Less than 2% of Nebraska is forested. But among the forested landscapes in the state, the Pine Ridge and Niobrara Valley ponderosa pine stands are considered some of the most precious and beautiful.

More than 60 years ago, about a quarter-million acres of the Pine Ridge were covered by pine. Since 1989, about half of the ponderosa pine forests in the state encompassing the Pine Ridge have been lost to fires, along with thousands of acres in the Niobrara Valley.

That makes for a big wildfire footprint, says Doak Nickerson, Nebraska Forest Service district forester in Chadron, Neb. With about 97% of the state’s lands in private hands, reforestation of lost pine forests, as well as pine preservation, must be coordinated between federal, state and local agencies and private landowners.

To accomplish this, NFS partnered with local natural resources districts and landowners in a three-prong approach that includes control of grass fuel among the forestlands, ladder fuel management in the pine forest, and replanting efforts.

As far as wildfires are concerned, the Pine Ridge is a grass fuel model, Nickerson says. The wildfires of 2006 and 2012 burned tens of thousands of acres of grassland and forest. The 2012 wildfire season alone burned across 500,000 acres in the north and northwest portions of the state, and all of those were ignited in grasslands with heavy grass fuel.

“The number one firefighter and primary grass fuel manager is the cow-calf pair,” Nickerson says. “Grazing those grasslands and keeping grass fuel under control is the key to preventing wildfires in the extreme drought years. The cow-calf pairs play an important role in manipulating the grass fuel model that drives catastrophic wildfire in this pine ecosystem.”

This past season was anything but dry in the Panhandle and Sandhills, so landowners often don’t worry about wildfires as much during these wetter years. However, Nickerson points out that grass and ladder fuel that becomes lush during wet years and is not managed properly can become heavy fuel for wildfires in drought years to come.

To mitigate future fires, NFS sent letters to 260 landowners whose pine forests were burned by wildfires in recent years. Of those landowners contacted, 33 have participated in the cost-share project.

“It is often challenging to help absentee landowners understand the importance of grazing the grass around and within the pine forest to protect the pine forest,” Nickerson says. “Secondary to the cow-calf pair will be our forest management tools, like logging, thinning and chipping, to reduce and manage forest fuel loads in this grass-dominated landscape.”

That’s where Fred McCartney, NFS specialist in forest fuels management, comes in. “We have to remember that centuries ago, bison grazed heavily within the pine forest and helped control much of the fuel,” McCartney says. “Frequent low-intensity, rapidly moving wildfires were also common, keeping grass and ladder fuel controlled, while leaving the pine trees intact.”

In the absence of these natural management tools, modern fuel management becomes more important.

According to McCartney, great efforts are being made to protect the green pine islands that remain after the recent wildfires as a seed source for future ponderosa pine. “It takes fuel reduction in and around the burn site and these pine islands that remain to maintain a forest in this ecosystem,” he says.

The 2006 wildfires that struck the region were followed by the 2012 fires that actually reburned some of the same areas. Dead trees still standing and interspersed within some of those green pine islands that had been killed in 2006 added fuel to the fire in 2012. Because of those standing dead trees, the fires burned hotter and longer in those pine islands, leaving them completely decimated after the 2012 fires burned out.

Replanting pine trees is another prong in the efforts, but McCartney and Nickerson both recognize that it is only a small part of their overall approach. According to Adam Smith, NFS forest products utilization specialist, 107,000 pines were planted in spring 2018; and 110,000 ponderosa, limber and southwest white pines were planted in spring 2019 through the partnership efforts with landowners in the Pine Ridge and Niobrara Valley wildfire footprint areas. Another 100,000 trees are scheduled for planting this upcoming spring.

Replanting efforts are part of a three-year program that is funded largely through a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant, with additional NFS support.

“Of key importance to the project are the Upper Niobrara White NRD and Middle Niobrara NRD tree programs, as well as the staff at Bessey Nursery at Halsey where the trees come from,” Smith says. “The spring of 2020 is the last year of the planting program. However, the opportunity for landowners and NRDs to become more familiar with the containerized stock type will hopefully lead to more large-scale tree planting efforts in the future,” he adds.

The replanting efforts are being carried out by professional contractor tree planting crews that work toward quality planting efforts, even over the tough terrain of the Pine Ridge and Niobrara Valley.

“Few if any new forest types have backfilled behind what used to be pine forest,” Nickerson explains. “This pine forest has been reset back to a pioneer stage dominated by forbes and grasses. Where the fires burned hot over entire watersheds and thoroughly killed live and green pine seed trees and stands for long distances, it will be 100 to 200 years before pine returns to those watersheds.”

There are random increases of spotty shrubs such as chokecherry and plum — as well as hardwoods such as hackberry, boxelder and aspen — but these are not a new forest type that will take hold in the fire-affected watersheds in the Pine Ridge, he says.

That said, for the landowners that had their pine forests completely wiped out with no green seed trees or green tree islands, this project will help jump-start the recovery of the piney woods that once grew on their land.

“Without this project, waiting on natural regeneration may take a century or two, well past the planning horizon of these private landowner’s great-grandchildren,” Nickerson adds.

Learn more by contacting Nickerson at 308-631-1280 or McCartney at 308-432-8158.