife. However, the health of Western forests is deteriorating due to a century of aggressive fire suppression, unsustainable logging practices, invasive pests, and other reasons. These challenges are exacerbated by increasing temperatures and drying soils. Historic under-investment in the implementation of forest management projects compounds past management decisions and ongoing climate shifts.

How To Improve Forest Health

Improving forest health across the West requires a two-pronged approach of (1) focused forest management and (2) forest restoration. Focused forest management includes stewardship of forests in ways that protect their viability and biodiversity, while forest restoration involves reviving the ecological integrity of degraded or destroyed ecosystems. Both are essential to boosting the Colorado River Basin’s resilience to extremes in water availability and risks of catastrophic wildfire.

Investing in forest health strategies such as the clearing of understory, addressing overgrowth, restoring river and stream channels, introducing wet meadow habitats, monitoring pests, treating invasive plants, and conducting prescribed burns will reduce risks to drinking water supplies, water quality, natural habitats, and property. It will also restore recreation opportunities. Such efforts help create jobs that boost local economies while reducing emergency and public health costs.

What Does It Look Like on the Ground?

Denver Water’s From Forests to Faucets Program

The From Forests to Faucets program improves forest health and protects watersheds. A partnership between Denver Water, the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service, Colorado State Forest Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, this program carries out forest management projects such as planting trees and thinning overly dense forests to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire with the goal of protecting watersheds and water supplies for communities across Colorado. As of July 2022, the program has treated 120,000 acres of forests in areas where Denver Water collects water and planted 1.4 million trees in areas affected by wildfires.

Treating Invasive Buffelgrass in the Coronado National Forest

The Coronado National Forest in Southern Arizona is home to a diverse array of unique wildlife and flora. However, invasive buffelgrass brought from South Africa to southern Arizona 100 years ago is threatening this rich and beloved landscape by displacing native plant communities, decreasing wildlife habitat, and increasing catastrophic wildfire risks. To address this, the National Forest Foundation (NFF) is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and others to eliminate buffelgrass through mapping and applying an herbicide to large patches of the invasive species. Since 2020, NFF and the USFS have treated more than 1,000 acres of buffelgrass, with another 1,100 acres of treatments scheduled in the Coronado National Forest. They continue to work on additional, long-term plans and methods to protect the landscape.

The Northern Arizona Forest Fund

The Northern Arizona Forest Fund (NAFF), a project of the National Forest Foundation, improves local forest and watershed health and secures clean and sustainable water supplies for downstream communities across the state. The NAFF provides an easy way for Arizonans, as well as those outside of the state, to fund restoration and green infrastructure projects that contribute to clean, flowing waterways and healthier forests in Arizona’s Salt and Verde watersheds. Since 2015 the NAFF’s projects continue to reduce wildfire and flood risk, improve streams and wetlands, enhance wildlife habitat, restore native plants, and minimize erosion and sedimentation in Arizona streams and reservoirs all while creating jobs and supporting local stewardship efforts. Between 2021-2022 alone, the NAFF restored forest health on 3,703 acres across Arizona watersheds, planted more than 23,000 trees, and reduced sediment transport into the Salt and Verde watersheds by more than 38.5 tons, among other improvements.

Provide adequate funding and facilitate collaboration across local, state, federal, Tribal, and other entities to identify priorities and implement projects.
Prioritize projects that improve ecosystem health while also increasing snowpack, protecting watersheds, improving flows, or reducing the severity of natural disasters.

Resources

CSU's Forest Health and Management Resources

Ensuring Healthy Forests

Why Healthy Forests Matter?

How To Improve Forest Health

What Does It Look Like on the Ground?

How Do We Scale It?

Resources