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CWPP - Apache Creek Print this page
The Apache Creek Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is a supplement to the Catron County Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The County CWPP completed in October, 2005 assesses the wildfire threat and hazardous fuels treatment priorities on a landscape scale. The Apache Creek CWPP uses the data and findings of the County CWPP to assess the wildfire threat and treatment priorities specific to the Apache Creek Wildland Urban Interface (WUI #s 146-151, 165, 166). Mitigation which will reduce the threat of wildfire damage to property, life and the land are proposed. Project scale data from the County CWPP and other sources is presented to aid in planning and design of the proposed projects.
The Apache Creek WUI #s 146-151, 165, 166 includes 48,132 acres, 76% of which is in the Apache Creek and Tularosa valleys in WUI 166. The remaining WUIs are in side drainages to these valleys. Gila National Forest and private land is included within the boundaries. There are 237 E911 address sites recorded for this WUI which includes private homes, businesses, miscellaneous buildings and a US Forest Service historic administrative site with old cabin. Because of the higher concentration of homes and businesses and the density of some of the surrounding ponderosa pine and pinyon/juniper, the largest WUI, #166, rated 11th in priority for treatment out of the 196 WUI areas in the County. The other seven WUI areas in this plan rated 54th, 42th, 22th, 47th, 25th, 21th and 38th respectively.
The County CWPP contains a thorough presentation of how determinations of values at risk, risk of occurrence and fire threat were used to locate the areas and values most at risk from catastrophic wildfire in the County and to prioritize treatment needs. Please refer to the County CWPP for more information. It is not the intent of this plan to duplicate the County CWPP. The general outline of the County CWPP is followed in this CWPP.
Goals And Objectives
As a supplement to the County CWPP, the main objective of the Apache Creek CWPP is to propose work needed to reduce and mitigate fire threat. To accomplish this objective this supplement continues the collaboration started in the County CWPP, coordinating the needed work with past efforts, the various land owners and other interest.
The desired condition for WUI areas as stated in the County CWPP is obtainable: "The desired condition for WUI areas is a fire safe environment around protected improvements that will provide "defensible space" for firefighters in the event of a wildfire in the surrounding area". There is some high fuel loading, but not as many complicating factors such as high elevation forests on steep slopes, Wilderness and Roadless Study areas and environmental concerns such as the Mexican spotted owl as there are in some of the WUI areas in the County. There is an excellent opportunity to obtain the desired condition for this WUI area.
No modifications were made in the WUI boundaries as established in the County CWPP.
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Large pre-historic ruins are located along Apache Creek and the Tularosa River with one particularly large pueblo ruin located at the junction of these two streams. Fort Tularosa located in the NE corner of WUI 166 on the Tularosa River was used for a short time in the late 1800's. A historic log Ranger Station is located on the Tularosa southwest of the community of Cruzville. The first settlers were mostly ranchers. Logging in the surrounding Gila National Forest supported at least 1 large sawmill now gone at the Apache Creek/Tularosa junction. Through the years the areas along these two main streams have become loosely defined as the communities of Cruzville, Apache Creek and Aragon. Cattle ranching and logging has been the main stay of these communities in past years but environmental restrictions and lawsuits has greatly reduced activities in those two industries.
Except for the steeper inaccessible areas, all ponderosa pine areas on the National Forest in and surrounding the Apache Creek WUIs has been commercially harvested several times. There have been numerous non-commercial treatments also such as pre-commercial thinning and prescribed burns. Fire wood cutting has greatly altered the age class and species composition in accessible to wood cutter areas.
Besides the meetings held around the County and one meeting at Community Center and Senior Center for the County Wildfire Protection Plan, the Reserve Ranger District of the Gila National Forest has had extensive contact with the private land owners concerning treatment needs and proposed projects. There have been numerous meetings with Reserve Ranger District to coordinate the writing of this plan. Comments from all these meetings and contacts were incorporated in a rough draft. The rough draft was presented at a public meeting on August 2, 2007 at the Apache Creek Firehouse. Comments on the rough draft were incorporated in a draft which was sent out for a last review by the involved agencies before the final was signed.
Most of the data used for this CWPP is from the County CWPP and was scaled to fit these WUIs, Although the County CWPP was a landscape scale analysis, much of the data originated at a scale that fits the purpose of this CWPP (30x30 meter satellite imagery for example).
See Collaboration section above.
The Apache Creek WUI areas include the communities of Apache Creek, Cruzville, and Aragon. The Village of Reserve lies about 12 miles to the southwest of these WUIs. Access to the area is best over Federal Highway 180 and State Highways 12 and 32. Most of the land is National Forest (79%). The WUI is mostly within theReserve Ranger District but includes a small amount of the QuemadoRanger district (all on the Gila NF).
Elevation ranges from 6160 ft. on the east side to 8960 ft. on the west side. The area straddles the transition zone between ponderosa pine and pinyon/juniper types. As can be seen in the table below over 7,000acres of the forested area is in a "closed" canopy condition. It is believed that the amount of ponderosa pine is over estimated and the amount of grassland is under estimated by the re-regap satellite data. Some of the sparse tree/grassland areas are classed as ponderosa pine in regap whereas normally they would be classed as grassland, especially from the standpoint of expected fire behavior.
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"Communities for Healthy Forests" Mission Statement: Communities for Healthy Forests was founded to inform the public, natural resource managers and policy makers about catastrophic stand clearing events in public forests caused by fire, and other natural disasters. Communities for Healthy Forests exists to illustrate and explain the benefits of applying the best scientifically supported prescriptions for restoring health to overgrown forests and to rehabilitate severely damaged forests promptly following such events. For more information, see link below: www.communitiesforhealthyforests.org
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