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Sat. Aug 21st 2010 Horse Mt. lVolunteer Fire Dept. "Open House" 8/21/2010  HORSE MT. VOLUNTEER
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OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY AUGUST 21, 2010 FROM 8:00 AM TO 2:30PM ACTIVITIES IN... Read more » |
Thu. Dec 31st 2009 Hazard Fuel Reductions - Landowner Acres 2009 Treatment Accomplishments for 2009. Read entire article under Files....Accomplishments Other. Read more » |
Wed. Aug 26th 2009 GRANTS are available for Hazard Fuel Reduction Projects Please contact Catron County Commission Office and ask for Linda Cooke. Application and Procedures are located... Read more » |
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CWPP - Horse Mountain Print this page
The Horse Mountain 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 Horse Mountain CWPP uses the data and findings of the County CWPP to assess the wildfire threat and treatment priorities specific to the Horse Mountain Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) (#103). 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 Horse Mountain WUI #103 is located southwest of the town of Datil and just north of Horse Mountain on the edge of the San Augustin Plains. Land ownership is either private, BLM or State. Most of the structures are either homes or outbuildings. Recreational use is about average. Fire threat is generally moderate. The Horse Mountain WUI area rated 31st in treatment priority in the County CWPP.
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, except where there is no supplement necessary to the County CWPP.
As a supplement to the County CWPP, the main objective of the Horse Mountain 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.
As stated in the County CWPP: "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". The most difficult part of obtaining the desired condition in this WUI is north slopes and the BLM Wilderness Study Area on Horse Mountain. The desired condition can be obtained with a collaborative effort between the BLM, County, fire department and private land owners.
No modifications were made in the WUI boundary as established in the County CWPP.
A Structure Protection and Evacuation Plan was completed in 2002 by EMNRD- Forestry Division and is an excellent reference. Any actions taken on the proposed mitigations of this CWPP should start with a review of this Plan. Some of the information contained therein is repeated in this document, but most of the information is not.
A large portion of the subdivisions are "backed up" against BLM lands which are rough steep north facing slopes with generally dense ponderosa pine, juniper and pinyon pine. Besides the obvious adverse fuels aspect of this situation many of the evacuation routes for these areas are limited to one way out. Except for the Horse Peak subdivision, most of the road ROW's (50' width) have not been thinned or cleared where such treatments would be necessary to provide a fuel break. Pullouts and turnarounds are non-existent or inadequate for fire truck sized vehicles on most of the roads, especially in the steeper terrain areas. Road grades are excessive on some roads especially in the TeePee and Last Frontier subdivisions.
Property owner covenants which prohibit cutting of trees is another complicating factor for at least some of the subdivisions. Some owners have ignored this covenant and thinned their properties anyway believing that they would rather take their risks with breaking the covenant than with losing their homes due to wildfire. How or if these covenants can be changed is not known at this time.
Property ownership has historically been mostly by absentee owners and that is not likely to change for many years. This will be a problem to any effort to educate and coordinate any efforts on private land.
One 16,000 gallon water supply tank for fire protection purposes is located on the main road in the Old Thomas Subdivision. However this tank has to be filled with hauled water as there is no well to supply water. There are several other water sources of smaller capacity. See the 2002 Structure Protection and Evacuation Plan.
Besides the meetings held around the County and one meeting at Horse Mountain Fire Dept. for the County Wildfire Protection Plan, a public meeting was held for this specific CWPP on June 13, 2006 at the Horse Mountain Fire Station. Comments from all these meetings and contacts were incorporated in a rough draft. 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 this WUI, 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). In addition collaborative input from the various cooperators and interested parties was obtained through group meetings and individual contacts.
See comments under above Collaboration section.
The Horse Mountain WUI # 103 area is located in the rolling hills and drainages at the bottom of the north slopes of Horse Mountain. Access to the area is over county and home owner association maintained gravel roads from either State Highway 32 or US Highway 60. About 70% of the land is in private ownership with the remainder about evenly split between BLM and State ownerships. BLM and State lands are administered from offices in Socorro. Most of the vegetative cover is pinyon/juniper with some grass/shrub in the drainage bottoms and some ponderosa pine and mixed conifer on the north slopes of Horse Mountain. As can be seen in the table below 17% of the area is in a "closed" canopy condition with the remainder of the area in an "open" canopy or grassland condition.
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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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