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CWPP - Davenport Print this page
The Davenport 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 Davenport CWPP uses the data and findings of the County CWPP to assess the wildfire threat and treatment priorities specific to the Davenport Wildland Urban Interface (WUI #s 23, 36, 37, 53, 71, 72, 74). 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 Davenport WUI #s 23, 36, 37, 53, 71, 72, and 74 includes 14,748 acres, 85% of which is in the Davenport Canyon area in WUI 37. The remaining WUIs are scattered around this WUI and would not be included in a plan such as this except for their being near to other major WUI areas. Cibola National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and private land is included within the boundaries. There are 25 E911 address sites recorded for this WUI which includes private homes, businesses, a youth camp, a USFS fire lookout tower, communications sites and miscellaneous buildings. Because of the presence of the youth camp and facilities on Davenport Mountain and the density of some of the surrounding ponderosa pine and pinyon/juniper, the largest WUI, #37, rated 16th in priority for treatment out of the 196 WUI areas in the County. The other six WUI areas in this plan rated 67th, 68th, 88th, 106th, 108th and 110th 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 Davenport 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". Although there are not the serious problems here that are in some WUI areas in the County, there is some high fuel loading and some complicating factors such as dense forests on steep slopes. 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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The early days of Datil were associated with cattle drives as it was on the cattle driveway from points west to the railhead at Magdalena. Past timber and wood cutting, cattle grazing and fire exclusion has influenced the species composition and structure of vegetation in the area. Datil has the only traffic light (blinking caution light) in the entire County. The youth camp in Davenport Canyon consists mostly of mobile housing and manufactured buildings, although there is one log structure. In the last 10 years there has been several occasions when fire threatened the youth camp and evacuations occurred.
Water availability for fire fighting is generally not very good for these WUI areas.
Except for the steeper inaccessible areas, all ponderosa pine areas on the National Forest in and surrounding the Davenport 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 meetings at Datil Fire Dept. and Community Center for the County Wildfire Protection Plan and the Datil CWPP, the Madalena Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest and the BLM Socorro Field Office has had extensive contact with many of the private land owners concerning treatment needs and proposed projects. There have been several meetings with the Magdalena Ranger District and BLM Socorro Field Office 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 for public comment on July 28, 2007 at the Datil Fire Dept. in Datil, NM. Comments on the rough draft were incorporated in a final 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 Davenport CWPP includes WUI areas in Davenport Canyon and outlying areas east, north, west and southwest. The community of Datil lies about 5 miles to the east of the east edge of these WUIs. Access to the area is best over U.S. Highway 60. Most of the land is National Forest (77%). The WUI is within theMagdalena Ranger District on the Cibola NF.
The area straddles the transition zone between ponderosa pine and pinyon/juniper types with some intermixing of grass/shrub land and mixed conifer on north facing slopes. As can be seen in the table below over 4,000 acresof the forested area is in a "closed" canopy condition.
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| Healthy Forests |
"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
"The Forest Factor": the factor in the carbon cycle, climate change, and our community. |
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