The Willow Creek WUI #12 as delineated in the County CWPP is located primarily in Indian Creek and Willow Creek Canyons on the north edge of the Gila Wilderness. A small portion of roadless study area, some of the Gila Wilderness, Gila National Forest and some private land is included within the boundaries. Besides about 60 private summer homes on the private land there is a Forest Service cabin with barn, a NM State Game and Fish cabin, summer special use cabins, a popular Wilderness trailhead and several developed campgrounds on the National Forest. Willow Creek is a popular recreation and fishing area.  There are many very steep slopes and generally very high fuel loads. These characteristics are the reason the Willow Creek WUI area rated second 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 Willow 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 will be difficult to obtain: "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 combination of high fuel loading, high elevation forests, steep slopes, Wilderness and Roadless Study areas and environment concerns such as the Mexican spotted owl complicate matters considerably. Although it may not be possible to obtain the level of protection and degree of defensible space desired by many concerned parties, this plan seeks to propose the mitigation that will do the best that can be done under the circumstances.

 

The Willow Creek summer home area lies in a canyon at the foot of an extremely steep north facing slope with the boundary of the Gila Wilderness on the ridge top. Since the Wilderness lies south, southwest and west of this WUI and contains extremely high fuel loading, the legal options for treatments is of concern. Research of these options resulted in the following findings:

 

Wildland fire use and limited prescribed fire can be used in the Wilderness.

 

The Willow Creek WUI boundary is modified slightly by this supplement. The boundary is redrawn to include The Gilita Creek Campground.

 

 

 

The original road to Willow Creek and the trailhead for the trail to White Creek Cabin crossed the flat ridge tops on "Willow Creek Mesa" and north of Indian Creek. The "old timers" tell about how the flat areas north and south of Indian Creek were all open Ponderosa pine with long sight distances under large timber. The "trail" to White Creek Cabin was actually a road. A generator was pulled in and out each field season for use using a small tractor. Many of the structures in this WUI are near 50 years old. An old CCC cabin at the USFS site is on the National Registry.

 

The first major timber sale activity was in the 1960's with some salvage of wind throw following that sale into the early 1970's. The Indian Timber Sale located either side of Indian Creek was in the 1980's. The Adam-Hoague timber sale was mostly cable yarding on steeper slopes that closely followed the Indian Sale.

 

The 65,000+ acre Bear Fire of June, 2006 covered all but the southwest 1/3 of this WUI. 
The largest 100% mortality areas were all to the north of this WUI. There are numerous smaller high mortality areas in the WUI area, but since these areas are scattered and relatively small, the original priorities for treatment in the WUI are not significantly different from what was proposed before the fire. The fire did reduce the amount of fuel treatment work needed since ground fuels and varying amounts of thinning was accomplished. In priority area 2 on the south facing slope for instance, the fire did some thinning in the smaller trees but mostly the fire remained on the ground reducing the ground fuels without high mortality in the large timber. This was partly because of burn-out operations done by smoke jumpers at a time of day when lower temperatures and higher humidity was most favorable to burnout. Priority area 7 received little large tree mortality because this area was thinned well in the old Indian Sale. Priority 6 area received the most mortality because of the denser understory. Priority 1 was not in the Bear Fire. Priority 5 did not receive much mortality. The portion of 8 that was in the Bear Fire burned hot in patches with maybe 1/3 of the burned area with large tree high mortality. These burned patches should help provide control points if there is an opportunity to use fire use in 8. The extreme fire threat SW of the Willow Creek summer home area is still the same.       

 

Besides the meetings held around the County for the County Wildfire Protection Plan including a couple of meetings on-site for agency collaboration, a public meeting was held for this specific CWPP on May 27, 2006 at the Willow Creek summer homes. 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.

 

In addition to the public involvement for the County CWPP, a meeting with Willow Creek on 9/5/05 was held by Forest Service representatives.  There have been several meetings and contacts with the land owners upon the occasion of fuels work being done by fire crews or during forest fire activity in the general area. See comments under above Collaboration section.